Monthly Archives: January 2024
The #1 Measure of the Quality of a Fastpitch Pitcher
Ask a group of fastpitch softball coaches or fanatics what the best way is to measure the quality of a pitcher and you’re going to get a variety of answers. Most of which come down to the three S’s – speed, spin, spot.
The most popular, in most cases, is likely to be speed. There’s no doubt about it that speed is important (it is called FASTpitch, after all). The higher the speed, especially at the younger or less experienced levels, the harder it will be (generally) for hitters to put a bat on the ball.
Speed is also easy to measure. You set up your radar gun, turn it on, and the highest number wins. Often you can also eyeball it, particularly if there is more than a couple of miles per hour difference between pitchers.
Others will tell you that speed is less important than spin. Being able to make the ball break – not just angle or bend toward a specific location but actually change direction as the pitch comes in – can really give hitters fits.
They think the ball will be in one location and orient their swings accordingly only to realize the ball is somewhere else by the time it reaches the bat. That phenomenon can either induce a poor hit or a swing and miss, depending on the pitch and the amount of break it has.
Finally, there will be those who insist that pitchers hitting their spots, i.e., throwing the ball to the location that is called within a couple of inches of that location, is really the be-all and end-all measure of a fastpitch pitcher. These are usually coaches who 1) believe in the infallibility of their pitch calling and/or 2) are looking for a reason not to pitch a particular pitcher who is otherwise doing just fine.
In my opinion, though, none of those three S’s are the most important measure of the quality of a pitcher. So what is?
It’s simple: the ability to get hitters out. Preferably with as few pitches as possible each inning.
Think about it. What does it take for your team to come off defense and get the opportunity to put runs on the board so you can win?
You need to get three outs, hopefully in a row but definitely at some point.
You’re not awarded any outs for your pitcher hitting a particular speed with her pitches, or getting a certain number of revolutions per minute/second on her breaking pitches, or nailing her locations 8 out of 10 times. The only thing you’re given an out for is the hitter either swinging and missing up to three times or hitting the ball in a way that your fielders can get her out.
(I was going to say easily out, but while that is preferred even a difficult out is an out. But it sure is safer when they’re easier.)
To me, a perfect inning for a pitcher is when she induces three shallow pop-ups to the first baseman. Easy to field, and if the first baseman fails to catch the ball in spite of that she can still pick up the ball and step on first rather than having to make a throw.
Not to mention a pitcher who can get hitters out with just a few pitches is going to keep her pitch count low, enabling her to throw more pitches throughout the weekend.
After all, the minimum for striking out the side is nine pitches. If your pitcher can get the side out in seven or eight pitches, that difference is going to add up over time. Particularly because even the best strikeout pitchers rarely require only nine pitches inning after inning.
Outs are the currency of our game. You only get so many – 21 in a non-timed game, maybe 12 or 15 in a typical timed game – so a pitcher who can make them happen efficiently is going to be more valuable at game time than one who merely looks good on paper.
So how does a pitcher become that low-count, efficient pitcher? Really, it’s through a combination of the three S’s.
Sure, she needs some measure of speed with which to challenge hitters. But she doesn’t have to be overpowering.
One of the most effective pitchers I ever coached, a young lady whose pitch counts were typically in the 8 to 12 per inning range, never threw above 54 on my Pocket Radar. But man could she throw to a hitter’s weakness and make the ball move as well as change speeds while making every pitch look like it would be the same.
In other words, she could also spin and spot the ball. All three together were a deadly combination for her, even against quality hitters.
She wasn’t the flashiest pitcher you’ve ever seen, and she probably wouldn’t be the one most coaches would choose first if they were watching several pitchers throw in a line. But when the game or the championship was on the line, she was usually the one her team wanted in the circle.
Because she knew how to get hitters out, plain and simple.
There’s no doubt that overpowering speed is impressive, and it can often make up for deficiencies in other areas. Just ask all those bullet spin “riseball” pitchers.
But if you want to win more games, don’t make speed, or spin, or spot alone your only deciding factor.
Look for the pitcher who knows how to get hitters out, doesn’t matter how. She’ll make you look like a smarter coach.
Why Good Circle Visits Are So Critical to Pitchers’ (and Team) Success
One of the toughest decisions a coach has to make during a game is when to take a pitcher out. That decision is based on a lot of factors.
