Do your pitchers pitch to teammates in practice?

Just wanted to get some opinions on this.

Do you have your pitchers pitch to teammates during practice?

Yes, I have mixed feelings about it.

Yes but its an equal part pitchers working on their craft vs hitters working on their craft.

In short its pitcher vs hitter not batting practice. If I wanted BP Id pitch myself.

Absolutely!!!
A portion of every single team practice is live game scenarios. We have a coach calling the batters and another calling pitches.
Practice like you play!

No, I prefer not to. One coach last year was pitching one of my students at batting practice - just whatever number of pitches to a batter that was in her head. I mean 10-12 pitches times 15 girls. The student's mom finally said "She is done. And when does she get to hit?"

But, everything in moderation, I guess.

Yes. Right now we are stuck with indoor practices so when we have the pitchers and catchers working together we will have a hitter taking "dry swings" to work on timing. After working on front toss from coaches for several practices, we can really see some girls lunging for change ups. Once we get outside, we will have team scrimmages (6 on 6). But it is pitcher vs. hitter, not batting practice. We want it to be a realistic game situation, or as close to it as possible.

We have been doing two new things this season... We are a strong 1st year 12U team.

First thing:
We have been doing pitchers and catchers before regular practice for one hour:
Roughly 30 minutes: Pitchers and catchers work separately on skills related to their position. Hugely beneficial to both groups - especially the catchers.
Roughly 30 minutes: Pitchers and Catchers work together but as the rest of the team arrive they will warm up and step in as hitters. So now we have live pitching/batting/catchers and this has proved very popular. We swap pitchers & catchers in every couple of batters. Sometimes this ends up being the first 30 minutes of practice as well as the girls love it - some will run bases after they hit, we have throw downs, etc, etc... Basically it feels like a pickup game which is way cool and there isn't the pressure a structured BP can give at this age. Girls have even started arriving earlier to get more swings in against live pitching.

Added Note: We have 4 pitchers who have solid control (i.e. they rarely hit batters). We couldn't have done this same time last year.

Second thing:
We went and got a HS pitcher to throw full BP for us. She doesn't throw her full, full speed (yet) and she throws a lot of fast balls and change ups and mixes in her drop as well. She does it in exchange for service hours which is nice. We do it once a week - we rotate 3 players in at a time (1 hit, 2 shag) and run our regular practice at the same time separately so there is no waiting around for their turn to hit.

Showing strong dividends so far.

^ very nice. People that don't have an older pitcher, around here - have one dad assigned to throw batting practice. They have it set up nice. They have a screen and a shopping cart full of softballs that are all kinds of balls (new ones, 11 inch, torn ones, soft ones, etc). The dad just stands there and wings them into the strike zone. I am guessing that they stand at about 35 feet. The variety of balls, gives the effect of different pitches. Once in awhile, with a good natured kid, you can throw them a grapefruit.

This is a very difficult situation that I think will have a potentially very difficult answer - "It Depends"...

If your pitcher is a dominant pitcher (that will just demoralize the batters) and not be representative of the hs conference "norm" - then "No".

If you only have effectively ONE pitcher on your team she is then too valuable to risk injury - then "No".

If you have multiple pitchers - then "Yes".

If you were using your pitchers for Batting Practice it will or will not be benificial. If you have no control as to how many pitches you allow her to throw it can affect your practice negatively by making it boring. We have my pitchers throw 7 Pitches max per batter. The batter either hits, walks or strikes out. After that, I will pitch to ensure the accuracy is there and my batters can hit the ball more. Like I mentioned, it can be benificial to a certain point.

Pitchers in my opinion should be pitching Game situations without batters so they can focus solely on her targets as opposed to a batter. I tell my pitchers that the batter doesn't matter. She needs to focus on ignoring the batter, hitting her spots, her accuracy and consistency of her pitches. If your simply using your pitchers just to get her some repetitions, that would not be the best time to use it especially if your doing game situations.