Author Archives: Ken Krause
Comments reopened
Still having problems with spam, but I think I’ve figured out a strategy to make it manageable. Not going to share it here lest the spammers use it to their advantage, but I’m going to give it a try.
The good news is comments have now been reopened. So as soon as I post something worth commenting on, give it a try. I’d love to see less lecturing and more discussions!
Ken
Tips for better baserunning
Often times when fastpitch softball hitters are having trouble catching up to the ball, a part of the problem can be found in their mental approach. They are watching the pitch to see if it’s a strike and then making a swing decision instead of assuming the pitch is a strike and then holding up if they see it’s not. The process is known as yes-yes-no rather than no-no-yes.
The same kind of thinking needs to apply to baserunners. They need to be looking for opportunities, assuming opportunities are coming, rather than sitting back passively and then trying to react (usually too late) when an opportunity arises.
This problem is actually how I manage to get baserunners thrown out at third or home from time to time. Because I understand baserunning, and was an aggressive runner myself (hard to believe when you see my picture but I wasn’t always old and fat) I assume my runners are looking for the same things I am.
So I see the ball get away from the catcher with a runner on third, and my immediate reaction is “go!” Unfortunately, if the runner isn’t looking for opportunity her first reaction is usually “huh?” followed by “oh maybe I should run now” followed by running, usually into a tag. It isn’t that the decision to send the runner was wrong — it’s sending THAT runner that didn’t work out because she wasn’t looking for the opportunity. While there may have only been a half-second lagtime between me saying “go” and her leaving, it was enough to get her tossed out.
Runners shouldn’t be relying on coaches to send them. They should be looking for opportunities to go. That means watching the ball out of the pitcher’s hand with the assumption that something will go wrong for the defense, then holding up if it doesn’t.
For example, a runner can look for a ball that slips out of the pitcher’s hand, or a drop ball that will obviously hit in front of the plate. Rather than waiting for the ball to hit the ground and then hit the catcher, the runner should be taking off before the ball hits the ground. It’s a pretty safe bet — not many hitters swing at balls that bounce in the dirt — and those extra hundreths of a second might make the difference between getting tagged out (especially with a strong-armed catcher) and cruising in standing up.
A little more difficult is the ball that is partially blocked by the catcher. It takes a little experience to make the judgment, but essentially you want to see how the ball gets away from the catcher. If you can see it going out to the side, that’s the time to take off because the catcher first has to get to the ball, then get control of it, before she can make a throw. If you’re uncertain, learn to recognize a ball moving to the side versus being blocked in front. As long as the catcher can’t just reach down and grab the ball you stand a good chance of making it to second or third.
If you’re on third, you need to be a little more cautious but you can still take advantage of miscues when they occur. You may have to wait a little more to see what the ball does, but the sooner you recognize that the ball is getting away from the catcher and will have to be tossed, the better chance you have of making it home safely.
But it all starts with planning to run. Make that your first priority, to take advantage of opportunities when they occur, and hold up if nothing happens, and you’ll find yourself getting around the bases a whole lot quicker.
Sorry – comments closed temporarily
Sorry to say this, but lately Life in the Fastpitch Lane has been getting inundated with spam comments. Rather than continue to delete them manually — which has gotten very time-consuming — I have chosen to shut down comments for the time being in the hopes that the spammers will move on to someone else.
I will try reopening comments in a week or two. Sorry for the inconvenience. I always appreciate your legitimate comments!
The trouble with tryouts
It’s that time of year in the fastpitch softball world — tryout time. A time of nervousness, hope and frustration.
But today’s post isn’t about the players. It’s actually about the challenges of running tryouts.
I have been a coach with two organizations, and have been able to watch parts of other tryouts, and most of what I’ve seen and experienced has been the same. The focus is primarily on individual skills.
Those are important, but it can penalize the kids who may not quite have the skills but have a lot of game sense or other qualities that make them good players. This is not a complaint — because I don’t have a solution. When you’re looking at a lot of players in a short amount of time it’s tough to do much more.
It’s not like soccer, where you can spend some time looking at skills, then divide the players up and have the scrimmage for an hour. Even if you did that, there’s no guarantee that the ball will be hit to any particular player, or that hitters will face the best pitchers. If the pitching is uneven, certain hitters can look better than others by default.
So I throw the question out: how do you structure your tryouts? Has anyone found an effective way to look beyond skills at soft skills such as game sense, or having a feel for when to steal a base, or other things like that? If so, I’d love to hear about it — and I’m sure everyone else would too.
Moving to 12U – looking for players
Usually I try to avoid shameless self-promotion. But hey – what’s the point of having a blog if you can’t help your own cause now and then?
For 2012 I will be coaching the Lake County Stars, a 12U team that’s part of the Lake County Fastpitch Softball Association (LCFSA). If you’re looking for a competitive team with non-parent coaching, and you’re in the Lake Zurich, Illinois area (or willing to travel to it) come on out to tryouts. They start at 4:00 PM on Tuesday, August 9. More details are available on the LCFSA website. I will be head coach; assistant coaches are still TBD.
Hope to see you there!
Glove angle and pop-ups
Somewhere along the way at a fastpitch softball clinic I remember hearing a college coach saying that the proper way to catch a pop-up (or fly ball for that matter) is with the fingers pointing straight up. This is another one of those mysteries that seem to come up in our sport.
Why would anyone in their right mind want to do that? I’m here to tell you that’s bad advice.
This past summer we had a few girls who apparently had been taught that way. Of course, we kept dropping easy pop-up after easy pop-up. I had told and shown our girls a better technique, but old habits are hard to break. Not impossible, however.
After another loss due to a couple of easy drops, we spent a good part of practice working on a small but important change. Instead of holding the fingers straight up, turn the glove to the side and put the palm up. That creates a basket that the ball falls into naturally.
