Category Archives: Coaching
Remember to Celebrate Progress and Successes
The other day I went to visit a healthcare professional (HP). Nothing serious, just basically checking a box for the insurance company.
Anyway, we were talking about some lifestyle changes I’ve made to try to stay healthier longer. Yet it seemed like every time I told the HP about some improvement I’d made she countered with I should be doing this or that too.
It was kind of frustrating, because rather than feeling encouraged to continue doing better I was made to feel like no matter what I did it would never be good enough. The focus would always be on what more I could do or should be doing.
That experience got me to thinking about how we coach our fastpitch softball players. (Take that Google algorithms.)
Often times we coaches are so focused on trying to get our players ready for “the next level” (whatever that is) or trying to make them look just like the players we see on TV that we fail to acknowledge all the great work they’ve done to get themselves to this point. And that can be just as discouraging as my experience with the HP.
That’s why it’s important every now and then along the journey to stop and take a look backward even as you’re trying to look ahead to the next goal. Showing a player how far she has come can give her a real boost to continue putting in the work to keep moving forward.
Let’s take a hitter who has been working on her swing. Honestly, I get a fair amount of students whose only goal (or their parents’ only goal for them) is to not strike out every time they come to bat.
Mom and/or Dad aren’t looking for little Amelia to hit home runs or have the highest batting average on the team. They’re simply hoping she doesn’t get totally discouraged from playing because she wouldn’t hit water if she fell out of a boat.
They don’t want to have to cringe every time she comes to the plate, but that’s another story.
So Amelia gets help from a coach or instructor, fixes whatever was causing her to just randomly swing the bat and hope she hit something, and now she’s making contact with greater regularity and getting on base now and then. At which point the goal becomes to start hitting the ball to or over the fence.
That’s great that everyone wants Amelia to keep growing and improving. But maybe in the midst of all that take a step back to appreciate the fact that the original goal has been met and let Amelia feel good about what she has accomplished so far – at least for a few minutes.
Video is great for that, by the way. Even if Amelia isn’t quite getting on base often enough, showing her a video of how she used to swing the bat versus how she is swinging it now will probably help her build confidence and continue to focus on the process instead of the outcomes.
Then let the law of averages take care of the rest.
It’s the same for pitching. Maybe you have a goal of having a pitcher throw faster, or throw more strikes. Or both.
Regardless of the goal, the path to achieving it starts with improving her mechanics.
So perhaps when she started out she looked less like she was trying to pitch and more like she was trying to fold a fitted sheet.
Showing her a video of how she used to look versus how she looks now might give her some encouragement that she’s on the right track, even if the radar isn’t reflecting it or she’s still throwing a few too many in the dirt. That doesn’t mean you still don’t want to hold her to a higher standard.
But you can acknowledge the fact that she is improving so she has something to feel good about while she works toward the bigger payoff.
All of this doesn’t mean you should provide false praise just to spare the player’s feelings. If she’s not putting in the work and showing improvement that needs to be called out. Otherwise, what’s the point?
Often, however, we are in such a hurry to get to the ultimate goal (being names an MVP, making a particular team, winning a scholarship, etc.) that we don’t take the time to appreciate the progress that’s already been made.
So think about that today. If you’re a coach, what can you do to recognize how much better your players are today than they were a month ago, or three months ago, or a year ago, etc.?
If you’re a parent, what can you point to that lets your daughter know you are proud of how far she has come so far? Even if she still has a ways to go.
That little bit of encouragement may be just the thing your player needs to keep grinding – and build a level of confidence that will carry through not just her softball career but her whole life.
Thank You and Farewell to Retiring Coaches
As the travel ball season winds down (that went fast!) some of you out there are coaching your final games. Whether your daughter is done with her fastpitch softball career, is going to a team with so-called “professional” coaches, your organization is making a change in how it selects coaches, you’ve just decided coaching is something you no longer want to do, or there is some other reason, the next couple of weeks (or so) will no doubt be bittersweet.
Well, I for one, want to thank you for taking on what is often a thankless job and doing your best to help the players you served as either a head or assistant coach.
As your last team plays its last few games, be sure you take a little time to reflect on the journey that brought you here. Because coaching youth sports is both one of the most difficult and most rewarding ways an adult can spend his/her time (if you are truly in it for the right reasons).
You’ve weathered countless storms of parents angry about their daughter’s playing time, the position she’s played, where she is in the batting order, decisions you made on the field, the caliber of teams you’ve played (either too hard or too soft), when and where you set up practice, some random comment you made that someone took personally, your selection of white pants, and how you enforced the team rules that were CLEARLY spelled out at the parent meeting you held right after tryouts were held and offers were accepted.
You’ve endured countless sleepless nights the night before the start of a tournament, going over batting orders, field lineups, contingency plans, and other things no one else had to worry about. You got to the hotel before everyone else so you could drive from the hotel to the tournament site to make sure the time Google maps says it will take your team to get to the field is the time it will actually take.
You’ve made sure someone is arranging meals and snacks. You’ve checked and re-checked the med kit to make sure you have everything you may need in case of injury.
