My first sport picture

Here is my first attempt at baseball and sports in general. I will say that the 5d mkII is not made for fast focusing. Anyways, let me know what you think. I think it needs to be brightened up a bit. It was a cloudy day with storms on the horizon. I think the 5d and the 100-400L was a good match and had great reach.

Looks underexposed (you know that already though) and the WB looks like it's a little off. His white pants don't quite look white. There's too much room above his head compared to below his feet. It's cropped WAY too close to his cleats. I think a portrait orientation would work better for this photo the way it is. There's too much space to either side.

I think better composition would be to crop the left of the frame just enough to get rid of the yellow foul pole and try straightening it a bit. That would get your "rule of 3rds" incorporated and make for a more visually pleasing sport shot...I think.

I will give you this though, nice focus and good DOF on this one! I'd love to see the next few frames (assuming you were shooting in continuous shots mode) to get a glipse of the ball he's about to pitch.

I agree that it's under-exposed. You didn't need 1/2000 shutter speed for this shot. If you'd dropped it to 1/1000 you would have upped the exposure by a stop while still keeping a pretty fast shutter speed for when he went through his full pitching motion. In metering this shot I probably would have spot metered off the grass then raised the exposure by a stop or so (for a true ETTR you would raise it as high as possible without blowing out the details in the brightest area of the scene, which would probably be his uniform). I also agree with rivas8409 that the composition could be stronger. His advice to place the pitcher in the left third of the image frame would increase the perceived space through which the ball will be traveling toward the batter and thereby give the image a more dynamic look. I'm not sure about the white balance - the pants may not have been a true "white" to start with, although on an overcast day things will tend to be pretty "bluish".

portrait orientation, more exposure, get closer, dont chop off feet

since he is not moving away or toward you why not "trap focus" or manual focus.