change up locations.

coach james said:

I'm not as big a fan of outside change ups for one basic reason. We all know that inside balls are hit early and outside balls are hit deep into the plate. Meaning outside pitches give the hitter a fraction more time to adjust. If its a slow pitch that's outside, the batter will have the most amount of time to potentially readjust and connect square. For that reason we try to stay inside and low. This location will predominately produce weak ground balls to ss/3rd if it was hit fair.

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You might want to re-think this! IME, the outside change typically will result in more swing and misses than the inside change because a hitter who starts their swing at their normal time will be more ahead of the outside pitch than the inside pitch. And if its not a miss, its often weakly hit and/or off the end of the bat.

The one thing I don't like to do is to throw change ups/off-speed pitches to weak hitters who are overpowered by a pitcher's speed and/or are swinging late. A change up or off speed to them may be the only pitch that they have a shot at hitting.

JJsqueeze said:

I don't think there is a bad location for the changeup if it is set up correctly. But I prefer the CU to be either early in the count and thrown inside to get a foul ball or in later counts down and away or down the middle and dropping hard to get a swinging strike. I even like a higher changeup dropping in for a called third strike for girls that are obviously laying off higher stuff. Any way you slice it, watching a changeup be effective is a gas to watch, nothing like watching a batter get completely fooled by a pitch that looks like such a cream puff.

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Don't get locked into being too predictable! And don't be afraid to throw more than 1 change up in a row! 6 in a row (looking Ks to batters #3 and #4) is the most I've seen.

Greenmonsters said:

Don't get locked into being too predictable! And don't be afraid to throw more than 1 change up in a row! 6 in a row (looking Ks to batters #3 and #4) is the most I've seen.

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This more than anything. Throw it on the first pitch, throw in back to back, just throw it randomly.

Hitting is timing. Pitching is disrupting that timing.

Greenmonsters said:

The one thing I don't like to do is to throw change ups/off-speed pitches to weak hitters who are overpowered by a pitcher's speed and/or are swinging late. A change up or off speed to them may be the only pitch that they have a shot at hitting.

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true true true....if they can't catch up then keep blowing them away. They need to prove they can handle the speed before the change up is even an option.

For me, the best change-up is the one that the pitcher sells as one of her high velocity pitches in her pitching motion (i.e., she "sells" it). If she is successful at that and throws it through the same outside corner doughnut hole between her and the batter as she does for that higher velocity pitch, there is a much greater likelihood that the batter will be swinging much too soon.

JJsqueeze said:

true true true....They need to prove they can handle the speed before the change up is even an option.

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Yes and no.

This sort of approach hinders the development of a young "fireballer", in my opinion.

How can a kid develop and have confidence in a change up if its only called for by the coach against the very best hitting teams (which amounts to maybe one or two matchups each tournamnent around here...)?

Throwing the change against weak batters is fine by me. Get the infield some work, too!