Travel Ball Realizations

[riseball]

Baseball already has this restriction, among others (depedning on the league or tourney), so we know how it will play out. And that is:

#3: coaches develop more pitchers.

As Greenmonsters said, how many girls give up on pitching because they know they aren't going to get a chance? I'd bet more would stick with it if they knew they were going to pitch even just a couple of innings every third or fourth game. And coaches would spend the time working with them because they'd need them to pitch.

I think it is a bit easier with baseball. Even if you have never pitched before you can go to the mound and pitch in baseball. Not quite the same with softball. The problem is that quality PC's are few and far between and unlike baseball, most fastpitch coaches will not even attempt to develop a pitcher. Even though pitching is the heart and soul of a team, most coaches leave that to the parents via PC. Even many top college programs do not have a dedicated pitching coach.

 

[BuckeyeGuy]

DGD is playing fall rec right now and not pitching, other girls are better than her but deep down I do wish she could get a little circle time. It’s more difficult to keep her motivated to practice when she knows she will not get any game time in the circle. My thoughts are what the @#$% this is rec but the coaches apparently view these games differently than I do.

As a long time rec coach, I see it both ways. And I'm inclined to give any girl who wants to pitch some game circle time if she can throw 50% strikes. By "some" I mean an inning here and there, because even though it's rec it's unfair to the rest of the team, and unfair to the other team to throw a girl who will walk in the run rule. No one gets anything at all out of that.

Coaching fall rec, we ran into a couple of C TB teams who had obvious #1, #2, and #3 pitchers. We didn't do too badly, but it really hammered home the idea that even in rec, we need real pitching, not "Hey coach, I'd like to try pitching!"

Once DD ages out or decides to stop or makes a TB team (my expected order of occurrence by probability), I'm thinking I'll drop back to 10U or 8U and work at begining to develop rec pitchers who might become real pitchers. We lack player development in my league, and I want to help fix that.

 

[abbygale]

Ok, let's play. Hypothetically no more than X innings per pitcher per day. Actual number does not matter since it is a totally arbitrary number. Given that restriction which scenario is most plausible:

#1 The best pitchers will join forces on the best teams and those without pitching talent will fold and ride off into the sunset. Although fewer teams the level of play will be much higher.

OR

#2 The best pitchers will join forces on the best teams and those without pitching talent will remain, Coaches will still put their DD's and anyone who can fog a mirror in the circle and complain endlessly about how there is not enough pitching talent to go around. On the plus side the limited reintroduction of slingshot pitching will be interesting.

I am going to go out on a limb and suggest #2 is the most likely scenario.

I agree and think that you would find those pitchers doing intrasquad scrimmages because they want to pitch against the best.

 

[dbronstein]

I think it is a bit easier with baseball. Even if you have never pitched before you can go to the mound and pitch in baseball. Not quite the same with softball. The problem is that quality PC's are few and far between and unlike baseball, most fastpitch coaches will not even attempt to develop a pitcher. Even though pitching is the heart and soul of a team, most coaches leave that to the parents via PC. Even many top college programs do not have a dedicated pitching coach.

I agree it's a bit easier in baseball. But based on the number of comments I've seen here from people complaining that the team coaches are teaching their DDs contradictory to what their PCs are teaching tem, it seems like a lot of team coaches are trying to teach pitching.

Regardless, I think that if there was a greater opportunity for girls to pitch, more would be wlling to put in the time and effort to learn. If the demand for pitchers increases, the supply will follow.

 

[riseball]

I agree it's a bit easier in baseball. But based on the number of comments I've seen here from people complaining that the team coaches are teaching their DDs contradictory to what their PCs are teaching tem, it seems like a lot of team coaches are trying to teach pitching.

Regardless, I think that if there was a greater opportunity for girls to pitch, more would be wlling to put in the time and effort to learn. If the demand for pitchers increases, the supply will follow.

Hard to argue against that. Teaching someone to pitch is not rocket science, but if you do not know what you are doing there are lots of opportunities to get a kid completely screwed up. Thankfully great resources are easily available, just have to separate the wheat from the chaff.

 

[FP26]

I agree it's a bit easier in baseball. But based on the number of comments I've seen here from people complaining that the team coaches are teaching their DDs contradictory to what their PCs are teaching tem, it seems like a lot of team coaches are trying to teach pitching.

The key term here is "trying". Some teams seem to place a disproportionate amount of praise/blame on the pitchers rather than teaching the other position players how to field ground balls, force out lead runners, drop step on fly balls, etc. If they can somehow teach the pitcher to strike out every batter, the defense doesn't need to worry about that other stuff. I know a team like this very well... When the coach realizes that the pitcher is not capable of striking out every batter, his solution is to find another pitcher...

 

[BuckeyeGuy]

Teaching someone to pitch is not rocket science...

Dunno - BM's IR threads read like it is lol!

I have very limited experience with softball, and what I know is from coaching rec and learning from my own mistakes, reading DFP, and watching videos (Hillhouse, Kobata, NECC). I have no experience with TB at all, but just from attending a couple of tryouts I am willing say that the coaching talent drop off from even C travel to rec is huge. If Candrea is a 10, and we say that A level TB coaches are 5's (just to give us a scale to work with), then 99.9% of rec coaches are in negative numbers, sometimes double digit negatives.

Where are all the coach the coaches clinics? Do the big TB orgs have them? If you TB coaches want more, better pitchers and more, better players, start with your farm system. Offer a coach the coaches clinic, then promote the hell out of it to the local rec leagues. Get the league commish to make it a requirement for coaching; bucket dads/coaches will attend if it is required.

 

[CoogansBluff]

I like the problem-solving idea of getting more training for pitchers. Never liked the complaint that there are too many travel teams. I think it's great that so many kids want to play this sport year-round. Now let's figure out ways to get more pitchers.

When my daughter was 8, a guy on the rec board suggested that we hire a pitching coach to give cheap or free lessons for rec players. Great investment. Several travel ball pitchers came out of that. Not even sure she was a great coach, might've been some hello elbow in there, but she made it fun and kept their interest and got them to work on it. They graduated to bigger, better things.

 

[JJsqueeze]

FWIW I see mostly 2-3 good pitchers on every team. They tend to get good amount of innings at friendlies and pool play, only in bracket play does it tighten up and the #1 get ridden but I have no issue with that as a #2 dad. We chose to play in a situation where she was a #2 on a better team rather than be #1 on a worse team.

Having a lot of teams at various levels is nice as a parent, it give us options and the ability to choose the right fit. I wish everyone had the multitude of choices in teams that we get in SoCal. It really lets you choose your commute time/competition level etc.

I don't really see any lack of pitching talent here. By and large the pitching is decent in all the teams we face. The really great pitchers are pretty rare, but there are plenty of good pitchers.

By good pitcher, I mean a girl that can keep it in the zone without pitching meat and keeps lids on innings. Not necessarily striking out a bunch but getting a lot of weak hits and not letting the good hits get strung together.

 

[YOCOACH]

Around here, like many other places, there is a plethora of various level TB teams. Most of these teams seem to have 2 pitchers appropriate for the level they play and more often than not, a decent #3 for there team. The real problem I see around our area is the lack of quality catchers. All too often, I'll see an "A" level team with only one "A" level catcher where as the other one may be a good "B" at best. Many "B" teams are worse off where they may only have one catcher or if they are lucky enough to have 2, they are both "C" level.