Injury risk

[sluggers]

IMHO, this is one more strategy cooked up by a coach that might help the team get a couple of more wins, but is detrimental to the girls. Teaching the girls skills they need has been put on the back burner.

How is this going to help the girls go the next level? how are they developing the mental and physical stamina to go 11 (yes 11) innings when they need to?

if the strategy was so great, you would see it used in the Olympics, pro-baseball, NCAA D1, etc.

It is just another gimmick. Good hitters don't time pitchers. They see the ball and hit the ball.

 

[SBFAMILY]

Thanks Bill. The main concern was the injury factor, and from my notes attending your clinics I didn't think this would be an issue.. Do we do this alot NO. Does the strategy work , Yes. Just to clarify how we do this, so I can address Bill's concern. Normally we go thru the lineup one time, before we switch. I do agree it sometimes takes a pitcher to adjust and get in a grove. . As Bill asked , I will clarrify It works mainly in high school when you face the same team and players and they know what pitches you have. If you have two good pitchers that have different styles, as a hitting coach I disagree with the above post. I work with a very good hitting coach that works with Olympic hitters and anything that changes the timing works. I have been to Bill's clinics and my dd has worked with him. Changing speeds is very important. The mental part of the game is always a battle between the pitcher and the hitter. We teach are kids to dance in the box to confuse the pitcher, so they don't know what pitch will work best. Bustos does this best.
None of my pitchers throw more than 2 games a day. This girl that we are talkiing about, is different, since she has a personnel trainer at this age. Plus in travel ball you may have to play 3 to 5 games in one day.

 

[Mark H]

IMHO, this is one more strategy cooked up by a coach that might help the team get a couple of more wins, but is detrimental to the girls. Teaching the girls skills they need has been put on the back burner.

How is this going to help the girls go the next level? how are they developing the mental and physical stamina to go 11 (yes 11) innings when they need to?

if the strategy was so great, you would see it used in the Olympics, pro-baseball, NCAA D1, etc. .

Which strategy are you addressing exactly?

It is just another gimmick. Good hitters don't time pitchers. They see the ball and hit the ball.

I would say the more times a hitter sees a pitcher the more it is to the hitter's advantage. I would say if timing a pitcher wasn't a factor people wouldn't throw change ups. But perhaps I'm misinterpreting your post.

 

[sluggers]

One purpose of softball is to get players ready to pitch at the upper levels. A coach should therefore be teaching them how to succeed at the next level. That means helping them develop a "tool chest" of skills. Some of the skills are mental and some are physical. If you are not helping a player fill up the tool chest, then you are wasting time. Given the short career of even the best female athletes, wasting time is a sin of the first magnitude.

So, how how rotating pitchers every inning do that? Where is the benefit to the pitchers? How are they improving both physically and mentally from being rotated every inning?

Physically, pitchers have to be able to got 11 or 15 innings in a game. How is doing this helping them develop the stamina? How is it helping them understand how umpires call the game? How does it help them learn how to read batters? How does it help them to learn that you have to pitch differently to batters after they have seen you once? How does it teach them to adjust?

E.g., a batter hits a home run. How do you pitch to the batter next time? Or, a batter strikes out on a high pitch. What does that tell the pitcher to do next time? This is the stuff pitchers learn from facing batters.

The trick in softball is getting the good hitters out. The .200 hitter can be struck out with a 50 mph fastball and a breaking pitch. So, you have to help pitchers learn how to strike out the good hitters--and this isn't going to do it.

No one does this at the upper level of softball. If it were such a great strategy, we would see at CWS and at the Olympics. So, this looks to me to be some gadget dreamed up to win a couple of games without regard to helping the kids.

As to timing:

Good hitters don't time pitches, so they aren't vulnerable to the change-up. They aren't particularly vulnerable to anything. The way to get out the good hitters is to change speeds (not necessarily throw a change-up), throw on the edges of the strike zone, and mix up the pitches.

You can get a good hitter to swing at a change-up maybe once a game, if you are lucky.

