Flying open

What is Flying Open?

"Flying open" is an umbrella term that people use to talk about a number of different mechanical flaws, when its supposed to only describe where the front shoulder is at footplant. It's an important feeling that helps many pitchers, but if it's misunderstood, it's a disaster for both velocity and command. Instruction around flying open will commonly focus on pitchers yanking their head to the side, striding too far open, or casting their arm out too early. And although those things are bad, they're their own separate issues unrelated to where the front shoulder is.

The solution to flying open, you often hear, is to "stay closed longer". And for many pitchers, in my experience for the majority of pitchers, this reduces velocity by limiting the pitcher's rotation.

Pitchers have to open the front side. You start facing the side of the field, and you finish facing the batter. So it's really just a question of how and when you opened up. And if you want to throw hard, you have to open up fast. The problems come from using the wrong muscles to rotate, or not getting your arm up on time. But that's not flying open. That's using the wrong muscles to rotate, or not getting your arm up on time.

What IS flying open, is when the front shoulder lands too far open at footplant. Except when we look at some of the game's elite pitchers, they're PRETTY dang open at footplant. This gets misconstrued because looking at one frame of video tells very little of the story. What we're actually interested in is the rotational speed of the pitchers torso when they land. And what you see is that a pitcher begins counter-rotated, lands with their shoulders near even, and the very next frame they're wide open. This is the sign of a pitcher who has started opening up long before footplant - exactly what they should be doing.

Why Do Pitchers Open The Front Shoulder?

There's a positive correlation between opening the front shoulder and getting your throwing arm up. This is because, so long as the ball and elbow are above shoulder height, rotation of the torso drives the elbow underneath the ball. Assuming your forearm isn't made of jelly, this forces the ball to move upward. It's really easy to test. Stand in a throwing position with your elbow at shoulder height, and the ball against a wall. Now rotate. The ball has to come up. Now watch again and pay attention to the front shoulder. It opens up.

There's an important caveat to this, which is that relying solely on momentum to raise the arm results in the arm being late. To get the arm up on time, the pitcher has to simultaneously externally rotate, but that's a topic we'll talk about in another video.

Young pitchers often open up early because they're simply not strong enough to rotate fast. It's imperative that a pitcher is wide open soon after footplant, because the less time that elapses from footplant to ball release the better. Young pitchers instinctively feel this, and will open up according to their physical capabilities. Limiting their rotation because adults can rotate faster is not the answer.

But Why Do Great Pitchers Talk About Staying Closed?

I believe the feeling of staying closed helps pitchers rotate in a tighter, more efficient arc. If you look from overhead, down on a pitcher, and trace the path his front shoulder takes, better pitchers will have a tighter curve. This does two things. It increases the angular velocity of their torso rotation, by shortening the moment arm like a figure skater does to spin faster. And it lets a pitcher spend more time moving in a plane towards homeplate instead of to the side. This helps the pitcher keep the arm from flying out, which decreases stress and increases command.

It's not an accident that "flying open" is such a common topic amongst pitchers. But the good ones are the ones that translate this cue into "rotate tighter" instead of "rotate later". There's no such thing as a bad cue. If you try to "stay closed" and you find yourself throwing faster, healthier, and more strikes, then you should keep with it. But if it doesn't work for you, don't be surprised to see that opening up faster, tighter, or earlier does help. A lot of the best pitchers in the world do exactly that.