You’ve carried around a 20 lb. bag of miscellaneous objects such as glove lace (and glove lacing tools), duct tape, spare sunglasses, a measuring tape, drying towels, cooling towels, and more to ensure you’re ready for every contingency. You’ve say through countless pre-tournament meetings while everyone else was off having a meal and/or an adult beverage or swimming in the pool.
And now that part is all over, and you may feel a little sense of relief. But you’re feeling something else too.
You know you’re going to miss working with your team, running drills and walking through situations to help your team learn this very complex and often heartbreaking game. You’re going to miss the challenge of facing an opponent that on paper looks to be better than you but that somehow your team manages to overcome.
You’re really going to miss the thrill of seeing a player who came to you barely able to put her glove on the correct hand suddenly blossom into regular contributor to your team’s success. And you’re going to miss the camaraderie that comes with spending so many hours with a group of people you really like as you work toward a common goal.
Come this fall if you don’t have a daughter playing anymore it’s going to feel strange to wake up at 8:00 am on a Saturday morning with nowhere to be and nothing to do.
If you do have one playing for someone else, it will still be odd to be sitting on the sidelines in your camp chair drinking coffee instead of tossing batting practice, fungoing ground and fly balls, or sitting in the dugout agonizing over a lineup.
So thanks for the hundreds of hours you’ve spent working with your players, attending live clinics and online classes to learn how to coach your players better, and missing out on events with family and friends because your team had a game to play. Thanks for always looking out for your players’ best interests, even when it felt like they may have conflicted with your own.
And most of all, thanks for caring about your players as people rather than just chess pieces to be pushed around a board. You may not realize it now, but the impact you made on at least some of their lives is probably immeasurable.
So as things wind down, take a moment to savor all that was great about being a coach. Linger a little longer after practice, and especially after your last game, and think about the good times you’ve had and the lives you have touched by saying “yes” when many others would have said and did say “no.”
Thank you Coach and farewell! You have made a difference in a lot of lives.
Main photo by Kindel Media on Pexels.com
What’s the Deal with the Colored Tape on Catchers’ Chest Protectors?
If you were watching the Women’s College World Series in 2023 and/or 2024 you no doubt noticed that Oklahoma’s catchers had a piece of blue or red tape affixed to their chest protectors. I have heard some interesting explanations as to what it might be.
One is that it’s some sort of enlarged target for pitchers to throw to. If they’re having trouble seeing the glove, or if the catcher is trying to hide the pitch location, the pitcher can sight in on the tape and throw it there.
Another is that the tape is the pitcher’s favorite color, and it’s being used to help her feel more comfortable and confident. That’s more on the right track, but still not quite there.
Actually what it is has to do with something called motor preferences. You can learn more about it here, but I will provide a quick background of what it is and how it relates to the colored tape.
The concept of motor preferences began about 20 years ago with a French company called Volodalen. They were doing extensive research in how to help athletes in many different sports (but primarily in track and field and cycling, I believe) perform better.
Through this research they discovered that all of us have certain preferences baked into our DNA. For example, when some people run they tend to bounce or rebound lightly off the ground.
They classified these athletes as “aerial.” Others tend to be more earthbound, pulling and passing as they run, so they call them “terrestrials.”
There are other tendencies as well, which I’m not going to get into right now because while I have completed an online course I want to wait until I’ve attended the in-person training to go into it in more detail. So I don’t quite feel qualified yet to offer a deeper explanation.
Motor preferences have been used in Europe for about 20 years to determine an athlete’s natural preferences so he/she is being trained properly, both to enhance performance and prevent injury. It was brought to North America by Motor Preferences Experts, whose link I provided above.
Which brings us back to the tape on the chest protectors. The color and the orientation both have significance in how they affect the pitcher.
The color is determined by whether the athlete holds his/her breath in while performing an athletic movement or lets it out. In this case, an athlete who holds his/her breath in will have a preference for royal blue. (As I understand it not just any blue will do, it has to be royal blue.)
An athlete who empties his/her lungs during the act will have a preference for red. I’m told any general red will work. All of this has to do with the rods and cones in the eyes.
There is a test to determine whether an athlete is breath in/breath out You don’t want to just ask them. That test is proprietary so I can’t share how to perform it here but I will say it’s fairly subtle so you need to be trained in it anyway.
Once you know the color, you then test to see if the athlete’s brain organizes information horizontally or vertically. That will tell you whether to run the tape horizontally or vertically on the chest protector.
Getting back to our pitchers, if the pitcher tests breath in vertical, you would want to place a royal blue piece of tape on the chest protector in a vertical orientation. If she is breath out vertical you would place a red piece of tape vertically, and so on.
The purpose, at least as I understand it, is to help the pitcher feel more relaxed and confident before she goes into her pitch. Perhaps more focused as well, all of which will hopefully help her pitch better.
The colors and orientation isn’t just for pitchers, by the way. Hitters can put a piece of the correct tape on their bats before they get into position to help them prepare to hit. Teams can put stripes up in the dugout to help their fielders before they take the field, or fielders can put a piece of tape on their gloves.
The good news for those of us who are still learning how to test is that if you mess it up and get the color or orientation incorrect there is no negative consequence, at least as I understand it. You’re just not helping the athlete the way you were hoping to.
