Fastballs Good Enough for MLB

[halskinner]

I've been enjoying playoff baseball the last few weeks as I suspect have others. Not a real fan of the network broadcasts, graphics (the side view streak of the pitch trajectory has not confirmed the existence of a rising fastball and is particularly useless IMO), or announcers; however, one thing I have noticed is the pitch breakdown. MLB pitchers generally are throwing their fastball more than 50% of the time. How can this be effective in MLB against the greatest hitters in the world, but frowned upon at upper levels in fastpitch (where most girls' swings still are perceived as flawed).

The only way I can rationalize this is perhaps because a riseball and dropball, which principally change planes vertically in the FP world, would be considered fastball variations in the BB universe, rather than breaking pitches which involve lateral articulation of the wrist and sideways movement. Any other thoughts or rational explanations?

GM,

I have been telling people this since my first book in in 1999; "To be successful, you must set the batters up for every pitch you throw. How the batter respoonded to the last pitch is the biggest factor to determine what pitch to throw next".

You set the batters up with different ball speeds. You set them up with different locations. You set them up with different movement pitches. My entire family are huge fans of the SF Giants, watch them as often as I can. MLB pitchers do that same thing to set batters up. What I enjoy the most is a batter will strike out, then the announcers will show what movement pitches and locations and tyhe order they happened. You can easily see how THAT batter was set up by the pitcher and catcher. Exactly the same in softball.

In baseball you have one wind up for overhand pitching, with the exception of the occassional 'Slingshot style' pitcher, the otherf wind up. Coaches use that wind up to throw off the hitters timing as well. This is where a smart softball pitcher has a better advantage than MLB pitchers. Think about all the different wind upos a softball pitcher can use. There are several. There is also no rule that says a pitcher cannot use more than one wind up against a single batter. That is tactical pitching at its best and something all my students used against the teams they faced.

Here is something else I have said many times. If you throw a curveball, it better curve. If you throw a dropball, it better drop. If you throw a fastball, it better be darned fast, overpowering fast. Do most young pitchers possess overpowering speed? No they dont. However, if the batter has been set up for speed, whatever that pitchers best speed is, it wil be overpowering at that moment.

If all you have is speed, you wont last past the 3rd inning with good hitters. They will catch up to you and start putting the bat on the ball.