Batters crowding the plate 14u+

NorthMS said:

What I try to teach mine, whether hitting or pitching, it that its a constant adjustment. Not only game to game, AB to AB, but pitch to pitch. You can't go into every game with a set mindset of pitching location and batting position and not be willing to adjust based off what's given to you and what's not.

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IMO, from a pitching standpoint there never needs to be an adjust IF your objective is to pitch to the catcher rather than the hitter because, if as a pitcher you want to live outside, you first have to establish ownership of the inside.

JAD said:

My DD has already cracked 2 bats this year when batters who were crowding the plate hit the ball off the handle. Nothing better than turning a $299 bat into a "paper weight" with an inside fastball.....we are doing our part to keep Coresoftball20 in business!

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I use the 1 spot, about 40 percent of the time, That is chin strap high and tight. Then 3 spot, low knee caps, about 30 percent, then 4 spot, low outside, about 20 percent , I try to limit that chest high outside, .

Broken bats , we should start an etiquette deal where the pitcher gets the broken bat like a trophy.

at the older age groups we do see more crowding. The rise in tight negates the advantage for the batter.

Coach JV said:

at the older age groups we do see more crowding. The rise in tight negates the advantage for the batter.

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With the rise of the power hitter, PCs are even teaching that the riseball should be thrown outside.

Nobody is "setting hitters up" any more. They all want to work the outside part of the plate all the way to the batter's box line because a lot of umps will give 'em that much. They are afraid of today's bigger, stronger power hitters.

Nothing like a riseball just inside the chin to set a girl up for that low & away curveball. PCs don't like it, though, because if their pupils miss with this pitch and it flattens out, over the fence it goes.

The problem is with the pitchers' control, not the umpires and the batters.

It is easier to teach a kid a new pitch than do the boring, mundane, repetitive work of learning control.

sluggers said:

The problem is with the pitchers' control, not the umpires and the batters.

It is easier to teach a kid a new pitch than do the boring, mundane, repetitive work of learning control.

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You are spot on Sluggers.

I can’t stress enough having pitchers master control of a select number of pitches.

It’s sort of like real estate …. location, location, location.

The three main qualities of a good pitch are location, movement and speed. Some will say ‘spin’, but I lump that under ‘movement’.

If you lack the ability to control where you locate a pitch, then you haven’t mastered that particular pitch. Sure, it can be boring to work on mastering a pitch. Being a good pitcher requires routinely going though boring, monotonous, and repetitive actions. Location, location, location. If you are going to play on the national level, then work diligently on mastering 3-4 different pitches.

The ability to locate a pitch correctly a few times is not mastery of a pitch. It is more a display of ability or potential … which then needs to be matured into mastery.

Sluggers .... a quick story from last evening.

Last night I was working with two pitchers. As part of a routine, we go through pitching to imagined batters. In the 5th inning they were feeling pretty good about themselves and decided that all batters should start with a 2-0 count. I suggested that they weren't ready for that, because their control wasn't good enough. They however thought differently. The result was that they loaded the bases, walked in batters, and plated the ball for hits. It was a big inning for the imagined opposing team.

After that inning they decided that all batters should start with a 0-0 count.

Made me laugh ..... because without them saying it out loud, they seemed to realize that they both lacked control.

FiveFrameSwing said:

After that inning they decided that all batters should start with a 0-0 count.

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Some of the pitchers I've seen should start with an 0-2 count--just to make it fair!

Greenmonsters said:

IMO, from a pitching standpoint there never needs to be an adjust IF your objective is to pitch to the catcher rather than the hitter because, if as a pitcher you want to live outside, you first have to establish ownership of the inside.

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We shouldn't just pitch to the catcher though. You have to make adjustments. If the ump is giving you 1 ball off the plate, why pitch closer? That's an adjustment. If a batter is hugging the plate, you have to be able to pitch inside. If the batters are not chasing the drop pitch, you have to adjust. If a batter you've never faced before crushes an inside pitch just foul, you may want to rethink putting it there again. Adjustments.

We work on situations like, facing a weaker hitter on a full count, you can get away with more of the plate than if it was a crusher standing in the box.

Just for fun...after a session with my pitchers we would play a game; put a basketball or soccer ball on the tee set it right on the middle of the plate thigh high and see how many times out of 10 they could hit it, that was the fun and easy part....then last 10 pitches leaving the ball there on the tee see how many pitches they could throw for strikes without hitting the ball we would count anything within about 2 ball widths as strikes.