I hope that clears up some of the mystery around the tape. While the whole motor preferences concept has only been in the U.S. for a couple of years I think awareness is starting to grow and more organizations are starting to look into it.
Consider the colored tape the “gateway drug” into the deeper world of motor preferences and how they can help your athletes perform better and avoid significant injuries. More to come on this topic after I go through the training.
You Have Stats – Use Them!
The movie and especially the book Moneyball details how the Oakland Athletics (A’s) helped pioneer the use of statistical data in making player decisions, from which players to acquire to who to play in the field on a daily basis. Their reason for doing it was primarily financial, i.e., they didn’t have the same kind of money to spend on well-known high-performers in order to compete so they had to look for the “hidden gems” – under-valued players who would deliver results while costing less.
The A’s had some very smart people (including a Harvard business grad) who wrote computer programs to help them parse through the mountains of data on every player in the league to find the ones who best fit the system they planned to use while still being within their price range. So you might think, well, ok for them but I don’t have those types of resources so what good does knowing all that do me?
In reality, though, most coaches today do have a lot of that type of information at their fingertips, at least about their own players. It’s contained within the GameChanger (or similar) apps the coaching staff or parents use to score and share game results with those who can’t be there.
On the home page for the team, the very last tab is labeled Stats. If you as a coach click on it you’ll see the cumulative statistics for all the games in hitting, pitching, and fielding.
Now, I understand that the stats aren’t always accurate since some people will score every ball that’s hit and gets someone on base a hit, even if an error was involved. But if you really want to take advantage of the value of stats, coaches, you can quickly train whoever is using on how to keep score properly so you can rely on the data that’s there.
The National Fastpitch Coaches Association also has online courses available for $9.99 that can teach this skill.
So how can having and using accurate statistical data help you as coaches win more games? Here’s an example, drawn from an actual team that apparently isn’t using the data at their disposal.
We will look at the hitting statistics for seven batters. We’ll just call them Player A, Player B, Player C, etc. We’ll look at batting average (BA), on-base percentage (OBP, which is how often they get on base through hits, walks, or hit by pitch), slugging percentage (SLG, the average number of bases a hitter gets each at-bat), and on base plus slugging (OPS, the sum of the on-base percentage plus slugging, which is a great measure of total productivity of the hitter).
Here are those stats for our seven players. The players are currently presented in a random order:
| Player | BA | OBP | SLG | OPS |
| A | .222 | .333 | .278 | .611 |
| B | .167 | .250 | .167 | .417 |
| C | .462 | .562 | .538 | 1.101 |
| D | .286 | .400 | .429 | .829 |
| E | .278 | .381 | .333 | .714 |
| F | .200 | .294 | .200 | .494 |
| G | .250 | .429 | .312 | .741 |
Ok, based on those numbers and a general understanding of how to put a lineup together (which I covered a couple of posts ago), how would you structure your batting order? Take a few moments to write it on a piece of paper without looking below; I’ll wait.
Let’s see how what you did compares to the actual lineup that was used when I pulled these stats. If you’re using a traditional lineup, it would probably look something like this:
- Player D
- Player E
- Player C
- Player G
- Player F
- Player A
- Player B
If you’re using a more modern approach that says put your best bats at the top so they come to bat more often, the lineup would probably look like this:
- Player C
- Player D
- Player E
- Player G
- Player A
- Player F
- Player B
Ok, now here’s what the actual lineup is:
- Player D
- Player A
- Player E
- Player G
- Player B
- Player F
- Player C
Do you see a problem here? The player with by far the highest batting average, on base percentage, slugging percentage, and on base + slugging (Player C) is hitting seventh, where she likely will get one at-bat per game, or two at most if the players ahead of her hit above their averages. In the meantime, Player B whose stats can only be called anemic at-best is hitting in the five slot, and Player A whose hitting line isn’t a whole lot better is in the two slot.
Is it any wonder that this team is struggling to score runs, much less win games?
Why would the lineup be structured this way? I can only guess, but that guess is the coach is relying on his “gut” or long-solidified impressions of who his top hitters are rather than taking the time to look at which players are actually producing statistically, game after game.
(It could also just be plain old playing favorites, but hopefully that’s not the case.)
If you want to win games you can’t and shouldn’t rely on your “gut” anymore. It’s like the the old scout thinking mentioned in Moneyball that so-and-so “looks like a ballplayer.”
That type of thinking is a dead end, whether you’re looking at the pro, collegiate, or youth level. You need instead to look at what is actually happening on the field, in the game, to determine which lineup is going to produce the most runs, which is a major key to winning ballgames.
The same is true for pitching and fielding too. You may think Pitcher A is your Ace, but if you look at the cold, hard stats you may find that Pitcher B does a better job of getting outs without giving up runs.
You may think Fielder A is your best bet at shortstop, but the stats could tell you Fielder B makes fewer errors while contributing to more “caught stealing” outs on throws from the same catcher.
All this information is there for you to use. All you have to do is click on it now and then to look at it.
Your eyes and your guts can lie. Statistics, if they’re properly kept, don’t.
