- May 26, 2021
- 56
- 18
My daughter is first year 10u. We practice a lot. She puts in a lot of time, and she has progressed a ton. She's throwing strikes about 70-75% of her pitches. Right now she hits her spots dead on about 40% of the time, but she misses by just a bit if she does miss. We're definitely still working on all this, but she is tiny. I mean tiny. Smallest on her team and maybe smallest in the league. Fastest I clocked her at is 36, one girl in her league I have her clocked at 49.
This is rec, I'm HC. Our no. 1 pitcher isn't my daughter and she's throwing about 42. My daughter has had one walk in like the last 9 innings but something like 20+ hits against her in the same time. Honestly our lack of fielding is a decent part of that, but still it seems like every time I have her throw anything other than a changeup they hit it.
I think she probably is top 3 in how accurate she is in hitting her spots in the league. But she's probably one of the worst pitchers in the league with runs scored against her.
I figure we start out in the weight room through the summer hopefully get her a few MPH. Most of the reason I'm writing this is to just crowdsource some thoughts on how I should call her pitches. Do I intentionally have her throw out of the zone in hopes they'll reach for it? I'm not doing that at all. But I do have her hitting the corners, which again she hits about 40% of the time right on, but if it's not right on it's usually still a strike.
I have her throwing a lot of changeups which she kills. They reach for them almost every time. But if I throw them three in a row, they get a read on it and hit it. But the second I go back to the fastball, boom a hit. Our other pitcher throws fewer strikes (not on purpose), but when she does throw a strike they are almost all meatballs down the center and they barely hit, I'm assuming because of the speed difference.
My daughter also has a "riseball" it doesn't rise or anything I think because it's just not going fast enough and doesn't have far enough to travel, but it has some nasty spin on it. She does pretty well with that and most of the time the hits aren't great, but they still hit it and our infield is just not bringing it.
Anyways long post I know, I just feel bad because she works so hard and I feel like I'm failing her here a bit with calling the pitches, and also I have this existential worry that I'm dooming her to fail in something because she's probably always going to be small (if I'm looking at her parents).
Any advice is appreciated! She has a great IR pitching coach and we've talked about this before, but just figured I'd crowdsource a bit and see if anyone had any more suggestions or have had success in situations like this before.
This is rec, I'm HC. Our no. 1 pitcher isn't my daughter and she's throwing about 42. My daughter has had one walk in like the last 9 innings but something like 20+ hits against her in the same time. Honestly our lack of fielding is a decent part of that, but still it seems like every time I have her throw anything other than a changeup they hit it.
I think she probably is top 3 in how accurate she is in hitting her spots in the league. But she's probably one of the worst pitchers in the league with runs scored against her.
I figure we start out in the weight room through the summer hopefully get her a few MPH. Most of the reason I'm writing this is to just crowdsource some thoughts on how I should call her pitches. Do I intentionally have her throw out of the zone in hopes they'll reach for it? I'm not doing that at all. But I do have her hitting the corners, which again she hits about 40% of the time right on, but if it's not right on it's usually still a strike.
I have her throwing a lot of changeups which she kills. They reach for them almost every time. But if I throw them three in a row, they get a read on it and hit it. But the second I go back to the fastball, boom a hit. Our other pitcher throws fewer strikes (not on purpose), but when she does throw a strike they are almost all meatballs down the center and they barely hit, I'm assuming because of the speed difference.
My daughter also has a "riseball" it doesn't rise or anything I think because it's just not going fast enough and doesn't have far enough to travel, but it has some nasty spin on it. She does pretty well with that and most of the time the hits aren't great, but they still hit it and our infield is just not bringing it.
Anyways long post I know, I just feel bad because she works so hard and I feel like I'm failing her here a bit with calling the pitches, and also I have this existential worry that I'm dooming her to fail in something because she's probably always going to be small (if I'm looking at her parents).
Any advice is appreciated! She has a great IR pitching coach and we've talked about this before, but just figured I'd crowdsource a bit and see if anyone had any more suggestions or have had success in situations like this before.