Strikes or Pitches

[dadof3girls]

Got a 8u TB DD that pitches 9-10 rec ball as the #1 pitcher. My question is about long term coaching philosophy. Her and the catcher call the pitches. She will shake off pitches she does not want to throw. She has a good little fast ball a spotty change up and a peel drop (that does not really drop more like an off speed fast ball). She likes to throw her change up but if it is not working it gets her in trouble with the count (she likes to throw it 2 & 2).

Should i encourage her to keep throwing what she wants or have her just throw fast balls?

 

[quincy]

IDK, you should be able to find a middle ground here.

Let her throw non fastballs under certain conditions until you are both comfortable with them. If she can throw her FB for a strike going down 1-0 is not the worst thing is the world, especially when facing the bottom of the order.

 

[SoCalSoftballdad]

Got a 8u TB DD that pitches 9-10 rec ball as the #1 pitcher. My question is about long term coaching philosophy. Her and the catcher call the pitches. She will shake off pitches she does not want to throw. She has a good little fast ball a spotty change up and a peel drop (that does not really drop more like an off speed fast ball). She likes to throw her change up but if it is not working it gets her in trouble with the count (she likes to throw it 2 & 2).

Should i encourage her to keep throwing what she wants or have her just throw fast balls?

I guess it depends on if your 10U rec league allows dropped third strikes like our local rec leagues do (sounds like it doesn't?). If DTS is not an issue, than by all means have her throw the c/u on any count. Experiment with what is effective and what isn't. I like that you are teaching the pitching/catching battery how to call the game. Are they going to make mistakes at this age, absolutley, but that is the only way they are going to learn and get better.

Make sure she learns how to locate her fastball to all four corners to set-up the c/u. A rule of thumb is that her strikeout to walk ratio should be at least 3 to 1 to be an effective pitcher for this age group.

 

[JAD]

My goal is for my DD to become like "Greg Maddox", where she can throw any pitch on any count. 90% of pitchers will throw a 3-2 fastball, so a pitcher who can throw a change, screw, curve, drop, rise will have a HUGE advantage if they can sell it. Therefore, I would encourage your DD to become confident in all of her pitches so she can also become like "Greg Maddox"!

 

[Gbucz]

Folks, she is 8yo in rec league! Until 12U most girls in the batters box are scared of any heat. Other than changes the batters will not recognize any junk and swing at anything near the plate. Most are hoping you walk them. I have laughed at so many teams that boasted girls throwing a million 'different' pitches yet walking tons of batters. My girls would just stand there and wait for the 4th ball and then we would challenge them with base stealing.

Most good movement doesn't kick in until she can throw 42mph or more at which time the ball moves may start about 35' from her hand. Since 10U is @ 35' distance and she moves forward 2'-3' the catcher would be the only person to notice any movement - not who you want to fake out.

I would have her work hard on the corners with heat and changeups so she can hit any spot with either pitch 95% of the time. The faster she throws the more batters will be afraid ergo, more k's she will have. For any kid that can hit the heat, use a change as a good way to keep them off balance (especially on 1st and second pitches - occasionally back2back). I would train the change with anything BUT the back hand. Make the palm, circle, knuckle, etc. look like a fastball and she will tear up the batters. The back hand is such a telegraphing pitch that 12U kids an pick up on it some will pound it. Any other style will make her deadly.

As she comes up to 12U travel her extremely well developed fastball and changeup will give her a solid base to work from then start introducing junk (peel drop first).

 

[NVfishing]

Why do you say movement starts at 42MPH? Occasionally my daughter gets movement on some of her pitches and she's U8. I don't think she's at 42mph yet?

 

[Carly]

Why do you say movement starts at 42MPH? Occasionally my daughter gets movement on some of her pitches and she's U8. I don't think she's at 42mph yet?

A ball slower than 42mph can often look like it's moving simply because it doesn't have the velocity to make it from the pitcher's hand to the catcher's glove in a perfect straight line. You can get a lot of what looks like different kinds of drop/drop-curve movement just because the ball is... well, slow. And it's dying before it reaches the plate. This is different from true movement pitch movement and it's not always a great idea to get a young pitcher thinking she's throwing good movement when she really doesn't have true spin on the ball.

Getting back to the original post...

Personally, I never start teaching movement pitches to kids that young for a number of reasons. I agree with pretty much all of what Gbucz said. I will add that no matter how good a kid is, at that age there is ALWAYS way too much room for fastball improvement to be worth taking time away from that to focus on other things.

Unless you've got a really enormous kid, 95% of the time her hand will be too small to perform movement pitch spins properly. No matter how good she is, usually it's really physically impossible to throw proper movement pitches until a certain stage of physical development. I also don't like focusing too much on alternate spins until I know a kid is capable of throwing a solid fastball with a 12" ball. If she can't, she won't be able to throw spins with that ball either.

As for the pitcher-catcher relationship and calling pitches, I wouldn't focus on anything beyond location based on the previous pitch and where the batter is standing. Teaching a catcher that young to call pitches is just reinforcing mis-information. I don't know what 8u and 10u leagues look like in other parts of the country, but all I've seen in the Northeast indicates that the batters aren't just "scared of any heat," they have NO clue about the differences between pitches, so the results you're seeing are probably not the result of pitch choice most of the time (of course there are exceptions). I bet you'd see no difference if you switched to just locating the fastball and maybe throwing in an occasional change-up... but even that isn't ideal until the fastball is truly fast enough for there to be a real drop off in velocity between the fb and change.