Use the data you have to make better decisions and you’re likely to find you win more games. Or at least can justify your decisions should anyone ask, which in this day and age is a nice thing to have in your back pocket.
Statistics photo by Burak The Weekender on Pexels.com
Believe It or Not, It’s Not All About Winning
Can’t believe I have to cover this topic yet again, but recently I’ve heard some stories that show me it’s still important to talk about.
What topic, you ask? The importance of giving young players, particularly those who are 14 years old or less, a chance to develop, even if it means your team’s win-loss record isn’t as sparkly as you and your ego would like.
Take a 10U pitcher who just started taking pitching lessons. She’s starting to get the hang of it, but maybe she just went through a growth spurt and doesn’t quite have full command of her arms and legs yet.
As a result, although she is trying really hard she tends to walk more batters than she gets out. In fact, the last time you put her in she walked 20 batters .
Now you have a decision to make. One option is you decide she’s just not good enough to pitch for your team, you tell her she just doesn’t have what it takes to be a pitcher, and you never put her in again. Because if you do put her in it will be tough for your team to overcome the freebies and win the game.
The other is you encourage her and look for opportunities to put her in (as long as she is continuing to work at it). Maybe you schedule some “friendlies” or scrimmages during the week and commit to giving her at least an inning no matter what. You can even put a run limit on each inning so the damage isn’t too bad.
If she’s a little further along but not quite ready for prime time maybe you put her in during pool play. Or you let her pick up innings when your team is either really far ahead or really far behind.
There are lots of ways to be creative and develop the players who need a little more of it while not driving away the players who are currently further ahead.
The same goes for position players and hitters. When you play scrimmage games, try moving the players who usually see one at bat per game up higher in the lineup so they can gain a little more experience.
Sure, it might cost you a few runs today. But we all know the softball gods are going to bring one of those girls up at a critical time in a game that does mean something and where you have no options but to let them hit. Wouldn’t it be nice to know they have a little more experience and thus a better chance of coming through in the clutch?
Or perhaps it turns out that the girl you keep trying to hide in right field actually is becoming a decent fielder, and by putting her at second base for a couple of innings she starts developing the confidence to become a more important contributor in the future.
That’s the funny thing about working with young players. They all develop at different rates, and some who seem kind of awkward at 9 or 10 years of age turn out to be pretty decent athletes by the time they’re 14 or 15.
You just never know. Take that pitcher who walks 20 hitters that I mentioned earlier.
That’s actually a true story. I’m sure there were “better” pitchers on her team, and it would have been easy for her to get discouraged and quit if no one gave her a chance in a game.
Fortunately, some coach did, which is how Lisa Fernandez eventually came to become a three-time Gold Medal winning Olympian and arguably the greatest female fastpitch player ever.
Yes, winning is more fun than losing. But if you truly are “in it for the girls” (as every promotional piece for every team that has ever come along says) sometimes it’s worth sacrificing a few wins here and there to help ensure ALL of your players develop into the best versions of themselves they can be.
Set your ego aside and find ways to give your players the opportunities they need to learn and grow. They just may surprise you.
Lead photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com
What the WCWS Can Teach Us about the Changeup
Whenever I see one of my students after a tournament weekend, the first question I usually ask them is “How did it go?” Knowing how they performed in game situation is very helpful in determining what we’re going to work on in that lesson.
Hopefully I get more than “good” or “fine” or “terrible” as a response.
The next question I ask pitching students is “What pitches did you throw?” (assuming they have more than just a basic fastball). That’s where it can get a little dicey.
The answer I least like to hear is “Mostly just my fastball,” especially if that pitcher has also developed (or is developing) a decent (or better) changeup. Sorry, I know that was a lot of parentheses in one sentence but hopefully you followed it.
Now, I know that pitchers these days, especially the younger ones, often don’t have a lot of input into the pitch calling process. But I will still ask them why they didn’t throw their changeups more.
The typical answer are:
- The other team couldn’t hit my fastball so my coach didn’t want to give them a slower pitch to hit
- I threw one but it rolled in/went high/went wide so my coach didn’t want to throw it anymore
- I had a little trouble with it during warmups so my coach didn’t want to chance it in the game
- My coach says he/she doesn’t like the changeup or prefers to go with speed
- I threw a few but when one got hit my coach quit calling it
- I dunno
I get the thinking behind most of these reasons (except the last one). Coaches want to win games so will tend to go with what they think will accomplish that goal.
They also tend to be risk-averse, and often view a pitch that looks so different from everything else in the pitcher’s arsenal as too risky to throw, particularly in close games.
I hope those coaches were watching the #2024WCWS (Women’s College World Series). Because it was a veritable clinic on how effective a changeup can be – and how often it can be used.
I’ve commented to a number of people that I think I’ve seen more changeups thrown in one inning by some of these pitchers than I’ve seen in total over the last five years. It was like someone suddenly remembered how great the changeup is and passed a memo along to all the top D1 college teams in the country.
Stanford’s NiJaree Canady, to me, was the poster child for this display of pitching chicanery. Because she wasn’t just throwing a couple per inning.
No, she was often throwing at least a couple per HITTER!