 

[SBFAMILY]

Actually the idea came from a coach in ML baseball. Where a coach will switch pitchers per batter late in a game. In terms of the Olympics. I'm not sure if you know how the game is called. Each hitter is filmed and reviewed by the coaching staff to look for all and any weakness. You would be shocked to know the amount of film that coaches use to decide how to pitch to a given player. It is not the pitcher reading the batter , it is film study. That is why Bustos moves in the box, so they have no idea what to call.

 

[Mark H]

One purpose of softball is to get players ready to pitch at the upper levels. A coach should therefore be teaching them how to succeed at the next level. That means helping them develop a "tool chest" of skills. Some of the skills are mental and some are physical. If you are not helping a player fill up the tool chest, then you are wasting time. Given the short career of even the best female athletes, wasting time is a sin of the first magnitude.

So, how how rotating pitchers every inning do that? Where is the benefit to the pitchers? How are they improving both physically and mentally from being rotated every inning?

Physically, pitchers have to be able to got 11 or 15 innings in a game. How is doing this helping them develop the stamina? How is it helping them understand how umpires call the game? How does it help them learn how to read batters? How does it help them to learn that you have to pitch differently to batters after they have seen you once? How does it teach them to adjust?

E.g., a batter hits a home run. How do you pitch to the batter next time? Or, a batter strikes out on a high pitch. What does that tell the pitcher to do next time? This is the stuff pitchers learn from facing batters.

The trick in softball is getting the good hitters out. The .200 hitter can be struck out with a 50 mph fastball and a breaking pitch. So, you have to help pitchers learn how to strike out the good hitters--and this isn't going to do it.

No one does this at the upper level of softball. If it were such a great strategy, we would see at CWS and at the Olympics. So, this looks to me to be some gadget dreamed up to win a couple of games without regard to helping the kids..

I take your point about pitcher development but you have to balance that against the best interests of the team. If this helps the team win you have to consider the best interests of the team as well.

As to timing:

Good hitters don't time pitches, so they aren't vulnerable to the change-up. They aren't particularly vulnerable to anything. .

Every hitter has a hole.

The way to get out the good hitters is to change speeds (not necessarily throw a change-up), .

Why change speeds if hitters don't time pitchers?

throw on the edges of the strike zone, and mix up the pitches.

You can get a good hitter to swing at a change-up maybe once a game, if you are lucky.

You can get good hitters to swing at change ups all day long if you can throw them for strikes.

Hitters most certainly, IMO, time pitchers. If they get the pitch they were expecting they should crush it. The key is, to be able to have a quick enough swing (defined as four to five frames, on a standard 30fps video, from first movement of the bathead into the swing plane till contact) that you can watch more of the pitch flight, gathering more information about speed, spin and location, and not have to commit early. This may be the timing you are talking about and certainly good hitters don't have to time the pitcher to the extent they have to start swinging before they have adequate information. The seven frame standard youth bat drag swinger has to start their swing so early they are making decisions without adequate pitch information. A good hitter with a quick swing does time the pitcher to the extent they time their pre swing movements/dancing with the pitcher such that if they get something close to the speed they expect, they have more advantage. If they get something faster or slower, they can adjust and put a reasonable swing on the ball. It just won't usually be the result they might have gotten with a pitch they anticipated though that isn't always the case as demonstrated by Manny's dinger on the slow 12-6 hook. Still, that was obviously a huge adjustment. An adjustment he would not have had to make if he had been anticipating the slow curve and timed it. I suspect our differences are merely semantic.

 

[BusterT]

In my 9 short years of being involved with fastpitch softball, I have noticed something that rarely comes up when men are discussing the women's game. That difference is the general difference in mental approach and attitude towards the game. Being male, I cannot tell you exactly what those differences are. But I can tell you that the female players I have talked with over those years (NOT Olympic level or pro players, but up to and including DI college) have a different perspective and strategy approach. Before I go into detail why (or how) I've noticed this, I'd like to hear if anyone else can HONESTLY say they have noticed this.

I know this seems off-topic of the original post, but I thought it would make an interesting side track on strategy perception - male vs. female. Can-O-worms??