Pitching for weak contact vs. strikeouts in 12u

[Rick M]

In regards to Koufax, I think the point of his quote is that as he matured as a player and gained an ungodly level of command, he stopped nibbling at the strike zone in an attempt to fool hitters and just went after them. His career numbers bear this out: for the first six years of his career, his K:BB ratio went over 2.0 just once. In the last six, his ratio was routinely over 4.0 and went as high as 5.38. He threw far more strikes than balls. As Casey Stengel often said, "You could look it up."

Of course it's ridiculous for a 12U softball coach to assert that he has some magic formula when calling pitches to generate weak hits vs strikeouts. The best a coach can do for his or her pitcher is to mix it up, change speeds, work the corners, change planes, use effective velocity. Sometimes that will result in a weak hit, sometimes a strikeout, sometimes a blast over the fence!

 

[badmonkey]

For softball? Probably coached 150 to 200. I had 3 DDs...so I would have coached about 8 or so seasons of rec ball. Then, add the 12U team, which had some 10YOA kids on it. And, there would be a sprinkling of camps and practices as well.

If you include basketball, baseball, soccer, softball and various camps, my guess is that I have coached 300 or so.

Then you know that a 10 year old girl is not going to be able to put the pitcher's role into perspective. You can only hope to guide them and help them understand the role. Some will get it, some won't.

As far as the thread topic, we're talking about girls going from 10U to 12U. They have to keep the mindset of making the pitch. That doesn't change. But at 10U a good pitch gets a good result 95% of the time. At 12U that percentage is going to go way down. Making sure the girls are aware of that is important. Making sure the pitchers don't feel 100% responsible to get all the outs is important. Keep in mind, my DD is just at the level of graduating from "just throw a strike", to hitting a side of the plate and adding in a CU. It's all new, and all different. She is starting to get it, but man, it takes time. And to start them out with the concept of pitching to contact when they are definitely going to get hit no matter what, is good coaching, imo. Telling my daughter she's supposed to go mow down the opponents lineup with her 40mph heater is not.

 

[sluggers]

Keep in mind, my DD is just at the level of graduating from "just throw a strike", to hitting a side of the plate and adding in a CU. It's all new, and all different. She is starting to get it, but man, it takes time. And to start them out with the concept of pitching to contact when they are definitely going to get hit no matter what, is good coaching, imo. Telling my daughter she's supposed to go mow down the opponents lineup with her 40mph heater is not.

Note that I didn't say anything about "mowing down the opponents lineup".

A coach should give meaningful instruction to a kid so she can understand what the heck she is supposed to do. It should be something the child can do and can practice.

"Pitching to contact" (which is the same as "let them hit it") doesn't have a meaning. "just throw strikes" doesn't have a meaning. Both are garbage. She can't practice "throwing to contact" unless she has a batter. She can't practice "just throwing strikes" without a batter and an umpire. The instruction, "Throw so that the batters get weak hits" is insanely stupid.

"Hitting your spots" is completely, 100% within a pitcher's control. It is specific advice telling the kid exactly what to do. "Hitting your spots" is a learned skill that can be practiced without anyone else. It is pretty easy to learn. (You actually teach a kid how to move the ball around the strike zone. )

The best "pitching theory" advice my DD ever got was from a guy with a World Series Ring. He told my DD, "When you are pitching, the only things that matters are the ball and the catcher's mitt."

 

[OsDad]

The instruction, "Throw so that the batters get weak hits" is insanely stupid.

Far be it from me to offer a criticism of your stance, because you’re FAR more experienced than I am and I have VERY often taken your advice and looked through your posts for direction but-

I feel like maybe you’re being a little obtuse about this. In my experience (which certainly makes this anecdotal), most 10-12yo pitchers (including my own) don’t necessarily have the maturity and grasp of nuance to understand that their focus shouldn’t be on the outcome. Should we be teaching it to them? Absolutely, but why is it so bad while they’re learning, to try and help keep them confident by assuring them that we are okay with batters putting balls in play? To take that a step farther, if we KNOW our pitchers can’t throw past batters and that while they’re learning to hit spots that they’ll likely get hit, why wouldn’t we make sure that they don’t confuse not striking out batters with a some sort of poor/unwanted outcome?