She also did a great job of wiping out excuse #1 above. Canady was consistently throwing all her other pitches at 70 mph+.
I don’t care how good a hitter you are, that’s going to be tough to catch up to, especially if you can locate the ball to match the hitter’s weaknesses. At one point I saw a quote from Monica Abbott saying she thought Canady could be the first female pitcher to throw 80 mph in a game in a couple of years.
Yet Canady and the Stanford staff didn’t go there and try to blow everyone away with speed. They actually used that speed to set up her changeup, which is where she was getting a lot of her strikeouts. If it’s good enough for one of the last teams standing in the WCWS…
Another thing I saw was various pitchers (including Canady) throw some sub-par changeups. They would throw them for close balls in tough counts.
I remember at least one pitcher (I think it was Nicole May in the final game of the championship series, a pretty important time) roll the ball in on a change at least once, maybe twice. Yet the Oklahoma coaches didn’t quit calling it.
I also remember a few along the way going high, going wide, and (gasp!) even getting hit – occasionally for a home run. But those pitchers’ coaches didn’t quit calling it, because they understood that’s going to happen, even to very high-level pitchers, and that the next one in the zone will still be effective.
There were also times when a pitcher might not be throwing her best changeup. But again, on softball’s biggest yearly stage, the coaches understood that changing speeds that way could be effective even if the pitch didn’t go for a called strike.
After all, nobody wants to look bad on national TV swinging through a changeup, so it gets in the hitters’ heads. If a highly accomplished, high-level hitter can feel that way imagine the psychological pressure a changeup can put on a 12U, 14U, or even older hitter.
Probably the only argument against the changeup that the WCWS didn’t answer directly was the coach wants to call the pitches he/she thinks will win the most games. And throwing a changeup on a regular basis doesn’t give us as much assurance of winning this game right now as throwing a speed pitch does.
So here’s my question: where do you think all these high-level pitchers learned to throw their changeups in pressure situations? I can pretty much guarantee that it wasn’t at the WCWS, or even during the college regular season.
Those pitchers most likely had youth coaches who believed in them, and believed in developing them to become the best they could be. I don’t have direct knowledge of the circumstances but I’d bet pretty good money that NiJaree Canady, Kelly Maxwell, Nicole May, Teagan Kavan, and all the other pitchers we watched this past weekend who throw in the high 60s and low 70s didn’t have youth team coaches who told them to just go out and blow the ball by everyone.
My guess is their coaches threw the changeup even when they didn’t need to, because they knew it would help those players (and countless others) become the best they could be. They also knew one single pitch rarely determines a tournament outcome so they could always come back with something else or change strategies if the changeup didn’t work.
All those young women throwing changeups in the WCWS were given ample opportunities to develop that pitch so it would be ready for when it mattered most.
Hopefully today’s youth coaches were paying attention, and saw how effective the changeup can be when it is called early and often, sometimes a couple of times in a row, even against some of the best hitters in the game.
If you have a pitcher who can throw a changeup, even if it isn’t the greatest in the world right now, take advantage of it and use it. If you let her develop it now I guarantee it will help your team win more games in the long run.
And you might just get the pleasure of watching one of your pitchers throw it on TV someday.
Re-Thinking the Traditional Batting Order
One of the most important responsibilities a team coach has is putting together a batting order that will produce runs. Yet all too often these same coaches become so bound to a particular way of thinking that they don’t take advantage of opportunities that might be available to them if they’re willing to think a little bit outside the box.
Let’s start with what is the norm for most teams. The traditional batting order usually looks something like this:
- Leadoff – Fastest girl who can put the ball in play reliably; often a slapper if one is available; tends to hit mostly singles; often called a “table setter”
- Two hitter – Primary job is to move the leadoff along when she gets on base, either by hitting a single, bunting, or hitting behind the runner; mostly puts the ball in play on the ground
- Three hitter – Best all-around hitter on the team; can hit for power, hit for average, doesn’t strike out much; her job is to bring the table setters in
- Cleanup – Your most powerful hitter, the girl who is a threat to go yard any time she steps up to the plate; not too worried about average so it’s ok if she strikes out a lot as long as she hits those deep balls
- Five hitter – Second-best all-around hitter on the team; she’d be the three hitter if three wasn’t there; maybe has a little lower average or slugging percentage than three but still a huge threat at the plate
- Six hitter – She’s ok and you hope to get her on base but you also know it’s not as likely; mostly a singles hitter, might be good at drawing walks
- Seven hitter – Great defensive player
- Eight hitter – Shows flashes of being good but not strong enough to make the top five; probably there to drive in six and/or seven in case either one is fortunate enough to get on base
- Nine hitter – Second base candidate for leadoff; while she thinks you put her there because you think she’s bad, you’re actually hoping she gets on base so the top of the lineup can drive her in; generally fast, could be a developing slapper; OR, your worst hitter who you’re trying to limit in how many times she comes to the plate
That’s a lineup that has worked for many teams for decades, and certainly a valid approach. But it’s not the only one.
One of the determining factors should be your personnel, i.e., your players and how they hit. A smart coach will look at who he/she has available and will try to take the best advantage of them regardless of what the “experts” say.