For example, it’s easier to leave a pitcher in a game to see if she can work her way out of trouble if the game doesn’t mean that much. On the other hand, if you’re in a big tournament, the pitcher is your #1 (and thus perceived to be your best chance at winning) and a loss means elimination, it can be very tempting to stick with her even if you know in your heart of hearts she’s done.
If you do decide the current pitcher needs to be replaced, however, one thing that shouldn’t be a difficult decision is deciding how to take her out. That should be handled by a circle visit, either by the head coach or the team’s designated pitching coach.
(ASIDE: If the pitcher is the head coach’s daughter, the visit should probably be handled by literally anyone else. That’s the voice of experience talking, folks.)
The reason I bring this up is I recently heard a story about a team where, when they want to change pitchers, there is no circle visit. The coach just sends the new pitcher out from the bench to tell the current one it’s time to take a seat.
That’s just wrong for so many reasons, not the least of which is the mental game wellbeing of the pitcher – a factor which will no doubt be of importance down the road. It’s also just rude.
A pitcher would have to be pretty unaware of her surroundings and what’s going on in the game to not realize she is struggling. I mean, if she’s walked the bases loaded in 12 pitches she probably has a pretty good clue that she’s not exactly on top of her game.
A circle visit gives the coach an opportunity to say, “Doesn’t look like today is your day,” or something to that effect.
If the pitcher was doing well up to that point the coach can say words to the effect of, “Looks like you’re having some trouble with the umpire. Let’s give her a different look and see if we can’t get out of this jam.” If she wasn’t, the coach can say something such as, “Rough one today. I think we need to change things up right now, but if you keep working there will be other opportunities.”
I’ve talked to many current and former players, and nearly all agree that girls are far more likely to think the worst of themselves and believe it when someone tells them they’re not very good. Even if they know it’s not true.
A few kind words when making a pitching change can help mitigate some of that thinking and bolster the pitcher’s base confidence level. And as we all know, confidence is a critical element to have when you’re playing the position that is most under the spotlight, and has so much impact on the team’s success.
But circle visits aren’t just for pitching changes. Getting out in front of problems, especially if they’re happening to your #1, can help you avoid having to make that tough decision later.
Sometimes when a pitcher starts to struggle she just needs a little positive reinforcement from the coach. Sometimes she needs the visit just to slow the game down and give her a chance to regain her composure, or her mojo. Sometimes she just needs to get out of her own head for a bit.
One time when one of pitchers was struggling I called time, walked to the circle, and said, “A horse walks into a bar and the bartender says, ‘Hey, why the long face?'” I then turned around and went back to the bench.
She was a bit stunned at first, I think, but then she realized my Dad joke was just a way of telling her A) don’t take all this too seriously, and B) you’re doing fine, just relax. It worked too – she pitched herself out of the inning with no more trouble.
A circle visit isn’t really a time to offer pitching instruction, although I was known to draw a power line or two in the dirt in my coaching days when I thought it would help. It’s a time to help pitchers deal with the mental side, whether it’s calming down so they can continue or softening the blow of taking them out so they know the situation is temporary, not permanent – and that coming out of a game mid-inning doesn’t make them a bad human being or a terrible pitcher. Everyone gets pulled sooner or later.
Now, I know at this point some of you keyboard warriors are thinking this point of view is soft, and that female pitchers need to not be such snowflakes. They need to toughen up Buttercup and just deal with it.
So for those who think this way let me ask you this: when was the last time you saw a Major League Baseball pitcher get taken out of a game without a coach coming out to the mound to do it? You can count those times on the fingers of one ear.
So if an MLB pitcher who is a fully grown adult and is getting paid millions, or tens of millions, of dollars per year to throw a ball needs a coach to come out and tell them personally that they’re done for the day, why shouldn’t a young or adolescent girl who is just playing for the love of the game be offered the same courtesy? Or a college pitcher for that matter.
If you’re a coach who is managing pitchers in-game, be smart about it. Get off your behind and talk with your pitchers when they need it – whether it’s to calm them down or make a change.
They may not like seeing you come out of the dugout but that feeling will be temporary. Because they will appreciate you showing you care about them as a person as well as a pitcher.
Champions Take Their Warm-ups Seriously
You see it before a game or practice everywhere there’s a ballfield.
Teams positioned in two opposing lines, randomly throwing balls in the general direction of the other line. And then chasing said balls behind them.
