Most younger athletes don't come in quite this advanced, but let's discuss the good and the bad.
The picture below shows data for this individuals fastball, change-up, and slider. The last picture in the bottom right shows the movement plot for each pitch.
The first thing to notice is the velocity on the fastball. With this being a high school freshman.....this is really good! Given the velocity, we look at the vertical and horizontal movement. Because he throws harder, gravity isn't going to have as long to affect the ball, which means the 19 inches of vertical movement is really good. He's going to get carry/life on his fastball! This is indicated by the red dot on the bottom right plot.
Moving on to his change-up. One thing I generally don't see from young pitchers is a good change-up. Typically the patterns are similar to their fastballs, or they'll slow down their arm/body to take velocity off. For too many kids force circle change grips and can't produce good movement (unless cutting the ball is what they're after). What we look for here is trying to kill vertical movement. As you can see in comparison to the fastball, he has 9 inches less of vertical movement. That, by itself, is great, but the additional horizontal movement makes it that much better. Indicated by the green dot on the bottom right plot.
Now, before we move on the slider, there's one more important piece for the change-up. Look at the difference in velocity. While the pitch itself has great characteristics, the velocity gap between his fastball and change-up are too spread out. This will lead to increase movement due to gravity having more time to impact the ball (albeit, just slightly), but it also means he's significantly slowing down arm speed. Against younger hitters, this won't matter much, but moving forward, we want to sell that a fastball is coming.
On to the slider (yellow dot)......with the life he gets on his fastball, this is the money pitch! While it's going to be good against high school hitters, that's not the goal. The spin is OK and the movement is OK. The problem here, again, is that it's too slow. It's curveball speed with slider spin. So the first thing it has to do, is pop up out of the hand due to lack of velocity. Again, this is fine against high school hitters. Against the better competition, we don't want that. As we work to throw this pitch with more velocity, the spin should pick up, leading to later and sharper break.
This is a guy to keep an eye on moving forward!