And in doing so, he/she may just catch the more traditional-thinking coaches off guard as they call pitches based on their assumptions. Here are a couple of examples.
More power at the top
Instead of opening with a couple of table setters, try taking a traditional five hitter and batting her at leadoff. She hits for average so will likely get on base, and since she also hits for power she could lead off the game with a double or triple.
That way you already have a runner in scoring position after one batter and have three outs to bring her in. Statistically you’re more likely to score in that situation than if you get a runner on first and sacrifice her to second. You also deflate the opposing team (and especially their pitcher) psychologically by opening with a big hit.
Then put your traditional three hitter in the two spot. A second big hit in a row scores the first one and probably leaves this hitter in scoring position as well.
Worst case you have two runners on base with no outs, with one or both already in scoring position. Then put your cleanup hitter in the three slot.
If she goes yard you have three runs before you have any outs, and even if she just hits a deep fly ball that’s caught you score one and probably advance the other runner to second or third where you still have two outs to bring her in. Worst case she strikes out but you still have two more outs to score at least one run.
From there, you can bunch your traditional one, two, and nine hitters to see if you can scratch a couple more runs together. You might want to put two in the four spot so that the traditional four, if she gets on base, isn’t in the way of your speedsters.
With this lineup you maximize the number of at-bats your best hitters get while minimizing the at-bats of your weakest hitters. It does create a potential hitter desert at the bottom of the lineup so you have to hope the top does its job so you’re not depending on the bottom to win a close game.
But hey, no risk, no reward.
Focus on speed
What if you don’t have any (or at least not many) big hitters? In that case you might want to bunch your fastest players (who can hit) at the top and try to create havoc and errors with aggressive baserunning.
Your leadoff hitter would be the same as a traditional lineup. But then bring the traditional nine up to the two slot, and follow her with another speedster in the three slot.
With three girls who can get on base with a slight bobble you are putting a lot of pressure on the defense to perform. And as we’ve all seen, errors often happen in bunches.
Force one bad throw that results in an extra base or two, then keep applying the pressure, and you may get another, or a fielding error as the fielder tries to rush her play on the ball. You could easily end up with a run or two without the ball leaving the infield.
You could also end up with demoralized opponents, especially if the opposing coach has to stop the game to yell at his/her players about making plays.
After those first three, put in whoever is closest to a traditional three (great power, great average) to see if you can clear whoever is left off the bases. You can then start again with speed, or if you have a traditional cleanup hitter put her in there before going back to the speed game.
The 5-4 lineup
There is probably a better name for this one but this is what I call it.
Basically what you’re doing is structuring the lineup so the first five hitters follow the tradition lineup. But then then next four act like a second top of the lineup.
In other words, your six hitter would probably be your traditional nine – the girl who would be leadoff if you didn’t have your one hitter. The seven hitter will be a traditional six – decent hitter but not good enough to crack the top five.
The eight hitter would be the same, a budding traditional three or five. Then the nine spot would be that great defensive player. You’re basically willing to take the out, or maybe that’s a good spot for the designated player to add one more decent bat to the lineup.
The turtle parade
This one is definitely driven by your personnel. And as you can probably guess by the name, while your team can hit pretty well it’s not exactly blessed with speed.
In this case I’d say take your fastest player who can get on base regularly and put her in the leadoff spot. She may not be all that fast, but compared to the others she’s a rabbit so give her the opportunity to run.
From there, if everyone is about 4 seconds or more down to first, base your lineup on batting averages – highest in the two spot, second highest in the three spot, etc. Figure you’re going to mostly be running station-to-station, so give the most reliable hitters the most at-bats.
Just be sure not to put the slowest turtle in the nine spot, because if she gets on base your only girl with any speed at all is going to be stuck behind her.
Be creative
Those are just a few options. A lot of what you can or should do will depend on who you have on your team and how consistent they are.
One other thing to keep in mind is how they handle things psychologically. I can tell you from personal experience I was a good three or five hitter, but for whatever reason struggled at four.
I’ve also coached girls who could hit .750 from the seven spot, but put them at one or two and they folded like a cheap card table. When weighing your options be sure to account for those factors.
With a little creativity, however, and a willingness to buck the norms (even when the parents don’t get it) you can find a lineup that helps you produce more runs and win more ballgames. And look like an offensive guru in the process.
How to Increase Your Coaching ROI
If there’s one thing just about every coach complains about when talking about coaching challenges it’s that they simply don’t have enough time.
It seems like there’s always a hundred things to go over in every practice and about 20 minutes to go over them. Hopefully things aren’t really that bad, but it can certainly feel that way.
So with that type of work/time pressure it’s important for coaches to invest their limited time where it will do the most good. Unfortunately, human nature being what it is, many seem to do the opposite of what they ought to be doing.
What mistake is it that so many make? Spending too much time trying to “fix” their best players, i.e., the ones who are performing best on the field, while ignoring or giving scant time to every one else.
I see it and hear about it all the time. Let’s say you have your top three hitters, all of whom are hitting the ball for average and power.