Hitters casually knocking balls off tees into the bottom of nets – or over the top. Pitchers sleepwalking through a reps of a K drill or slowly strolling through a walk-through instead of going full speed.
Not just youngling rec teams either. The same behavior can be seen with high school teams, travel ball teams, even college teams.
It’s players sleepwalking through warmups as if they are something to be (barely) tolerated before the “real thing” begins.
That’s unfortunate on many levels, but mostly for what it says about those players’ dedication and desire to play like champions.
You see, champions realize that we are a product of our habits. They also realize the importance of paying attention to details.
Warm-up drills should be about more than just getting your body moving and your muscles loose. They should also be preparing you to play or practice at your highest level.
So if you’re just going through the motions, waiting for practice or the game to start, you’re missing a real opportunity to get better.
Take that hitter who is basically just knocking balls off the tee before a game. Hopefully she knows what she needs to do to hit to her full potential, and what she needs to work on to get there.
So if she’s just taking any old swing to satisfy the requirement of working at that station she could actually be making herself worse instead of better because she’s building habits (such as arm swinging, dropping her hands, or pulling her front side out) that may let her get the ball off the tee but won’t translate into powerful hits in the game.
Or take the pitcher who is sleepwalking through her K drills instead of using that time to focus on whether her arm slot is correct, she is leading her elbow through the back half of the circle, and she is allowing her forearm to whip and pronate into release. She shouldn’t be surprised if her speed is down, her accuracy is off, and her movement pitches aren’t behaving as they should when she goes into a full pitch.
Even the throwing drills that often come right after stretching require more than a half-hearted effort. Consider this: as we have discussed before, 80% of all errors are throwing errors.
Which means if your team can throw better, you can eliminate the source of 8 out of 10 errors. Cutting your errors down from 10 to 2 ought to help you win a few more ballgames, wouldn’t you think? That’s just math.
Yet how many times have you seen initial throwing warmups look more like two firing squads with the worst aim ever lined up opposite of each other?
That would be a great time to be working on throwing mechanics instead of just sharing gossip. Not that there’s anything wrong with talking while you throw. But you have to be able to keep yourself focused on your movements while you chat.
Even stretching needs to be taken seriously if it’s going to help players get ready to play and avoid injury. How many times have you seen players who are supposed to be stretching their hamstrings by kicking their legs straight out and up as high as they can go take three or four steps, raise their legs about hip-high, take another three or four steps, then do the same with the other leg.
Every step should result in a leg raise, not every fourth step. And if young softball players can’t raise their feet any higher than their hips they have some major work to do on their overall conditioning.
Because that’s just pathetic. Maybe less screen time and more time spent moving their bodies would give them more flexibility than a typical 50 year old.
The bottom line is many players seem to think warm-ups are something you do BEFORE you practice or play. But that’s wrong.
Warm-ups are actually a very important part of preparing players to play at the highest level and should be treated as such. If you don’t believe it, just watch any champion warm up.
6 Ways to Take Advantage of the New Year
The holidays are over and the calendar has flipped back to January. I would say people are stressing over writing the wrong dates on their checks but who writes checks anymore?
Except the little old lady in front of you in line at the grocery store when you just want to buy a loaf of bread or a half gallon of milk and get on your way?
While in reality New Year’s Day is just an arbitrary date (as evidenced by the many different calendars, each with their own first day of the year), the idea of a new year does provide an extra incentive to think about doing things a little differently going forward.
So with that in mind, here are a few ideas of how you can shake things up a bit and make this your best softball year ever.
1. Get New Batting Gloves
I actually see this one a lot. Hitters go to put on their batting gloves and half their fingers are sticking out, or the palm looks like a surface map of the moon. Or the stench is so bad it hits from 15 feet away.
Batting gloves aren’t that expensive, at least relative to most equipment in fastpitch softball, yet they can save you from a lot of blisters and other issues during long practice sessions. Sure, your daughter should have asked for them for the holidays but she didn’t, because the only time anyone thinks about batting gloves is when they go to put them on.
Don’t be cheap. Pony up a few bucks and replace them. If your daughter is superstitious, tell her she can keep the old gloves in her bag, or her back pocket. Preferably in a sealable plastic bag.
2. Clean Out Bat and “Go” Bags
Over the course of a season, bat bags quickly become a dumping ground for old water and sports drink bottles, half-eaten fruit rollups, used bandages, team handouts, the occasional extra shirt or shorts, miscellaneous plastic wrappers and other detritus of the sport. Not to mention field dirt and those little rubber pieces from turf fields.
