eFastball.com About Us

Our purpose is to provide free, unbiased information, and opinion, on the best ways to hit and throw a baseball or softball. We try to watch the things the best players actually do and learn from them.

We are not here to sell any of our own products like instructional DVDs, hitting equipment, clinics or the like. We do not have any super-secret member only section that you have to pay for. All information on this website is free.

My kids started playing ball 30 years ago, and I have been seriously studying swings for 20 years, and have been looking at slow motion swings and pitching motions for over 12 years. After years of listening to 'experts', I finally started applying the 'Hanson Principle' - compare everything you know against what actual MLB players do in game situations. I use high speed cameras up to 300 fps and use motion analysis software.

I am just a dad that coached and helped his five kids through many years of competitive fast pitch softball and baseball, and paid for years of lessons, camps and DVDs.

My daughters played rec ball, A & B travel ball (2-time A-level ASA Nationals Top 16 finishers), and high school ball on some great teams that were state 5A high school runners up. Many of their former teammates went on to play in the College World Series, and two were stars in professional fastpitch softball.

The girls were hitters and position players and did not pitch, so I am no expert in fastpitch pitching.

My son played rec ball where he pitched and played shortstop in 2 state tournaments, played on a pretty good travel ball team, and pitched and played infield in high school baseball. He holds the school record at this super sized high school for wins and most of them were complete games. He then had a nice pitching career in D1 and D2 baseball, including starting and relieving against SEC teams.

Since we have been living and breathing fastpitch and baseball for the last 20+ years, we mostly want to put everything down that we learned over the years before we forget it.

We intend to cover all the controversial topics like rotational vs. linear hitting, baseball myths, long tossing (or not), and the like. So stay tuned.

I learn something new almost every time I watch a game or talk to someone about this sport. As we learn new things, or learn things that are different from what we previously taught here on this website, we will update and change the site to reflect the correct technique or information.

Who Relies On Us?

Sports Illustrated, Wikipedia, New York Times, Mythbusters and the like rely on us primarily for our groundbreaking work on the fastest MLB pitchers ever, our explanation of various pitching grips, and average (actual gunned) pitch speeds by age group.

Many baseball and fastpitch parents and players rely on us for our work on busting hitting myths, our clear explanation of differences between rotational and linear swings, and finally on our understanding of the rotational (MLB) swing and the way we break it into phases.

History of eFastball.com

The website began in Feb 2000 as a single page.

Around 2006, I bought a cheap radar gun, a Bushnell Velocity Speed Gun that displayed minimum and maximum speed (Bushnell's first personal radar gun was introduced in 2002), to measure speeds of pitches at our local park. We used it to determine variations of different pitches, when to pull pitchers (reduced speed), and to try out different pitching techniques. It was a fun device that had lots of quirks and it got me interested in learning how radar guns work and in knowing the difference between plate speeds and out of hand speeds.

During May 2008 I refocused the site, and posted our first instructional articles on pitching grips (with pictures), average pitch speeds (based on radar) and reaction times (real ones). These pages were instantly popular and were used as references in baseball forums and websites.

On Aug 11, 2008, we posted the first version of our famous Fastest Pitchers Ever page, which created a standardized basis (50 Foot Equivalent) for comparing pitch speeds using different measurement sytems like radar, ballistic systems, and Pitch F/X. This page has been popularized in many newspaper and magazine stories.

Late in 2008, I posted the first ever detailed Linear vs. Rotational hitting method/style explanation. (My fastpitch and baseball kids had experience with many camps, videos, lessons and such using 'linear' cues and drills from the 1990s on.) Plus, I published a list of hitting aids that should be used only for each swing type. When Pitch F/X first came on the scene, I created a script to post live daily F/X data during the 2008 and 2009 MLB seasons, until MLB changed the file format.

In early 2010, after studying video and obsessing over swings for over a decade, I posted my understanding of the rotational swing. On 2/14/2011, I posted links to popular hitting and pitching studies, and graphics demonstrating various techniques.

During this time, I focused on debunking hitting myths, and really testing my understanding of the major league (rotational) swing.

In Oct 2013, I began to perform hitting video swing analysis for anyone that wants to compare their swing to what I think MLB hitters actually do. Note that all information on the website is free and openly available.

On 11/2/2013, I posted a list of the most common baseball hitting websites that people talk about in forums.

From 2014 through 2019 the website was not updated frequently as I had a serious health issue, then did not update the site regularly.

On 2/28/2020, we completely revamped and relaunched the website as mobile friendly, with the highest https security, using PHP and shiny new webservers. Thanks for reading this far, and welcome.