Help with my 10yr old

[Greenmonsters]

The pitching machines in the cages I frequent have dials on them to change the pitch speed.

For many people, simply changing the dial on the machine would be the wiser option. They would avoid the ridiculous induced effective pitch speeds (+200mph) and the associated breakdown in mechanics.

A 'drill' I'll sometimes perform is to ladder the pitch speed 'up' in a series of increments, as well as 'down' in a series of increments. I find the dial on the pitching machine comes in pretty handy for such a drill.

Specifics please

I believe your intent in posting is to be helpful.

When you advocate such a drill, without providing the specific details..., you risk folks copying the drill in a manner that will do more harm to their players than good....

 

[FiveFrameSwing]

Specifics please

I use the dial on the pitching machines to re-set pitch speed.

 

[Mark H]

As I said, our drill is similar. it's not identical. It's similar in the sense of stepping increasingly closer to the machine. The speed we use isn't that fast, and that's intentional. At the stations furthest from the machine, we want them to have to wait on the pitch - wait as long as they can before they launch the barrel.

If you don't like it, don't use it. I'm seeing the effectiveness of the drill manifest on the field with young hitters who struggled with the concept of waiting on slow pitching. For my DD's team, the drill is doing what it is intended to do.

What I'm hearing is you use this drill (protocol really) to stretch hitters in terms of teaching them to wait late on something slow rather than using it to force quickness?

 

[Eric F]

What I'm hearing is you use this drill (protocol really) to stretch hitters in terms of teaching them to wait late on something slow rather than using it to force quickness?

Some of both, I guess. Stepping closer to the machine requires them to increase their quickness, but I guess this could be considered more of a tune-up of their reflexes in preparation for the lesson of waiting on a slow pitch.

 

[Mark H]

For that, I like it a lot.

 

[FiveFrameSwing]

Some of both, I guess. Stepping closer to the machine requires them to increase their quickness, but I guess this could be considered more of a tune-up of their reflexes in preparation for the lesson of waiting on a slow pitch.

EricF, I believe you know this already ... but you don't teach a hitter to hit faster pitching by simply "swinging faster". You teach a pitcher to hit fast pitching by teaching them the "holy grail" of hitting ... i.e., "slow and early". When the prior poster wrote of having hitters face effective 200+mph pitching, he acknowledged that the hitters were in a "pre-loaded" position ... basically they were playing Russian Roulette and attempting to guess when to unload. Having the hitter in a pre-loaded position bypasses the "slow and early", and actually robs the hitter of the ability to learn to hit fast pitching.