With games at a minimum right now, this is a good time to completely empty out the ol’ bat bag, throw or put away everything that doesn’t need to or shouldn’t be in there, and give the inside of the bag a thorough scrubbing to boot. Maybe at a car wash.
The same goes for parents’ gameday “go” bags and coolers. There’s a pretty good chance you have a few science experiments running in there at the moment.
Clean them out before the season starts to crank back up in earnest. Not only will it be healthier (and smell better). It might even make everything a whole lot lighter.
3. Do Some Research about Doing Research
There is a metric crap ton of information about how to pitch, hit, throw, run the bases, warm up, and perform a variety of other fastpitch softball-related skills on the Internet and in social media. Some of it is great, but quite frankly a lot of it is useless at best and garbage at worst.
How do you tell the difference?
Well, rather than just jumping on to the first thing you come across in a search (or while scrolling), do some research about who is putting out the information, such as:
- What is their background?
- How long have they been teaching?
- Do they seem open to new information or are they stuck in their ways?
- How do their students do overall? Not just their one or two best students but across the spectrum?
- Does what you’re reading/watching make sense to you? (You’d be surprised how many videos, especially on apps such as Instagram, actually seem counter-productive when you think about them, even if you don’t have any expertise.)
- Does what the source is espousing match up to what you see the best players in the world doing?
Taking the time to check the source and evaluate what he/she is saying can save you from taking a long, frustrating trip down the road to nowhere.
4. Challenge Your Current Beliefs
It’s very easy to fall into a rut, or assume that you already know everything (or at least enough) about a topic. Taking that attitude can prevent you from discovering a whole other world of knowledge that can make you even better.
Every now and then it’s important to look at information that challenges what you already believe. Especially when it comes to mechanics and general approaches to the game.
You may end up right back where you started, Which is ok – it’s confirmation you’re already on the right track.
But you may also discover techniques or approaches you’ve taken for granted, or that you learned when you were a player, are not quite as beneficial as you thought they were. You can then decide whether to continue blindly following what you’ve always done or make a change that will help you going forward.
Either way, you’ll have made an informed choice.
5. If You’re Taking Lessons, Attend a Non-Affiliated Clinic or Camp
Taking private lessons is a wonderful thing. Obviously I highly recommend them as the best way to make progress toward improvement.
But after a while even the best-designed lessons can get a little dull. They also usually have a limited perspective, even if you’re in a group lesson with 2-4 other players.
Going to a clinic or camp with a different instructor(s) can help in a few ways. Not the least of which is a different instructor may see something your current instructor doesn’t because of familiarity. After a while, we all tend to see what we’re used to seeing.
It also gives you a chance to see how you compare to others. That’s especially important for those who are really driven to be the best.
Sometimes in the drive to get to the next achievement we forget how far we’ve already come. A large group setting can show that while you’re still working on things, you’re actually ahead of the curve overall.
It can also show if you’re behind the curve, which may be an inspiration to those who maybe have trouble getting themselves up for practice sessions. Nothing like seeing where others are to get a player to say “I’d better get after this.”
Many of these clinics and camps are just one day, so it’s not a huge time commitment. But they can be enlightening.
Just be sure to do your research again before just signing up for any old camp or clinic. Make sure the instructors are going to be teaching solid mechanics and approaches or you could end up going backward instead of forward.
6. Do Some Non-Softball Stuff
These days all competitive sports seem to take up a LOT of your time. While you no doubt love it, and wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world, there IS more to life than softball.
This is the time of year to find out what the rest of life is all about. Read a book. Go to a museum or a concert or a dance performance. Watch a completely different sporting event, either live or on TV. Go bowling or ice skating or to a trampoline park (just be careful not to get hurt).
Doing something just for the fun of it will clear your head, reset your spirit, and help you get ready for the long grind ahead.
Make It a Good Year
None of what’s listed here is likely to cost you very much. But the return on investment will be huge.
There’s a reason the windshield is much larger than the rear view mirror. This time of year provides a great opportunity to leave the past behind, symbolically as well as literally, and focus on the road ahead.
Doing these little things will help you do just that.
New Year’s photo by Karolina Grabowska on Pexels.com
Life in the Fastpitch Lane 