strikeouts or putting the ball in play--the mental appraoch

[batsics1]

CT,
Osterman is a rare talent. She also changed her pitching style in her teens. Why? I don’t know, but I can guess it was to grow as a pitcher. It suggests she has a rare mentality to go along with her physical ability – specifically the desire and dedication to improve. I believe that without her mentality she may have been a very good ground ball pitcher that we never heard about even with her physical gifts.

If I were to tell a pitcher she needs to get more K's, and she started to overthrow, her movement pitches start to flatten out, and she starts getting lit up with line drives, it would be a disservice.

OTOH, if I tell the same pitcher that she has a great drop, but she tends to throw it at the same speed and change her release point to move it in and out of the zone. I suggest that she works at maintaining the same release point and changing speeds to get the ball to move where she wants and that she works on her change up so it starts slightly higher than her drop and moves to a third location. Assuming she works hard to master these skills, what would the likely outcome be?

It may be a tweak to the sequence. She may have a tendency to get ahead in the count and then work too far off the plate outside trying to get the batter to fish. What she may need to work on is jamming the batter more often.

Most players focus on getting better at what they do, rather than figuring out what they need to do to get better. This is often because what is needed to get better can be tedious, uncomfortable, frustrating, and can take time to master. It can also lead to a dip in performance. From time to time every player needs to be willing to take a risk to improve.

A kid should never be made to feel inadequate if she is not getting what you think is the right number of K's per game and I believe it is unreasonable to expect every pitcher to reach a 12 K’s a game average. But, that doesn’t preclude challenging your pitchers. I believe a pitcher should always be striving for more strike outs for any number of reasons not least of which is doing so will improve the odds that any ball put in play will produce an out.

 

[Hillhouse]

I was told, so take that for what it's worth, that Cat's "style" changed when she started to see Bobby Smith for lessons. Bobby was an open level pitcher in his day and a pretty successful one too. She said in an interview (probably available on Youtube) that her pitching changed a lot when she went to see him as adjustments were required to do things. And this goes back to what I always say, You cannot put a good edge on bad steel. Meaning, if the mechanics are wrong then true movement is NOT possible. This is why so many people teach incredible tilts, twists, steps and multiple releases for various pitches. It's because their mechanics do not allow for proper spin, let alone movement. So the only way they can make the ball 'move' or even seem to move is to contort their bodies. I'm sorry.. stepping left to throw right is not a breaking pitch. Stepping right to throw left is not a curve. leaning and throwing high is not a rise. etc.

No Hal, I'm not saying FPCoach is Ty. Ha ha. I believe your ASA commissioner has some serious explaining to do if D'Arcy was playing in A tournaments while on the US National team and winning Major titles with Guanellas!!!!

Bill

 

[Mark H]

She already had great movement. The decision was to change from stepping style to leap and drag. Seems to have worked out ok.

 

[halskinner]

At that time there was a 'Rating committee' for our area, made up of all the coaches from most of the A level teams. They had the authority to allow a pitcher to drop down and play in a different classification. I had to deal wiuth that political mess myself in 1980 or 1981. They could not bump me up to Open div as I had never thrown a pitch in Open competition. So, they came up with a new classification and I was the only one in it for the first half of the season. It was EXTREMELY political. I had to go appeal their decision and I won the first time. The met once a month and they bumped me back up the 2nd time. I hung my glove up at that point.

Now, I also recall we played in some tournies that were combined A and A-open. Not enough teams around to field single classification tourney so they combined them. I know we did not play the team Chuck was pitching for in the tournament. Only got to see him pitch one inning and then we had to go warm up for our game.

There were several open rated pitchers allowed to drop down and compete. This was also the time that there were more teams than there were pitchers. Softball was dying in our area as there was no feeder crop of boys coming up playing the sport. The politics going on did not help matters at all. However, letting some of them drop down surely helped stave of the death of the sport at least for a few years.

Chuck might have been playing on the A-open side of the tournament/s, I am not certain at this point.

He might have been the shortest adult male pitcher I ever saw but man could he bring it!

 

[ctfastpitch]

CT,
Osterman is a rare talent. She also changed her pitching style in her teens. Why? I don’t know, but I can guess it was to grow as a pitcher. It suggests she has a rare mentality to go along with her physical ability – specifically the desire and dedication to improve. I believe that without her mentality she may have been a very good ground ball pitcher that we never heard about even with her physical gifts.

If I were to tell a pitcher she needs to get more K's, and she started to overthrow, her movement pitches start to flatten out, and she starts getting lit up with line drives, it would be a disservice.

OTOH, if I tell the same pitcher that she has a great drop, but she tends to throw it at the same speed and change her release point to move it in and out of the zone. I suggest that she works at maintaining the same release point and changing speeds to get the ball to move where she wants and that she works on her change up so it starts slightly higher than her drop and moves to a third location. Assuming she works hard to master these skills, what would the likely outcome be?

It may be a tweak to the sequence. She may have a tendency to get ahead in the count and then work too far off the plate outside trying to get the batter to fish. What she may need to work on is jamming the batter more often.

Most players focus on getting better at what they do, rather than figuring out what they need to do to get better. This is often because what is needed to get better can be tedious, uncomfortable, frustrating, and can take time to master. It can also lead to a dip in performance. From time to time every player needs to be willing to take a risk to improve.

