CT,
Osterman is a rare talent. She also changed her pitching style in her teens. Why? I don’t know, but I can guess it was to grow as a pitcher. It suggests she has a rare mentality to go along with her physical ability – specifically the desire and dedication to improve. I believe that without her mentality she may have been a very good ground ball pitcher that we never heard about even with her physical gifts.
If I were to tell a pitcher she needs to get more K's, and she started to overthrow, her movement pitches start to flatten out, and she starts getting lit up with line drives, it would be a disservice.
OTOH, if I tell the same pitcher that she has a great drop, but she tends to throw it at the same speed and change her release point to move it in and out of the zone. I suggest that she works at maintaining the same release point and changing speeds to get the ball to move where she wants and that she works on her change up so it starts slightly higher than her drop and moves to a third location. Assuming she works hard to master these skills, what would the likely outcome be?
It may be a tweak to the sequence. She may have a tendency to get ahead in the count and then work too far off the plate outside trying to get the batter to fish. What she may need to work on is jamming the batter more often.
Most players focus on getting better at what they do, rather than figuring out what they need to do to get better. This is often because what is needed to get better can be tedious, uncomfortable, frustrating, and can take time to master. It can also lead to a dip in performance. From time to time every player needs to be willing to take a risk to improve.
A kid should never be made to feel inadequate if she is not getting what you think is the right number of K's per game and I believe it is unreasonable to expect every pitcher to reach a 12 K’s a game average. But, that doesn’t preclude challenging your pitchers. I believe a pitcher should always be striving for more strike outs for any number of reasons not least of which is doing so will improve the odds that any ball put in play will produce an out.
Osterman is a rare talent. She also changed her pitching style in her teens. Why? I don’t know, but I can guess it was to grow as a pitcher. It suggests she has a rare mentality to go along with her physical ability – specifically the desire and dedication to improve. I believe that without her mentality she may have been a very good ground ball pitcher that we never heard about even with her physical gifts.
If I were to tell a pitcher she needs to get more K's, and she started to overthrow, her movement pitches start to flatten out, and she starts getting lit up with line drives, it would be a disservice.
OTOH, if I tell the same pitcher that she has a great drop, but she tends to throw it at the same speed and change her release point to move it in and out of the zone. I suggest that she works at maintaining the same release point and changing speeds to get the ball to move where she wants and that she works on her change up so it starts slightly higher than her drop and moves to a third location. Assuming she works hard to master these skills, what would the likely outcome be?
It may be a tweak to the sequence. She may have a tendency to get ahead in the count and then work too far off the plate outside trying to get the batter to fish. What she may need to work on is jamming the batter more often.
Most players focus on getting better at what they do, rather than figuring out what they need to do to get better. This is often because what is needed to get better can be tedious, uncomfortable, frustrating, and can take time to master. It can also lead to a dip in performance. From time to time every player needs to be willing to take a risk to improve.
A kid should never be made to feel inadequate if she is not getting what you think is the right number of K's per game and I believe it is unreasonable to expect every pitcher to reach a 12 K’s a game average. But, that doesn’t preclude challenging your pitchers. I believe a pitcher should always be striving for more strike outs for any number of reasons not least of which is doing so will improve the odds that any ball put in play will produce an out.