How to Throw a Gangster Curveball Trevor Bauer X Marika Lyszczyk

Trevor Bauer here with Marika. We are going to be talking about throwing routines, some mechanical stuff, breaking down our mechanics on the mound, and teaching the gangster curveball, which is a Warren Bauer creation, and how I learned to throw it and served me right my entire life. So we're gonna we're gonna teach you the gangster curveball. I'm ready. Let's go. What do you do for warm-up? Usually just weighted balls. You throw weighted balls? Yeah. Okay, what's your routine with first off, who taught you about weighted balls? My coach back in Canada. He's driveline certified. Driveline certified, so you're familiar with the driveline. But I only know a little bit. Okay, so why don't you walk me through your routine? I usually start on the one knee. You go kneeling throws? Yeah. Okay. The back. How many do you do here? Like five or six. Then I switch to the next one. I like go back to it after. I like the violence. I like the violence. Most people when they do reverse throws, they're just like, oh like this? Like no, you're trying to like get something out of it, you know? So I like I like that. I still haven't seen you throw, so I gotta I gotta I gotta watch that, but all right. Clickbait. Coach Bauer teaches me how to throw weighted balls. You're kind of like out here, right? So the ball is going to travel from outside of your body and hit the wall. So as long as you're not cutting it, the ball should bounce back kind of straight on this side of your body. So when you throw it, if you put your glove back there, you can catch it. Gotcha. And then it's just a real seamless catch, like one solid motion. If you if you just kept your glove there at the end, you moved it and you moved it right off where the ball is. It was there? Yeah, you're right on it. There we go. There it is. Here right now, I'm working on not letting my back leg collapse when I throw. We'll start with the back leg. We'll see how that goes. Again, every time you are throwing, you're pulling the ball across. All right, so it'd be good if you set your eyes on a target here. I'm assuming you don't usually lock your eyes on a target when you're doing it, because most people don't. They're just kind of warming up. But if you can find a way to lock your eyes on a target, it should help you get away from the cutting action. The other thing is people have a tendency to throw and want to watch the ball. And so it stops their shoulders from rotating. Right. And so when I the reason I invented catching it behind my back is so that I gave me a reason to continue my shoulder rotation all the way through, as opposed to like... There's purpose behind the catch. Of course, of course. It's style points, but it's also so I'm going to grab it. I'm going to grab some tape here. Give me a second. Spring reinforcements. Would rate a good review on Yelp. Sometimes some visual aids help. Cutting the ball off and pulling the ball across your body is generally a couple things. It's either your torso is rotating before your lower body finishes, or it's lack of shoulder rotation. There's two ways to go about this and two coaching tips. One, you can start thinking about the internal the way your body's functioning internally. Like, OK, so I know my hips aren't going and I know my shoulders and I'm thinking about all that stuff. The other way is to set an external cue and let that guide your body into making the changes that you need. So we have an external cue here. My preference is always an external cue. And if we can get an external cue to guide the way your body is going to move, it's a lot better because now you don't have to think about stuff and it doesn't disrupt the natural athleticism. There you go. You go twice through that routine? Yeah. OK. Right now in your routine, there's a large gap between just the shoulder rotation and then the full throw. You're not really getting your lower half integrated into it at all. So one thing I like for that is what's called, I guess, a roll-in. I generally do it with the green ball. You're going to step in with your right foot. You're going to pick your target out and you're going to take your hand to that target. So it looks like this. OK. Basically, you want to try to think about your hips being forward the entire time. That's not actually what's going to happen because, of course, as you retract and your torso turns, your hips are going to turn. But you want to have the cue of thinking that your hips are straight. Yep. There we go. Did we just break this? Look at that. I'm so sorry. That's fine. This is an old one. I use this thing all season, so it's been here for a while. When you throw it, your direction, you were hitting the, I think actually, you can see right here where the ball broke. That's how I broke the ball. It's not Marika-proof. That's where it hit. So you dotted up the X pretty well. And so this shoulder rotation, allowing your shoulders to basically replace each other, is going to be very beneficial. That's what I see on the warm-up side of things. You want to play catch? So one of my favorite drills is actually like a backhand drill, simulating a backhand throw in the six hole. So fielding a ball, stopping, and turning and throwing. It makes me rotate my hips