Their batting averages are above .333, which is pretty darned good unless the teams you’re playing are pretty darned bad, and their on base percentages (OBP) and on base plus slugging (OPS) are equally on the high end.
Then you have the bottom part of the order that can’t hit water if they fell out of a boat. (Thank you Bull Durham – one more funny line to add to last week’s blog post.)
Every time one of them comes to the plate in a tight game you suddenly rediscover religion, hoping and praying that somehow they manage to put the bat on the ball, even if it results in a duck snort or a swinging bunt, so for once you can move those runners along and score a little more than you usually do.
So where do you think you will get the best return on investment for your time and effort in practice?
To me, logic says that if you can improve those bottom few players and get them to go from poor to even below average, you’re going to score more runs and win more games. That would be a huge gain that would continue to pay dividends throughout the season.
Ok, now, answer this: where do most coaches tend to spend the bulk of their time? Unfortunately, it’s trying to make incremental improvements with their top three hitters.
Why do they do that? Because A) it’s more fun to work with a good or great player than with one who seems to barely know which end of the bat to hold and B) they often want to get a share in the glory that comes with seeing a player they’ve coached go on to do well. In other words, they want to stake their claim that they helped that player become the star she is today – even if their suggestions were actually getting in the way of that great player playing great.
The reality is it isn’t that hard for a bad coach to screw up a high-performing player. All he/she has to do is give bad advice and then insist that it be followed.
For example, the coach can tell a top-performing hitter that she should widen her stance and not stride, even though her narrower stance and normal stride have been resulting in her hitting bombs. Then the coach stands there during batting practice and forces the hitter to follow the advice he/she gave until that hitter is dragged down to the level of everyone else.
Or there’s the case of the coach who thinks he/she knows everything about pitching and decides to have all his/her pitchers do a certain set of drills he/she saw at a coaching clinic instead of realizing that the top pitcher(s) got that way by doing whatever it is they’ve been doing.
Throwing in an arbitrary set of drills just because he/she can could end up hurting the top pitcher’s performance on the field, creating unnecessary losses. If the coach feels he/she has to contribute to the pitchers, do it with the ones who are already struggling. They have far less to lose – and so does the team.
As the high school and college seasons end and the rec and travel ball seasons begin in most of the country, please keep this idea in mind: You will gain far more benefit by investing the bulk of your time bringing your least-performing players up to an average level than you will by trying to wring a little more performance out of players who are already playing at a high level.
This is a team sport, after all, and no single player, no matter how good they are, can make up for eight others who are below average. But bring the rest, or even a few of the rest, up to a higher level than they were and you’ll stand a much better chance of putting more Ws on the board.
One last thought: don’t assume you know who your best players are just by gut feel. Look at their stats too.
You may just be pleasantly surprised – and it will help you narrow down where you spend your limited time.
Funny Lines for Your Back Pocket
We’ve all experienced this phenomenon at one time or another. You get into an argument or a tense situation and instead of defusing the situation with a witty one-liner you just choke out some nonsense.
Then later on you think of the perfect comeback or bon mot, but by that time it’s far too late to say it because the moment is over.
Well, my softball friends, I have a solution for you. Instead of trying to think up something clever to say on the spot, it’s better to have a set of great one-liner in your back pocket that you can pull out when the occasion warrants it.
But you’re not a funny person who can come up with one-liners even when you’re not under pressure? Or the ones you do come up with tend to thud?
Not to worry, because we’re going to put some of Hollywood’s and the entertainment industry’s best writers on the job for you. Spend a little time committing these lines from movies and TV shows to memory, along with my suggestions on when use them, and you’ll quickly be revered as that person who always knows what to say when the need arises.
I know all the lines aren’t exactly from the movie or TV show, but they have been adapted to match the situation or reference softball or keep it appropriate for all ages. Attributions are in parentheses afterward.
- Your pitcher gives up a home run and you have to make a circle visit #1 – Wow. Anything that travels that far in the air should have a flight attendant on it. (Bull Durham)
- Your pitcher gives up a home run and you have to make a circle visit #2 – Don’t worry, that wouldn’t have been out of a lot of parks. Like Yellowstone, Yosemite, etc. (Major League)
- Your pitcher gives up a home run and you have to make a circle visit #3 – Looks like she launched that one toward South America (Major League)
- You take a risky suggestion from an assistant coach or even a player, then send the team off to do it; you then look at the person who made the suggestion and say – This had better work. (Moneyball and The Imitation Game)
- Pre-game speech before an important game – A win right now takes us to the championship (or whatever) so it’s very important we don’t stink today. (That Thing You Do)
- Answer to the above statement from a player – I make no guarantees. (Also from that Thing You Do)
- Response to a parent who has “a few thoughts” on how you should run the team – I have your phone number. When what you think becomes important to me I’ll give you a call. (NYPD Blue, although that one may not quite defuse the situation. It’s still funny though.)
