The 7 Most Common Youth Pitching Mistakes (And Why You Can't See Them at Full Speed)

Here's something we can tell you from reviewing pitching videos every week: almost every young pitcher is making at least one of the seven mistakes below. The two we see over and over are trying to throw hard instead of throwing well, and the glove side flying open early. Odds are good your pitcher is doing one of them right now.

Now the part that should make you feel better. Nobody in the bleachers can see any of it. A pitch takes about a second and a half from first move to release, and the moments that decide velocity, command, and arm stress happen in hundredths of a second inside that blur. A parent's eyes can't catch them. A coach's eyes can't catch them. Honestly, a pro scout's eyes can't catch them either, which is why pro organizations film everything. If your son has one of these flaws, nobody taught him wrong. The human eye was simply never equipped to find this stuff. It's a physics problem, not a coaching failure.

So read the list two ways: to understand what each mistake costs, and to understand why the fix starts with slowing the delivery down to individual frames.

1. Overthrowing: trying to throw hard instead of throwing well

The most common mistake we see, and the sneakiest, because it looks like a virtue. A kid wants velocity, so he squeezes, grunts, and max-efforts every pitch. His face says 100%. The radar gun says otherwise.

Velocity comes from sequence: legs, then hips, then torso, then arm, each link passing energy to the next like the crack of a whip. When a kid strains, the links fire together instead of in order, and the energy that should stack up leaks away. That's why the hardest throwers in the world look almost casual out there.

What fixed looks like: effort that disappears into the motion. The ball jumps out of a delivery that looks easy.

2. Flying open: the glove side quits early

The other one we see constantly. The glove-side shoulder works like a gate. While it stays closed, the hips can fire ahead of the shoulders and build torque. When the glove arm swings open early, pulling toward the dugout or dropping toward the hip, the gate crashes open. The chest spins out ahead of schedule and the throwing arm gets left behind to do everything alone.

Flying open drains velocity, sprays command (misses up and to the arm side are the classic signature), and piles extra work onto the shoulder and elbow. Three problems, one cause.

What fixed looks like: the glove firms up out front, chest-high, and the body rotates around it instead of past it.

3. Rushing: the body sprints ahead of the arm

Some kids are so eager to get to the plate that their lower half takes off before the arm is ready. The arm is still climbing into position when the front foot lands, so it drags behind a body that already spent its power, late and strained. Misses go high, and the arm absorbs stress it never needed to.

What fixed looks like: a delivery with rhythm. Controlled down the mound, not falling down it. Timing beats hurry.

4. A stride that quits short

Stride length is where leg power becomes pitch power. A pitcher's stride should approach 85% of his height. Most young pitchers land somewhere around half that. Every missing inch throws away energy the legs already generated, like winding up a slingshot and letting go halfway.

What fixed looks like: an athletic, confident stride where the back leg drives instead of just stepping.

5. The front leg collapses

The front leg isn't there to cushion the landing. It's a wall. The lower body's momentum slams into a braced front leg, which vaults everything above it forward the way a pole-vaulter's pole snaps straight. When the front knee keeps bending after landing, the wall turns to mush and the energy dies in the dirt.

This is the quietest flaw on the list. At full speed it never looks like a mistake. It just looks like a kid who “doesn't throw that hard yet.”

What fixed looks like: the front knee lands slightly bent, then firms up as the chest comes through.

6. Hips and shoulders turn together

The single biggest velocity secret in pitching is separation: hips firing first while the shoulders stay closed a beat longer, stretching the core like a rubber band. Elite pitchers create huge separation. Most young pitchers create almost none. Their hips and shoulders spin as one block, the rubber band never stretches, and there's simply nothing to release.

Consider the timing involved. This happens in roughly four hundredths of a second. Of everything on this list, this is the flaw you'd have the least chance of ever spotting live.

What fixed looks like: on a freeze-frame at front-foot landing, the belt buckle faces the hitter while the chest still faces third base (for a righty). That one frame is worth more than a summer of guessing.

7. The arm drags late

Sometimes the flaw is the arm path itself. The hand breaks from the glove and takes a long, looping route, or the elbow climbs above the shoulder line early, and the arm arrives late to its slot. A late arm costs command, and it's also one of the patterns most associated with elbow and shoulder stress in young pitchers, because the arm plays catch-up under maximum force.

We'll say this plainly: pain in a growing arm is never “normal soreness” to push through. If your pitcher has arm pain along with any of these flaws, see a doctor before anyone touches his mechanics.

What fixed looks like: a compact, on-time arm path where the hand is up and ready the moment the front foot lands.

Why you can't just watch him and fix it

Notice what these seven have in common. None of them is visible at game speed. Several stay invisible even in normal video until you scrub frame by frame. And most kids have two or three of them tangled together, where fixing one (say, striding longer) can make another (rushing) worse if you attack them in the wrong order.

This is exactly why we built our free evaluation. You film one pitch (a phone from the side works fine) and upload it. We break the delivery down frame by frame, find which of these leaks your pitcher actually has, and tell you what to work on first and what can wait. No guessing, no generic drills, no $80-an-hour trial and error. It's free, and it takes about two minutes to submit.

One mistake at a time

If the evaluation (or your own eye, once you know what to look for) turns up two or three of these, resist the urge to fix everything at once. Kids improve one cue at a time, and overloaded pitchers get worse before they get better. The good news is that these fixes compound. Close the glove side and the arm often stops dragging on its own.

Common questions