DD can't hit slow pitchers

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May 12, 2008
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A high level swing can't really do what it's supposed to against a wheeled machine throwing hard. Nothing to time off of. Have to truncate your motion. If you have this kind of swing Photo 10 of 16, Fastpitch you are going to have to do everything before heel plant before the ball spits out. Timing off of an artificial arm circle is iffy. I agree with the need to get quicker which is what moving closer to the machine is forcing and I REALLY like the backing off portion of your drill forcing them to learn to wait for the slower pitch without starting their motion early but you won't develop the kind of swing you see in the above clip in close to a machine. Perhaps that's one reason we see the defensive swing mechanics so common in fp? With the shortage of quality bp pitchers the machine gets used more than for boys and the girls end up truncating the motion (getting rid of everything you see in the above clip before toe touch or heel plant). It's a problem. If you have a dad who is a former or current men's pitcher who can cruise all day long at a speed that slightly challenges your hitters, that's huge. And of course moving the machine close doesn't really get it done in terms of learning to track and time high speed pitching. It does challenge quickness but in an artificial way as I explained. Closing speed has been discussed many times. The timing challenge for a ball moving 90 is greater than for a ball moving 60 released from closer even though the reaction time is the same. Reason being the ball is in the contact zone for less time. Has everyone read the cannon ball analogy? Back off a cannon far enough the reaction time is the same few tenths of a second as it fires the ball over the plate at 200mph. Compare that to the same reaction on a 30 mph pitch from closer giving you the same few tenths of a second reaction time. Obviously the faster closing speed creates tracking problems and timing challenges well beyond the reaction time. So you really can't train for high speed pitching by moving closer to a machine throwing slower. But I DO love your drill. For me, it's about training to deal with the off speed more than training to deal with faster pitchers.
 
May 12, 2008
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An anecdote about moving in the box. When Cat and the Katy Cruisers blanked the Olympic team for the five innings she pitched in Fort Worth back in the day, some of the Nat team players said afterward they wanted to move back in the box and see if they could lay off the rise and drop but the coaches wanted them in the front of the box and they waved at rises and drops out of the zone all night. It was the second game of the night and a few of the name players were taking a break. About the second or third innining you could see them off the bench and getting back in the game to try their hand at this lefty who was eating their team mates up. Michelle Smith had told them this kid was special and now they were believing it.

Depending on the ump and the pitcher, I can see where moving in the box might be effective or even necessary but I don't teach it either. Take an ump calling a curve off the plate. Moving back might give the ump a different perspective or moving up might make it possible to do something with the pitch he's going to call anyway.
 
May 12, 2008
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I should add Fernandez was eating up the Cruisers worse than Cat was eating up the Nat team. But not by much. Only way they got Bustos to second was on some unusual call by the ump that sent her to second. Otherwise no one got past first on Cat. The Cruisers F4 who went to play for Texas whose face I can see but whose name escapes me right now was actually safe on a bunt against Fernandez but didn't get the call. Someone else drove the ball hard in the right center gap but the Nat team F8 stole a double away from the kid that made the Dallas paper the next day with the F8 stretched out in mid air. Might have been a different game if that one had gotten to the fence. If they had left Cat in, it would have been a long night. The other lefty for the Cruisers whose name also escapes me who played for Baylor later held them scoreless for two more innings though there was more base running traffic. I think that may have been the only game on the Central Park to Sydney tour that went extra innings.
 

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