first, so now my hips are ahead of my torso, and I have to transfer the ball into my hand, which keeps my arm action short and makes me actually just rotate through as opposed to getting like long or getting out of sync. Yeah. Yep. And then I'll do catcher throws where I'm... He's getting ready for the catching part. Adding a little bit of movement like this, where you're having your hips rotate, keeping them in front of your shoulders, and having an external focus of like, okay I'm trying to hit, like I'm trying to hit the logo on your chest. That's what my eyes pick up, right? So if you want it to be the head, if you want it to be the hip, if you want it to be the glove, whatever, just have some sort of external focus and do some sort of athletic movement. And that should like, without having to think about it, it should tighten everything up and get rid of the pull. Automatically corrects it almost without thinking about it. For sure, for sure. I haven't learned that much about like, throwing anything since like, I was so young, because like, they kind of just stop. Yeah. That's the one thing is like, once you get to college, it's kind of like, you're off on your own, and I don't learn much anymore. So like, to pick up knowledge, it's like pretty cool to like, keep learning. Yeah. You see a lot of young girls are taught to throw improperly, and they're taught to like, get their arm like, way up here, so they get this like, elbow above the shoulder line, and then it's like, there's no power coming through, and their arms kind of hurt. A lot of like, leaning forward, kind of like this, and pushing the ball. Or you see like, kind of elbow in, like pushing the ball, kind of like this. Don't see any of that, which is super encouraging. Check out my zero ERA in college, one inning. All right, you want to, you want to learn to pitch? You want to throw some off the mound? What else, what else can I help with? What do you want to learn? Yeah, let's throw some off the mound. All right. All right, you're getting into my realm now. This is where I, this is where I exist. This is where I live. You occasionally get up here sometimes. Yeah, sometimes, every now and then. We got a radar gun behind the mound with the radar board on, so you can judge your intensities. That's what I usually do. So I have different levels in my, in my training program. Sometimes I'm at a max intent, where I'm trying to see what, what number I can get. Sometimes I want to be at whatever the case is. And then we got a tee with a ball on it. And now I like this better than throwing to a catcher because it forces you to pick a singular focus. Again, what we talked about with the X on the wall, the external focus. So I sit here and I try to throw and knock the ball off the tee with each pitch. I'm actually going to take some film of you from the side and from behind. We'll do a quick mechanical breakdown, and then we'll jump into some of the like curveball stuff. I think that'll be pretty fun. Okay, let's see what we got here. So ideally, we'd see the front foot down in this position with the hips. Your lower body's in a great spot here. But we'd see the torso be more in like this position, closed off wise. More closed off. Right, and so this is kind of what we talked about a little bit earlier with the cutting. So now your heel's down, the torso's open. So now it's going to just come here and then kind of stop rotating. And then you rotate again afterwards, after the ball releases. Some of the rotational drills we talked about, the straight pick off, the short stop throw, getting the hips to go first will be very beneficial. But overall, I mean, the segments all move very well. There's just a little bit of a break in the timing between the lower half and the upper half. But the moving pattern is very good. Go through your normal delivery. Did you feel any sort of stretch in your obliques? Yeah. Anything else? Yeah. Okay, let's try it. Let's try it again. This time I'm just going to kind of pin this shoulder forward. So right about, like, right when you get your foot's about to hit, I feel like a big pressure into my hand. And it's because your shoulder wants to turn and open up as your hips are going. And that's what we want, because that's when your hips are actually really starting to turn over. And they turn over really well. But as they're turning over, your torso's going with them. And that's where I feel the pressure into my hand. So when I put pressure on your shoulder, you should feel, like, a little bit of stretch. Kind of like, oh man, that, like, stretched in my oblique here. Some people feel on this side, but you should feel a little bit of a delay where it's like, oh, hips and then shoulders kind of awkward. Yeah. Just that little bit of delay means that your foot can get down and your shoulders are still here. And then they've stretched, and that's that stretch that you're feeling, that little delay. And so now the heel is down. So now it all springs forward, but you have something firm to rotate against. 