Of course, there was more to it than just practicing. I made it very clear that I no longer wanted to see the fingers up, and if another error was made using that technique there would be serious consequences.
The good news is there were no more drops the rest of the season. Every pop-up was fielded cleanly and we got the outs we were supposed to get.
Little things often make a big difference. Turn the glove sideways and palm up for those pop-ups and you’ll put an end to the drops.
Thus endeth another season
The season is now over for the team I coached this year. That’s just hard to believe. We worked so hard for so long — going all the way back to September, 2010 — and now it’s over.
One of the things that’s fairly unique about the program I coach in is that coaches generally don’t stay with their teams. They remain at a particular level, and players get passed along from coach to coach.
That’s good in some ways — it gives the players exposure to different coaches and different coaching styles, helping them become more well-rounded. At the same time, though, it’s also kind of sad. Players you’ve spent a year or two getting to know move on, and you’re left to start all over again.
It seems like just yesterday we were getting going on our first tournament. Now we’re done. It’s particularly sad because we spent so much time on team building, and our girls got along so well.
I will miss them all. But that’s life, I suppose. All I can hope is that they enjoyed themselves during the season, will take away great memories, and that they learned a little something about playing softball along the way.
Great softball defensive game/challenge
First of all let me state that this training game for fastpitch softball wasn’t my idea. I got it at a clinic a few years ago.
The game is called 21 outs. It’s pretty simple. You put your team on the field, at least one person per position. Then you start hitting the ball to different locations. The object is to get 21 outs in a row. If someone makes an error, either fielding or throwing, the count gets re-set to zero and you start over.
You can do it with or without runners, depending on how many players you have. Because I have my kids play at least two positions, I will have them switch positions after seven outs. (You can also do that to give your subs an opportunity to participate.)
The other rule I put in is when the ball comes back to the plate for the next play, even though the play is dead, it has to be a good throw. Otherwise we go back to zero again.
One of the fun aspects of this game is that the coach “mis-hit” makes it more realistic. Say you’re trying to hit a fly ball and you just dink a spinner off the end of the bat. They still have to read, react and get the out.
The final rule is that the ball has to be “getable.” If I hit a clean shot in the gap that could never have been fielded, it’s a neutral. On the other hand, if it’s a clean single to the outfield and the ball gets behind the outfielder, it’s an error and we start over.
As a coach you can make the game as challenging as you want. You can vary the types of hits, how hard they’re hit, etc. You can also say things such as “only two more to go” to add a little extra pressure.
Just make sure you allow enough time. You may think it would be easy, but it can be tough to get 21 outs in a row.
Losers make excuses – winners make adjustments
One of the things that makes fastpitch softball so difficult is that it is not the type of sport where you can hit a groove very often. Because of the design of the game, your tempo or pace may not match up with the tempo or pace of your opponents. When that happens, you either have to make adjustments or you’ll lose the little matchups that make up the game.
Hitters versus pitchers is an obvious one. Nearly every hitter has a pitch speed they really like to hit. If the ball comes in at that speed, it’s like batting practice to her. She can even handle +/- two mph. But go outside that comfort zone and the hitter has two choices — adjust or struggle.
Or take catchers and baserunners. A catcher’s pop time — the time from when the pitch hits her glove to when it hits the person covering the base’s glove — will usually be pretty consistent. But if the opposing baserunners have more speed than she’s used to, or is getting a little extra jump, what normally works may not work anymore.
In these and other situations players can react a couple of ways. They can get mad at the opponent and make excuses — I can’t hit slow pitching, the runner is leaving early, the umpire is making bad calls — or she can make adjustments. In other words, she can change what she’s doing to match what’s being dictated by the opponents.
Take that hitting example. She can time her swing like she always does and be ahead of the ball on a slow pitcher, then complain the pitcher is too slow. Or she can figure out when she needs to move and swing to deliver full batspeed into the ball.
In the case of the catcher, she has to know that she needs to pop up a little quicker, and perhaps get rid of the ball a little quicker than usual if she’s going to have a shot at getting the runner. It may not be what’s comfortable for her, but it’s what’s necessary.
What it comes down to is what you can and can’t control. You can’t control the speed of the opposing pitcher. I’ve never met a pitcher yet who didn’t want to throw faster, so if the pitcher could throw harder she would. That being the case, you can adjust what you’re doing, because you can control that. Just work up your determination, get out of your comfort zone, and do what needs to be done in the situation.
Losers make excuses — winners make adjustments. Remember that and you’ll have a lot more softball success.
A first for me
Those who know me (or follow me via the Internet) know I’ve been coaching fastpitch softball for a long time — more than 15 years. (Although some days it feel like 1500 years.) Today, though, I had a first.
I had a parent come up to me with a suggestion as to where he thought his daughter was best-suited to play. That’s not unusual, of course. It was the suggestion itself.
His daughter is my starting shortstop, but he thought she’d make a great center fielder. This is the first time I’ve ever had a parent suggest taking his/her daughter out of the infield and putting her in the outfield. I’ve had plenty of suggestions going the other way, as I’m sure all you coaches have. But from infield to outfield? Never.
Now, understand she would make a great center fielder. She’s also make a great right or left fielder, second baseman, third baseman, catcher, etc. She’s a very athletic girl with a great attitude who will do anything she can to help the team win. She self-analyzes in the batter’s box to keep from making the same mistake twice. And she always grabs team equipment when it’s time to move without ever having to be asked.
So dad is right, in a way. But she’s happiest at shortstop and plays it well.
So what about you? Have you ever had a parent suggest moving his/her daughter from the infield to the outfield? Or is this an unusual request?
Life in the Fastpitch Lane 