Private lessions

*Private BASEBALL & SOFTBALL INSTRUCTION (all ages) J.R. Potthast Professional Baseball /Softball instruction for 35+years! Male or female. semi-private: 2,3,or 4 students is better than one. With 2-4 students, the throwing and hitting competitions can be realized. Plus, it gives a student a chance to rest and observe other students being taught. With 4 students, I obviously instruct a longer time session than if there are only 2 in the group. Bottom line the semi- private sessions are more efficient and economical.

I specialize in hitting, pitching, and position throwing (ball rotation). Hitting is taught primarily by swing development. I rarely do live hitting, (unless above regular game velocity) as it is often counter productive to swing development. In the semi-private setting, I get very particular about how different position players should throw a ball. Rotation of the ball becomes very critical. 30 years ago only 25% of Major League outfielders threw well. Today, up to 50%+ throw well. There were a lot of great arms back then, but few threw as well as they could have. Hitting can be improved almost immediately. It usually takes 30-60days (thousands of swings) of continuous drills for changes to feel comfortable and hopefully permanent. Females tend to retain instruction and development for a longer time than males. When both groups “loose” their swing neither realize it. A batting average, especially at a young age is a poor indicator of how well one is swinging the bat. I have seen some very good athletes batting .300 that were grossly underachieving with their swings. Example: John the (built like a deer) athlete is batting against high school pitching with a poor swing, but still bats .400 because of aluminum and his great abilities. I think, “So what, he still has a bad hitting approach”. If he does not get the right help before College he will hit a little bit off the dumb pitchers. The smart pitchers with only average ability will shut John down. He will go through 4 years of College and fade away never knowing that he could have been so very much better!

Let me give a local success story on hitting. Joe Dickman (past present 2010 a senior at McKendree U batting .580 (6 Hr's) -14 games in) was thought to be a very good hitter in High school. He was batting over .350 most of his High school seasons. At that time my evaluation as a scout was this: average major league catching/ receiving skills; below average arm (injury - football) for pro ball; bad hitting approach (bat pusher) – hitting well, but grossly underachieving at the high school level – with no projection. The “no projection” means it is hard to project how well Joe would hit major league pitching with a good hitting approach. But certainly his present swing would completely fail at the next levels. Joe had invested thousands of swings in that bad approach, thus it would take a year or so to get that out of his system. One year after high school, I saw Joe (.210 ave) at the Oderizzi no hitter at Collinsville American Legion (summer). Joe had by now became a one-dimensional hitter as well (swing designed for hitting the ball left side only - 40 foot fair to 60 foot foul = dissaster) – now at an all time low both mentally and physically as a hitter. It was time for me to try to make a difference. It would have been hard for me to help him in high school because he and everyone else thought he was a great hitter with a great swing. He worked very hard with the hitting concepts we employed. Success was instant, which gave him the confidence to continue working with that philosophy. He continued to work very hard that summer (which is rare- college player working hard on baseball in the summer) By the end of the summer he had ( from .210) went on to set the all time hitting average in Highland American Legion Baseball’s 51 year history! -- April 2010, I receive a call from a MLB scout about some players of common interest. He had just seen McKendree U play. (MLB scouts report and are paid by major league baseball- reports are sent to major league teams that pay MLB for the service. They used to be called burrow scouts. Other classifications are amateur team scouts – that scout only amateur players; and pro team scouts that scout only pro players. There are also organizational scouts and advance scouts.) So I ask the Dominican born MLB scout, “ how does Joe Dickman look as a hitter”? He answers “He is barred out”! That is a term for barring the lead arm at crisis point in the swing. So I am thinking, “darn, he is vulnerable on the outside corner, and will be down from .580 to .380 by May. Keep in mind, I consider it improper as an independent instructor to interfere with a teams’ player unless asked by the college coach and player. Some college coaches are not intimidated by my help, and do ask, especially when I have a history with said player. I did not call, as I became too busy in other locations. May 12, 2010- He ended the season .365 with 8 home runs- still very much a success story! In March I was projecting .430 with 16 to 20 H.R.’s – very plausible draft numbers! I am very hopeful that he still gets drafted, or signs after the draft. He has worked so very

hard and deserves the opportunity. Bottom line on hitting approaches---If I am mentally jumping up and down – wanting to be the pitcher, you have a problem with your swing! Example of Cardinals that grossly underachieved as hitters: John Rodrigues; George Hendricks; Chris Duncan).

