Off-season Throwing—Should You or Shouldn’t You? It Depends.

The question is—should baseball pitchers throw during the off-season or not?

There has always been the question of whether baseball pitchers should throw during the off-season or not. For this discussion let’s talk about how this relates to high school, college and even minor league pitchers—since successful major league pitchers normally already have a set routine that has worked for them. Not that their throwing routine could not be improved.

As for Little League baseball pitchers, in my opinion they should be playing other sports at this point rather than focusing on just baseball. That will help them develop better overall body awareness along with building their motor skills which will be more important long term even if they decide to specialize in baseball when they reach high school.

Many baseball coaches and parents have the misconception that throwing during the off-season is harmful because too much throwing may lead to pitching arm injury…especially if the pitcher had a sore arm or an arm injury the past year.

What baseball coaches would rather have pitchers doing is focus on getting bigger and stronger since the idea is that it will help the pitcher produce more velocity. If you have been reading some of the other articles here you know how foolish I believe that thinking to be since baseball pitching is not a strength activity but a skill activity. Attention should be focused on building explosiveness rather than general strength in the weight room.

If we assume the baseball season ends for most pitchers at those mentioned levels in early September and starts again March 1st for high school and sooner for colleger and pro…then that time period gives the high school pitcher almost six months off. But if he starts throwing a month before the season starts he will still be away from throwing for five months.

The college and minor league pitcher may have as much as 4-5 months away from throwing depending on the climate of where they are from.

Imagine a top golfer taking off for five or six months. The problem there is that swing mechanics get out of whack and whatever you have worked on to improve the previous season may be another problem because of a lack of continuing to improve skills.

What should be considered is that for pitchers at all three levels is that most problems are laregely due to poor or inconsistent mechanics…not a lack of throwing strength.

The idea then is not to just throw during the off-season but to eliminate mechanical errors that reduce velocity, adversely effect control and lead to the majority of arm injuries.

A twice a week schedule of doing skill work to improve mechanics while throwing to develop and maintain good timing. And that’s why golf pros don’t take a lot of time off. The time off they do spend off the tour is spent with their swing coach. When you lose good timing and your rhythm it’s just like starting over.

The problem however is that the large majority of parents and pitchers at these three levels do not understand what pitching mechanical problems are causing their poor performance. Until they understand how to videotape and then find the problems, their off-season throwing can actually further reduce the throwing ability.

If you have a coach or an instructor who has not videotaped your pitching mechanics and set up a program to eliminate the errors that he has found…then your time is not well spent. Much of it is wasted just throwing and possibly building in more mechanical faults.

As college coach Charlie Green has always said: Pitchers are made in the off-season. And he did not mean that they are made in the weight room or by doing senseless and time wasting drills.

If you have questions about this post or on any phase of pitching—mechanics, strength and conditioning, mental training, strategy… send those questions to dickmills@gmail.com and I will answer them here.

If you want an explosive body and explosive mechanics that can add that extra velocity while increasing control…you need to get my Free Report at www.pitching.nexcess.net. We won’t waste your time. We show you how to recognize exactly what is holding back most pitchers…find the problem—fix the problem. I show you a comparison between two high school pitchers and a major league pitcher who throws mid to upper nineties. You will immediately see the biggest problem that reduces velocity in the majority of pitchers.

(If you are a high school or college coach, ask for our special free Coach’s Report.)