Pitching speeds at LL World Series.....

It is still "innings pitched" in softball. One pitch, can be an inning.

The JR's playing right now use anything over 4 innings then a day of rest. So the games are usually 4 with the first pitcher and 3 with the next. 10 innings max in one day. The better pitcher might go 7 if the team comes up against a strong team and then a week team the following day. No pitch count.

watched the final and was wishing they didn't have the innings rule, would have ben a much better game is Virginia had their #1 pitcher available.

I'm about 25 minutes away from Alpenrose and didn't make a single game. Tried to watch the stream but gave up and went to bed. Maybe next year...

Amy,
During post-season, LL (Majors) can pitch up to 2 innings without a day of rest. They can pitch up to nine innings a day (2 the first day and 7 the next.) This is a little more generous than the regular season, but it does favor teams with 2+ good pitchers.

Last year, we went into districts with fireball and really nobody else. The team pretty much just stood there and watched her blaze down batter after batter. Our other games were not good and our run was cut short.

This year we had three kids and strolled through districts and did well at state. (DD did not get hit and still has another year in her age group. Can't wait...)

Ken B., Are you able to practice with some of the girls year around? That is what we finally went to, and my son turns 30, this month. So, it was 18 years ago. We had a coach with access to a gym and hitting center. It was called open gym and had nothing to do with LL. Anyone was welcome, but we knew we had at least 9-10 of the up coming All Stars. Many of the teams that do make it quite far, are actually travel teams that register for LL.

Thanks for clarifying the LL pitch limitation rules, folks.

In our district, my DD (9U) and another girl a year older (10U) are really progressing nicely as formidable pitchers.
I pushed our Board hard this Spring to field a 10U-A Wport team, but they declined (we always field a 12U-A).
I viewed it as a unique opportunity to make a run, with the luxury of 2 very good pitchers for the age-group.
The pitching limitations were mus-interpreted (pitch-counts vs innings), and that factored into the decision-making. (our faulty math made us believe that without 4 reliable arms, it just wasn't viable...)

Now, we're eyeing a run at the 12U-A in 2 years...

Seems like, with typical scheduling of not more than one game in a single day, and with inning (vs pitch count) limitations, a team could do well with 2 equally good pitchers splitting innings 3/3 (and hope for no extra innings!)?

Of course, great pitching isn't everything, and certainly doesn't insure success - but it doesn't hurt, either. <wink>

cuzmail said:

Has anyone run the math to calculate at what speed (top & average) the ball must travel to remain "flat" and not have an arc?

Most intestested in 43' calculations, but 40' would be inetersting too.

Click to expand...

All pitches have an "arc". No pitch is "flat". The Earth has gravity.

If you would like to see if the ESPN gun is reasonable. Take video of the TV. Count the frames from release to Catcher. Estimate that to 40-41 feet (37-38 for LL). And do the calculation.

I did this in the WCWS and found the ESPN speeds were reasonable (The pitchers were throwing 13-13.5 frames on a pitch to the catcher for 30 FPS video, the gun was reading 64-66 MPH).

I love all the haters!

LL allstar teams have to be made up of girls from your town. The whole idea of LLWS is that the girls are playing for their town and people outside of the team care because it is for their hometown... Not some travel team made up of girls an hour away or better yet, guest players.... If you win some tournament, who cares besides the team and the parents??

I know LL in my area has a bunch of TB girls in... WHy? because they want to play for their town and since there are a lot of TB girls playing its competitive

I don't see what you mean by haters? this is a thread about the pitching speeds and how the guns look fishy. I think we all understand the difference between all stars and TB. It seems a little weird that given the quality of overall play that some of the speeds that were shown are faster than what was seen at the PGF finals with 14u girls that were up to two years older and a general quality of play that was much better. I enjoyed watching it but those guns were off.