In the throwing area Tony Pena the Cardinal catcher of the 80’s had probably one of the best (strongest) catching arms in the history of baseball. I would rate him in the lower 10% when it comes to throwing

with proper rotation. He released the ball with his fingers under the ball. Hence, he threw a severe slider to 2nd instead of a ball with perfect backspin (under spin). Presently, there is a 280-lb. catcher

at SIUC that throws with that exact under spin. I was expecting 20 HRs from him this spring, but his swing has become long and sweeping, (he has lost his backhand dominance as well) much like Chris Duncan of the St. Louis Cards.

Maybe one of the worst of all Cardinal outfielder at throwing was Vince Coleman, who had a very below average arm, but more importantly, released high with fingers under the ball at release. He did not take

advantage of throwing on astro turf either! He is still one of my all time favorites, as I really like the game of the 70’s: rabbits in the outfield and stolen bases. Now we have smaller fields, more homeruns, thus athletes in the outfield are not as important as the big parks of the 70’s. That sure is a tough brake for Chris Frey (4th year triple A Colorado) from Highland who has major league center field abilities, but has so far not shown the HR power wanted these years.

Pitching is a long-range development at any age. Any changes in a pitching motions MUST be gradual and strictly controlled by myself, parent, student, and student’s game coach. I cannot begin to tell you how many pitchers on all levels that have went to so called experts who completely change their motion and end up with arm problems of varying degrees. I see this happen in all levels of baseball and softball. By the way curve balls do not hurt arms. Over doing any pitching motion, especially a new arm slot, will. The biggest concern to me is when someone completely changes a pitcher’s motion and then has them do it a lot and often! (my new Yogi-ism) In effect they are saying” lets use muscles in your arm and back that you have never used before and see how long it takes to injure your arm.” I remember taking one of my Summer Pitchers (elbow) to the Cardinal trainer Bob Bowman in 1975. He told me that a very high percentage of pitchers with major league ability do not make it because of arm injury. It was very interesting how he examined and worked with my pitcher. My pitcher recovered and later signed with the Twins for a minor league stint. I went back several times to observe Mr. Bowman work on other Cardinal pitchers. Pitcher John Folgum was the most interesting injury case. He was the highest prospect for the Cards. John worked very hard over a long period of time, but never recovered to major league ability again. Today, with advances in surgery, the injury would have been very curable. The “Mad Hungarian” was there about the same time. At one point Mr. Bowman gave me a “trainer” (weighted) baseball for pitchers to throw. He said it will one day be accepted as the best pitching tool you could use for a variety of benefits. I have used several ever since,sometimes even between innings if I wasn’t getting the desired ball movement on certain pitches. Now some 35 years later, I am even more convinced that he was right, but it seems it will still take another time period before validation. Along the same theme- I started using the “soft toss” hitting drill in 1971 while in a baseball class at SIUC. There were 40 some students in the class, thus I was able to get 20 some hitters swinging a bat at the same time instead of only the normal one in traditional batting practice. I liked the efficiency, but soon realized all the other advantages. Although my class experiment was very successful, and this local area accepted the hypothesis, I took abuse for at least 20 more years before the technique became nationally accepted by the baseball world. Now 2010, I have added a new dimension to soft toss that allows one person to toss to both a right (alternating) and left handed hitter at the same time. This concept doubles the practice efficiency.

Just as long as it takes a good process to be accepted, it also takes maybe even longer for bad ideas to be dismissed. When I was young I kept hearing people say “ keep your back elbow up” for hitting. It took me about 30 years to be convinced that the concept has little merit. But, I bet 30 more years from now you will still hear it. Having the hands near an area of strength and quickness at “crisis moment” in the swing, is a more important content of lever assembly. For a full explanation of almost all my concepts, you would need to spend quite a bite of time at my sessions to fully understand my conclusions. There is no way to try to fully explain anything I teach about baseball in less than 10 years or so. I believe Izak and Jacob Post, probably have come the closest to that endeavor over a 15 year period. You see, most people want you to summarize your life long studies in 15 minutes. I have made the mistake of trying to do that years ago. Example: 10 years or so ago, Mitch Carriger's dad (great athlete from Triad) ask me " What do you teach about hitting". I thought " Oh my", but I was wanting to impress him because I knew of Mitch's genetics and future abilities thus I hoped to work with him. So I was foolish and attempted to summarize hitting in 5 minutes which always makes a hollow impression. With every question my answer needs to start by " well it depends"-- on 1,2,3,4,5 etc. In conclusion, if you want to know what I teach about pitching, hitting, catcher throwing to second, outfielders' thrown ball rotation to bases, etc., you would need to hang out with me for many years, to get a complete understanding.