- When a pitcher throws a wild pitch into the backstop – JUST a bit outside (or wherever it happened to land. (Major League)
- When someone tells a hitter her brain is getting in the way of her hitting – Well, can’t say that’s happened very often. (Tin Cup)
- When the whole team is getting down on themselves or getting nervous – Remember that softball is a game, and games are supposed to be fun. (Mr. Baseball)
- When the team has a particularly bad inning or makes a particularly bad series of goofs on one play – Well, that was a defining moment, and the definition was *poop* – (Tin Cup)
I think that’s plenty to get you started. Just think of the situations you think you’re most likely to find yourself in and focus on those first. Then you’ll be ready for whatever comes your way.
Laughing photo by Hannah Nelson on Pexels.com
The Art of Pitch Calling
Whenever a group of fastpitch softball fanatics gets together to talk about pitching, they (we) often talk about the three S’s – speed, spin, spot. You need a healthy dose of all three to be successful, especially at the higher levels.
Within that, however, there is one significant caveat.
Success with speed and spin is almost entirely pitcher-driven. In other words, when you get into a game the pitcher takes whatever skill she has acquired in these areas and applies it to the best of her ability.
Spot, however, is a little different, because often the pitcher doesn’t really have a choice in which spot she is throwing to. She may want to (or prefer to) throw high and inside in a particular situation, for example, but if whoever is calling the pitches wants it low and out that’s where she’s expected to throw it.
That’s what makes pitching calling such an art. No matter how great the pitcher is at hitting her spots, that alone isn’t enough. The pitch caller also has to be smart enough or experienced enough to call the right pitch in each situation or all that spot-hitting ability is essentially neutralized. Or even detrimental.
So how do you go about calling pitches? That really depends on the level of play and the ability of the pitch caller to determine what will work based on all the available information.
For example, in the P5 conferences, and I’m assuming many other collegiate programs, the team has a wealth of data on each hitter and what her tendencies are. Especially for long-term players. There’s a lot of data science in it.
They know what pitches and locations a hitter strikes out on the most and what she pummels over the fence on a regular basis. They know if she’s susceptible to certain locations based on past performance and they know which pitcher threw that particular pitch.
After all, if a hitter has trouble on the inside against a pitcher who throws 70 mph, it doesn’t mean she’ll always have trouble in that location. The more varying the data is, and the more of it you have, the better chance you have of making a good decision.
That, incidentally, is why some freshmen or newly elevated-to-starter-status players will start out hot and then cool as the season wears on. At first there isn’t much reliable data about them, but eventually it starts to accumulate.
But what if you don’t have the luxury of well-populated spray charts and other data? That’s where it becomes more of an art form.
There are some charts out there (like this one) that offer some guidance based on things you can observe. Most of them are based on common sense, such as if a hitter is crowding the plate try to jam her inside with your fastest pitch.
Again, however, it’s not quite that formulaic. It could be that this particular hitter is crowding the plate because she is awesome at hitting inside pitches and not so good at hitting outside pitches.
You try to smoke her inside and she’s going to turn on the ball and launch a very long, dispiriting home run.
That’s why it’s important to develop a feel for pitch calling rather than simply relying on charts or conventional wisdom or other things from the past. You need to be able to look at a hitter and see what she’s bringing to the plate that day.
Another important skill is learning how to set the hitter up for the outcome you want. For example, if she awkwardly swings at a low outside pitch for strike one, she just showed you she’s probably not comfortable out there.
Try another one a little further off the plate. If that induces strike two, see if you can get her to swing at a curveball off the plate.
If she doesn’t bite, you can try coming inside, then going back outside again if necessary. The idea is to make sure she never gets totally comfortable with what she’s seeing.
Another good strategy is if the hitter fouls a ball straight back on a speed pitch (fastball or drop ball), come back at her with a changeup. If you make her look bad with that she’ll probably figure you’re coming in for the kill with a speed pitch again so maybe throw her another change that falls off as it reaches the plate.
The possibilities are endless. The key is to see where she looks least comfortable and use that information to keep her off-balance and uncertain.
One other key piece of information when you’re calling pitches is to never throw more strikes than you have to. What does that mean?
When you get two strikes on a hitter it’s tempting to try to just put her away right then and there by overpowering her, especially at the younger ages. But unless the other team’s hitters are completely over-matched by your pitcher, that’s a bad idea.
They’ve already had an up-close and personal look at two pitches. If the hitter is any good at all she is starting to figure out your pitcher a little more.
Instead, throw a ball that looks like a strike. It could be a drop or curve or rise that starts in the zone but gets out of it by the time it reaches the plate.
It could be a fastball that’s a ball’s width too high or too wide to be hit effectively. It could be a dying quail of a changeup that starts out thigh-high and then hits the plate or the dirt in front of it.
Just don’t give them anything too good to hit. Work the edges, throw off the hitter’s rhythm, or do something else to make sure she can’t take her best swing at the ball and you’re likely to achieve much better results.
While there is science to pitch calling, at the end of the day it’s still more of an art. And like any art, some people have a knack for it and others don’t.
If you find you’re a don’t-have, find someone else on the team who does have it – an assistant coach, a catcher, even another pitcher – and let them do it. If there are no other options talk to people you know who are good at it to learn their thought processes as to why they call the pitches they do.
That way when you call a spot you’ll not only expect your pitcher to hit it. You’ll be confident it’s a spot worth hitting.
Life in the Fastpitch Lane 