It looks like Tara Oltman from Crieghton has been able to correct her motion also. She was getting a metric ton of IP's called after the memo came out for a while and wasn't able to pitch games. 4 pitches and 4 IP's called and her coach would pull her. She pitched some games starting last weekend for wins with no IP's.
discussion on college D1 illegal pitches
- Thread starter Amy in AZ.
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Has anyone here actually seen these pitchers' new motion? Do they look significantly different from what they were doing before? If these young ladies can unlearn a lifetime of leaping/ crow-hopping in just a few short weeks and regain their dominance in the circle, it would suggest that a) deeply entrenched habits are easier to break than one might have expected, and b) leaping/ crow-hopping didn't give these pitchers nearly as big an advantage as many of us had assumed.
Until we see some 'before and after' comparisons, one does tend to wonder how much of this sharp reversal in IP call frequency was due to substantial changes in the motion of the affected pitchers, and how much of it may be the direct consequence of Abrahamson's 3/29 memo, advising the umps to give the pitchers the benefit of the doubt whenever possible.
Until we see some 'before and after' comparisons, one does tend to wonder how much of this sharp reversal in IP call frequency was due to substantial changes in the motion of the affected pitchers, and how much of it may be the direct consequence of Abrahamson's 3/29 memo, advising the umps to give the pitchers the benefit of the doubt whenever possible.
Watching Michigan vs Northwestern on the Big Ten Network right now and watching the referenced pitcher. IMHO the reduction in illegal pitches is direct consequence of Abrahamson's 3/29 memo, advising the umps to give the pitchers the benefit of the doubt whenever possible.
- Jun 22, 2008
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I don't think you can dismiss the possibility the pitchers knew what they were doing and just continued to do so until it was called.
Had a chance to watch a couple of televised games recently. It looks like "the big crackdown" is no longer all it was cracked up to be!
One game was the Florida/Florida State. BIG TIME leaping, blatantly obvious in "real time"...and no Illegal Pitch calls that I saw.
The other was the Northwestern/Michigan game. (A little bit painful to watch, being a Buckeye in Columbus. But at least it was softball...) The Michigan pitcher had an odd rocker motion and it looked to me like her pivot foot raised up off the plate, then came back down on top of it, on every single pitch. Just the sort of "technical violation" that was getting called left and right early season but, again, no IP calls that I saw.
What I saw in these two games represents a MAJOR change from what we were seeing a couple of weeks ago. Pitchers are back to their old tricks and the umpires are back to letting it slide (or, is it "back to giving the pitchers the benefit of the doubt?).
One game was the Florida/Florida State. BIG TIME leaping, blatantly obvious in "real time"...and no Illegal Pitch calls that I saw.
The other was the Northwestern/Michigan game. (A little bit painful to watch, being a Buckeye in Columbus. But at least it was softball...) The Michigan pitcher had an odd rocker motion and it looked to me like her pivot foot raised up off the plate, then came back down on top of it, on every single pitch. Just the sort of "technical violation" that was getting called left and right early season but, again, no IP calls that I saw.
What I saw in these two games represents a MAJOR change from what we were seeing a couple of weeks ago. Pitchers are back to their old tricks and the umpires are back to letting it slide (or, is it "back to giving the pitchers the benefit of the doubt?).
The Mississippi State/South Carolina game was on TV here this weekend. The Mississippi State pitcher very obviously crow hopped on every pitch - you sure didn't need slow motion to see these. I didn't see a single one called, but didn't watch the game start to finish. My 10 year old daughter commented that she thought it was illegal to do that, and asked me why the umps weren't calling it. I wasn't quite sure what to tell her...
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