When we say “pitch to weak contact” to a 10 year old, MOST of us are saying “We want you to hit the spot even though it may mean you’re going to get hit for now”. I’ve seen kids who don’t understand that it’s okay, start missing outside/up/down because they get discouraged when kids hit the ball. They aren’t always mature enough to understand that the outcome of the pitch wasn’t necessarily a reflection on their ability.

Again- you’ve forgotten more than I’ll probably ever know but I feel like you’re maybe arguing a different point (people actually thinking they are teaching a “skill” vs just trying to communicate a nuanced concept to little kids in a way they can digest it).


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[_MIA_]

Agree that communication to a young pitcher regarding expectations is necessary but telling them to pitch to weak contact may not be the way to go as it still sort of implies that the pitcher shoulders all the burden regarding the outcome of any given pitch to any given batter. Sometimes good hitters hit good pitches and sometimes a pitcher may throw the pitch which was called but it may have been the wrong pitch call (see below for more on this.. )

In my opinion, a coach needs to communicate to a pitcher that his/her job is to call the pitches that he/she feel gives the team the best chance to succeed, that the pitcher's job is to execute those pitches to the best of her ability and that the job of the defense behind her is to make plays should the ball be hit.

Or in the words of Bill Belichick, everybody has to "Do your job" for the team to succeed.

On a somewhat related note, one thing that I have always wondered about, in particular with older pitchers, is how long does it take for a pitcher to trust her pitch caller and how often does that actually not ever happen? I pitched through HS and we would call our own game. I am not sure how I would feel having someone sitting in the dugout telling me what pitches I should and shouldn't be throwing on any given day to any given batter.

 

[badmonkey]

Agree that communication to a young pitcher is necessary but telling them to pitch to contact may not be the way to go.

Coach needs to communicate to a pitcher that his/her job is to call the pitches that he/she feel give the team the best chance to succeed, that the pitcher's job is the execute those pitches to the best of her ability and that the job of the defense behind her is get outs should the ball be put in play.

Or in the words of Bill Belichick, everybody has to "Do your job" for the team to succeed.

Maybe not telling them to "pitch to contact", but instead explain to them that softly hit balls are a good thing. In 10U anything in play is a good hit, and the pitchers sometimes feel like they lost even when they get a ground ball to short.

 

[_MIA_]

Maybe not telling them to "pitch to contact", but instead explain to them that softly hit balls are a good thing. In 10U anything in play is a good hit, and the pitchers sometimes feel like they lost even when they get a ground ball to short.

I mean maybe if a good pitcher is going from rec at 10U to TB 12U that might be the case. Yes there are a lot of errors in 10U TB but I wouldn't go as far as to say anything put in play is considered a good hit

 

[badmonkey]

I mean maybe if a good pitcher is going from rec at 10U to TB 12U that might be the case. Yes there are a lot of errors in 10U TB but I wouldn't go as far as to say anything put in play is considered a good hit

I know, but you know what I mean. Go watch a 10B and a 12B game back to back. The difference is astounding.

 

[_MIA_]

I know, but you know what I mean. Go watch a 10B and a 12B game back to back. The difference is astounding.

Consistency is typically better going from 10's to 12's, I would agree with that. Just like it improves going from 12's to 14's. Things start to level off after that from what I have seen. Players get more polished and make better plays, but routine boots of ground balls or bad throws to first seem to happen at the same rate for 14's, 16's and 18's.

My DD's 10U team would have tournaments where they would only make 2 or 3 errors in the whole tournament while in other tournaments they would make that many errors in 1 inning . On a personal level, in the first 50 or so games at SS my DD made less than 10 errors (by my count..me being me, I pretty much remember them all without having to resort to the probably erroneous scorebook/gamechanger). In her last tournament of the year she made at least 6...that was painful.

They are now a 1st year 12U team and in their first Fall tournament they had 3 games where they made a total of 2 errors and 3 games where they made 4 times that with basically the same number of chances...LOL!!

 

[cnardone]

I am not sure how I would feel having someone sitting in the dugout telling me what pitches I should and shouldn't be throwing on any given day to any given batter.

I am going to bet that for girls (or boys for that matter) that never got to call their own game, this is not as large of an issue as compared to someone who 'grew up' calling their own game.