64. Just hit my PR right there. Want to learn a curveball? Absolutely. There's three keys on a curveball, right? The very first thing is you want to keep a stiff wrist and forearm. Okay. So a lot of times people think that on a curveball you want to, like, snap the wrist. That's what I've always been told. Right. That's why it doesn't move. Yeah, that's exactly why it doesn't move. So the thing you think about first is a stiff wrist. So the way I tell people is if there's a board over here, you're going to have to karate chop through the board. Okay. How would you do that? And it'd be, like, with a stiff wrist, right? So that's how you throw a curveball. First get this stiff. Then you're going to position the ball in where your, this finger, because this is the finger you want to come off of, your middle finger. Yeah. That's what's going to impart the spin. Okay. So you're going to position that on a seam somewhere. It doesn't really matter where, but you want to make sure that you have it on kind of the inside. You don't want to be on the outside part of the seam where you're going to be pulling against leather. Yeah. You want to pull. That's usually where I'm in, like, on the inside. Yeah. So whatever grip feels good, find a place on the seam. So you're going to go stiff wrist, put the ball in the, where the seam hits your middle finger, and you're just going to curl it into your hand, kind of like this. So these two fingers? I'm holding it with just my middle finger, pressing it into my palm. Thumbs off. See how all my fingers are off? Yeah. Can you take your thumb off? So now you want this. So this is going to be stiff. It's not going to be cocked this way or this way. It's just in a neutral position, stiff wrist. Yeah. And now what you have is what my dad likes to call, you have a gun right here. Pistol. Yeah. And you're basically just going to shoot, when you throw this, you're going to shoot whatever target you want to throw it at. Okay. And what's going to happen here is when you're in this position, you see how my finger is in front of the ball? Yeah. So when I shoot the target, pow, this ball is going to roll out of my hand and have topspin. Okay. So I don't have to do anything from this grip. I don't have to do anything with my wrist. I just throw the ball, and if I shoot right at you, see how it has a topspin? Yeah. So try that real quick. Exactly. So you see how you can create spin without doing anything with your wrist? Yeah. Just the orientation in your hand. Next step in throwing a curveball is you want to divide the ball in half with your thumb and your middle finger. And my thumb, so this is on the inside part of the seam, and my thumb goes on this seam. Now when you look at it, it's split. You can do it on the two seam here, if you want to pull on that, and your thumb just kind of goes and it's split in half. All right. So find a position on the ball that's good. Make sure it's split in half. And again, you want to make sure that you can hold it with your thumb and your middle finger in a way that your wrist is going to maintain being locked in. Make sense? Yep. See how my wrist is straight? Okay. You've gotten good at doing this and creating the spin, so now we need to work that back a little bit towards the delivery. So very good. Next, we're going to go just to a normal throw. Start in your normal throwing position, point, and then go through your arm swing and finish the throw, but make sure that finger, like as you're releasing it, points towards me and then follow through. See how you finished? Yeah. Okay. This brings me to last point. When you finish, you have to, you have this gun. Yeah. This is the way my dad teaches it. It's not cool to just shoot a gun. You have to shoot it like a gangster. That's what my dad tells all the kids that he teaches. All right. So what he means by this is as you're coming through, you stiff wrist it, the ball is released, but you have to turn the ball over this way. You have to pronate through the release. Okay. As opposed to like you just finished that last time, you finish like this. See how your hand is up? This is supination. You're familiar with supination and pronation? So you're finishing in supination. The only way you do that is if you're breaking the wrist or doing something around the ball and you're finishing like this, right? When you throw, you don't finish like that. You throw and then your hand turns over, right? So the next, the last piece of it is you have to pronate through the release and the way he talks about it is taking your gun and turning it into a gangster's gun. Yeah. When you go to throw this, you're going to feel really weird trying to turn it over, but the main thing to think about is drive your hand to me and just let it, let it finish. Without flicking. Don't, don't stop, right? Yeah, exactly. Okay. It's time to rip it. Okay. It feels like way easier. Yeah. Takes a lot of the, a lot of the timing because if you're you know, so those are the three keys. I'll let you tell them back to me. What are the three keys of a curve ball? All right. First of all, we start off with the stiff wrist. Yep. And then we have to have straight line going through. Cut the ball in half. Yeah. And then the, when you're coming through with the straight and then turn, cause you got to be a gangster. That's right. Now shoot him with the gangster gun. So that's the, uh, that's the Warren Bauer gangster curve ball. And that's how I learned. That's how I learned to throw it. So that's what I got for you on the curve ball. That's sweet.