**** Here is the most significant pitching controversy that will be played out over the next 20 years. Circa 1972-76 the slide step was initiated in several colleges as a tool to quicken the pitcher (in the stretch) to home to stop base runners from stealing. The slide step started at SIUC as I was graduating, thus I did not give it full attention. That pitching coach (Newman), now very high in the Yankee organization, presented the idea for pitchers in the stretch to slide forward instead of raising the knee to balance point for quicker delivery against the rampant rise of stolen bases in the time period. Sounds good doesn’t it. College baseball has always been the forum of discovery. Had I stayed on as an assistant, I probably would have bought into the idea as well. At that age I wouldn’t have had enough confidence to disagree with that concept, even though my Physics, Calculus, scientific background would have eventually lead me to doubt. I have had many baseball experiments over the years, luckily my bad ideas have been discarded usually with the help of more knowledgeable baseball contacts. I was also lucky that I was busy game coaching with very little time to instruct. Thus I did not have to go through that "too young to be teaching age". Perhaps no one should be allowed to be called a professional baseball instructor until age 35 or so.

By the way, I do know that I have learned more about baseball instruction after the age of 35 than before age 35.

Back to topic- Several pitchers with very good pitching forms (Barry Noeltner Triad, Mike Hecker Collinsville and more) went to some of those colleges. When they came back for the summer they all had trouble with control. I did not realize what was really going on at the time. About 1978+ I was talking with Roy Lee, former head coach at SIUE about this phenomenon.

Another year and he concluded that the slide step was taking away the most important part of the pitching motion- the balance point that actually begins the pitching motion. The slide was even filtering

into the windup motion as a consequence (vertical stacking destruction). So that is why Barry Noeltner came home from SIUC and walked 13 his first game with us. That is why Mike Hecker, the best pitcher from the mid west in 5 years came back home so messed up we had to eventually turn him into an outfielder. I did not know enough to help him. I hadn’t seen enough innings. I hadn’t yet learned all I can from great baseball minds. What the players from those 17 years of H-P baseball should realize is that it was a learning experience for me at that point. I was a game coach and did not have enough time or knowledge to be a physical teacher of the game. I have now logged enough time and experience to be a credible instructor.

The retired coaches have a great wealth of knowledge. They have been through it all and now have had time to reflect. Their knowledge should not go to the grave. I was very fortunate to be able to talk with Roy Lee on a weekly basis. He was an enormous help to me. (Ray Ripplemeyer 80+, the best major

league pitching instructor I know lives in Valmeyer, Il. and I am disappointed in myself for not calling him for over two weeks.) Now 2010, after my continued research, I am totally convinced the slide step is not only a balance killer of any pitcher that employs it, I am also convinced it nets you slower to home. I can not convince or describe properly the concepts in this forum, but simply put – getting the lower part of the body quicker to home does not get the ball there quicker. When I physically show college pitching

coaches how I can get my 70 mph fastball to home quicker with balance point intact than their pitcher with an 80+ mph fastball with a slide they sometimes understand. Today 12-12-12 SIUC has officially stoped teaching the slide step in the stetch position. SIUC had been teaching some form of a slide step fo over 40 years. Thank you P.J.Finigan, who is the pitching coach at siuc. With time he will become a very good instructor. Myself and a very few other professional instructors like Don Mraz (Tampa Bay) have been leading the charge against the slide step for such a long time now, that most of the "facilities" that still teach it call it other names now to avoid our criticism.

**Private lessons are $208. for a 5 pack! Lasting at least 1 hour per visit. This is usually for pro and college players. **Semi-private lessons (2 or more) are priced per situation, and last longer for each additional student! This is more efficient both in time, money, and progress. In this setting a student has the ability to work toward whatever goal he/she might have- High school ball, College ball or Pro ball. It is my job to get each student to set realistic goals. My approach to instruction is much different for someone who has a goal of playing a major league sport than someone who just wants to play youth league.

Video and “homework” are special tools.

I will travel to teams and groups in the Midwest area! Time: TBA.

CALL: 654-3615; 960-4467 © jrpotthastbaseball@gmail.com

On about Mid Feb '15, I will be adding chapters on " Why in the heck are pitchers in the stretch when they do not need to be and/ or when they should not be and why!" Other topics will include " have too many baseball coaches become control freaks?"

BE SURE to check out JR Camp Baseball pdf below!!

Subpages (1): Professional Private Instruction

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Jr Potthast