Pitching at Practice

[coach james]

Practice like you play... never throw to ANYONE that your not planning on striking out!
Getting hit and hitting others are an unfortunate part of the game, but its reality. Batters don't check their swings in order to protect the fielders! Stop thinking about hitting the batters and start focusing on throwing hard! NOBODY benefits by having a timid pitcher throwing at bp.

 

[coachtucc]

Her experience is very common. So common, that I never have a pitcher throw to her own team. Let the coaches throw batting practice. She needs pitching practice.

Hi Amy..I do not disagree with you but just a question. What if the coaches cant pitch? Now I can pitch a bit if I only go from the 12:00 position but not like my girls can. Any advice?

 

[Amy in AZ.]

Yes. Throw overhand. But a screen is a requirement. Pitching to a batterr w/o one is how I got hit in the face mask. They are made for softball. One other thing you can do is use tennis balls. They are safer and easier to toss. A nice TB team that I watch has a young dad behind a net, with a bucket of balls. He is at 30 feet. He can throw hard enough using the sling shot ( as you describe) to be very effective.

A big problem with having the girl pitch, which hasn't been mentioned is the number of pitches thrown. Limit it to 3 each batter and I am ok. But some girls have to throw indefinitely and then, don't get to bat.

 

[About Them]

With our 12U team, we go live pitching hitting (with a screen). My objective is for the pitchers to strike the batters out or force poor hits. I know my head coach wants pitches down the middle, but somehow my pitchers just can't seem to do something that I don't allow. Batters are going to get hit, but as batters they need to know how to turn.

 

[starsnuffer]

She needs to know that she's not helping her team by easing up on them, she's hurting them.

-W

 

[KCM]

My daughter is a pitcher for her team. We practice live pitching with batter in the box. Practice like we play.

We have another relief pitcher and one rising pitcher that should play next year. So at practice my daughter and her defense gets three outs and we switch. During the switch she will get to hit or play her other position (2nd base) a few batters.

Of course this drill is not every day at every practice. We usually have this towards the end of the week and focus on setting up past game situations to show the girls how to limit errors.

 

[Greenmonsters]

I would say about 10 on the one next door and about 7 on the college further away.*

Softball has 3. Still, both can pitch practice. The old fart softball coaches certainly can't do it and they should put more softball pitchers on the roster. If you have an assistant who pitched herself, more power to you. But I would say no college near me has one of those.

*plus a few on the practice squad (like Arizona State softball) and a few others who pitched in the past but are now fielders.

Sounds typical, but it means that BB has 2-3 times as many pitchers as SB. I can't see 3 FP pitchers being able to handle that kind of daily BP pitch count on top of their game load without breaking down - there's just no recovery time. This is where the grad assts should come into play IMO.

 

[Robert Thiebeau]

I'm backwards on this i guess (12u): My pitchers always pitch with someone in the box - always. And in most cases its the other pitcher doing 20 pitches and then switch.. both pitchers have their own catcher who is always catching during practice/game.

Wednesday(team practice) is regular pitcher/catcher for 40mins, then they do 'coach pitch; or scrimmage. Thursday is just pitcher practice with "Larry: the ball bucket with a helmet on top. (bandaged up with duct tape all over).