I am about to jump into pitching head first but I'm way behind the curve (pun intended). Here's the situation, I'll try not to get too, wordy;
Current info - 16U team moving from 14U last year. My latest focus (and thus this thread) came from asking a very successful HC to share his team stats with me so I could understand "What it takes to win at 16U". What I'm starting to realized is that we didn't even have what it takes to win at 14U and now I'm wondering what I can do to help the situation.
What I learned - In a nut shell, we have a very good offensive team (it's my strength and focus) and defensively we have continued to improved, but we do not have championship pitching, our team is way out of balance. This is my fault as a head coach and thus leader of my team, now it's the main thing left to work on.
Last year at 14U we scored 8.2 runs/game but gave up 6.5 runs/game over 33 games. Looks good on paper but we blew out some teams and struggled against good teams. In Bracket games we scored 3.6 runs/game and gave up 7.25 runs/game. Bottom line, we always give up 6-7 runs/game on average.
This year's team is going to be even stronger offensively, I'm confident of that, given the new girls we have and the ones we lost. I honestly expect numbers to improve although runs may not be as high because lost speed and gained power and our speed put a lot of pressure on the defenses we played.
Here's my current pitching situation:
We have 5 that are capable of pitching.
- (A, B & C) - 3 Pitched with us last year and we finished with a 6.02 ERA & 1.94 WHIP.
- D - 1 new pitcher I have watched pitch in HS and a bit in the Fall games we played.
- E - 1 that pitched for us previous summer (2015) but hasn't pitched in a year coming off ACL
KEY; C=Change speed (ability to effectively change speed), L=Location (ability to locate pitches), S=Speed (above average for age)
A - (C,L) - Younger 16U, smaller stature, gymnast, mentally strong (other position OF)
B - (C) - Younger 16U, smart, tough (other position 3B)
C - (S) - Younger 16U, High potential athlete, never formally trained (other position SS)
D - (S,L) - Older 16U, Very tall, Good athlete, also plays VB, BB, & Tennis (other position 1B, SS)
E - (C,L,S) - Older 16U, Coming off ACL not sure what to expect, took us to State Championship game in 2015
As far a coaches this year, there is some basic knowledge but overall we are green. 2 years ago we had a college pitcher coaching with us, last year we had someone filling in running pitchers through workouts from previous year's coach, and this year the dad of pitchers B & E is a coach that we planned to work with pitchers.
We start indoors in Nov (1x/week) what's usually called Pitcher/Catcher time and then add a large Gym facility in Jan & Feb. We don't have them Mar, Apr, May & early Jun due to HS ball.
Any advice, must reads, further Q&A, general direction, etc is welcome. Like I said I'm just about to jump in head first and I'd like to make this jump as efficient as possible. Thanks.
Current info - 16U team moving from 14U last year. My latest focus (and thus this thread) came from asking a very successful HC to share his team stats with me so I could understand "What it takes to win at 16U". What I'm starting to realized is that we didn't even have what it takes to win at 14U and now I'm wondering what I can do to help the situation.
What I learned - In a nut shell, we have a very good offensive team (it's my strength and focus) and defensively we have continued to improved, but we do not have championship pitching, our team is way out of balance. This is my fault as a head coach and thus leader of my team, now it's the main thing left to work on.
Last year at 14U we scored 8.2 runs/game but gave up 6.5 runs/game over 33 games. Looks good on paper but we blew out some teams and struggled against good teams. In Bracket games we scored 3.6 runs/game and gave up 7.25 runs/game. Bottom line, we always give up 6-7 runs/game on average.
This year's team is going to be even stronger offensively, I'm confident of that, given the new girls we have and the ones we lost. I honestly expect numbers to improve although runs may not be as high because lost speed and gained power and our speed put a lot of pressure on the defenses we played.
Here's my current pitching situation:
We have 5 that are capable of pitching.
- (A, B & C) - 3 Pitched with us last year and we finished with a 6.02 ERA & 1.94 WHIP.
- D - 1 new pitcher I have watched pitch in HS and a bit in the Fall games we played.
- E - 1 that pitched for us previous summer (2015) but hasn't pitched in a year coming off ACL
KEY; C=Change speed (ability to effectively change speed), L=Location (ability to locate pitches), S=Speed (above average for age)
A - (C,L) - Younger 16U, smaller stature, gymnast, mentally strong (other position OF)
B - (C) - Younger 16U, smart, tough (other position 3B)
C - (S) - Younger 16U, High potential athlete, never formally trained (other position SS)
D - (S,L) - Older 16U, Very tall, Good athlete, also plays VB, BB, & Tennis (other position 1B, SS)
E - (C,L,S) - Older 16U, Coming off ACL not sure what to expect, took us to State Championship game in 2015
As far a coaches this year, there is some basic knowledge but overall we are green. 2 years ago we had a college pitcher coaching with us, last year we had someone filling in running pitchers through workouts from previous year's coach, and this year the dad of pitchers B & E is a coach that we planned to work with pitchers.
We start indoors in Nov (1x/week) what's usually called Pitcher/Catcher time and then add a large Gym facility in Jan & Feb. We don't have them Mar, Apr, May & early Jun due to HS ball.
Any advice, must reads, further Q&A, general direction, etc is welcome. Like I said I'm just about to jump in head first and I'd like to make this jump as efficient as possible. Thanks.