A kid should never be made to feel inadequate if she is not getting what you think is the right number of K's per game and I believe it is unreasonable to expect every pitcher to reach a 12 K’s a game average. But, that doesn’t preclude challenging your pitchers. I believe a pitcher should always be striving for more strike outs for any number of reasons not least of which is doing so will improve the odds that any ball put in play will produce an out.

Hey B-1...I think we ended up taking two different trains to get to the same station! I agree with everything you said in this post! I think every pitcher should be working hard to get better...more mastery of her pitches..increased speed, more movement, varying speeds, etc as well as pitch selection & sequencing. All of these improve her edge over the batter, and will result in more strikeouts, which we all agree is a good thing!!! My nuance would be that I would not want a pitcher to go out on the field with an unrealistic standard that says she needs to strike out every batter to be successful. Now, having said that, IF she develops into a dominating S/O pitcher, then that standard becomes more realistic. I just don't think it is a blanket approach that applies to all pitchers.

 

[Hillhouse]

She already had great movement. The decision was to change from stepping style to leap and drag. Seems to have worked out ok.

That's not what she says in the interview Mark. She says she didn't learn how to move the ball until she went with Bobby Smith. My experience tells me that the movement she is referring to would require some mechanical changes and tweaks.

I'm still baffled there is a such thing in 2009 as a "stepping style".

Bill

 

[Mark H]

Well I certainly wouldn't tell Cat she was wrong about herself but my recollection is she already had a good drop and no one ever said Timmons couldn't teach spin. My understanding was she went to the leap and drag to get a better rise. The winter she changed, my daughter made the same change with a different instructor. Gary and I discussed the progress a couple of times that winter with me having no idea how high a level pitcher we were talking about. Funny at my expense in retrospect.

As to why there is still stepping style, well around here, Timmons has probably coached more pitchers than everyone else combined. As to why he teaches it, I leave that question to him. If I was pressed to defend it, I'd say he produces kids with control and spin very quickly. When I met Bobby, he was working for Timmons teaching the same stuff though I'm sure the stepping style wasn't his call. Bobby has a reputation for finishing pitchers. A good reputation I should say. When Timmons got Bobby to show his stuff, I was the green dad who squatted down and got a screwball bounced off my knee back in the day.

 

[DonnieS]

Well I certainly wouldn't tell Cat she was wrong about herself but my recollection is she already had a good drop and no one ever said Timmons couldn't teach spin. My understanding was she went to the leap and drag to get a better rise. The winter she changed, my daughter made the same change with a different instructor. Gary and I discussed the progress a couple of times that winter with me having no idea how high a level pitcher we were talking about. Funny at my expense in retrospect.

As to why there is still stepping style, well around here, Timmons has probably coached more pitchers than everyone else combined. As to why he teaches it, I leave that question to him. If I was pressed to defend it, I'd say he produces kids with control and spin very quickly. When I met Bobby, he was working for Timmons teaching the same stuff though I'm sure the stepping style wasn't his call. Bobby has a reputation for finishing pitchers. A good reputation I should say. When Timmons got Bobby to show his stuff, I was the green dad who squatted down and got a screwball bounced off my knee back in the day.

Mark, I have never been HBP as much as I have been in the last 2 months. I started showing up with steel toe tennis shoes and shin pads - in the last 5 weeks I have had 2 toes severely broken, and I took one in the mouth last night. Bobby 'ordered' me to buy a mask at the last practice and I have - its supposed to be here Monday (next) - a friend who helped me last night, lent me one until then. He told me about Gary having a near miss afterwhich he used a mask.

 

[CoachFP]

Well I certainly wouldn't tell Cat she was wrong about herself but my recollection is she already had a good drop and no one ever said Timmons couldn't teach spin. My understanding was she went to the leap and drag to get a better rise. The winter she changed, my daughter made the same change with a different instructor. Gary and I discussed the progress a couple of times that winter with me having no idea how high a level pitcher we were talking about. Funny at my expense in retrospect.

As to why there is still stepping style, well around here, Timmons has probably coached more pitchers than everyone else combined. As to why he teaches it, I leave that question to him. If I was pressed to defend it, I'd say he produces kids with control and spin very quickly. When I met Bobby, he was working for Timmons teaching the same stuff though I'm sure the stepping style wasn't his call. Bobby has a reputation for finishing pitchers. A good reputation I should say. When Timmons got Bobby to show his stuff, I was the green dad who squatted down and got a screwball bounced off my knee back in the day.

Mark, this is a serious question. How does one teach "spin"?

 

[Mark H]

Well how would be an individual thing. Not sure I understand the question. Or maybe I haven't communicated clearly. When I say teach spin, I'm talking about controlling the spin axis so the drop spins down, the rise spins up and so on rather than all the spins looking the same while dad says DD has six pitches. While Timmons may teach an extreme stepping style rather than what you see most top pitchers using, he can teach a kid to control her spin and produce movement and he WILL NOT bs you about how good or how bad your spin axis is. No question about that. Now the good rise ballers I've seen him produce were mostly slender flexible types. Mostly but not all. I say that because to me his style requires more flexibility to get back spin.