Category Archives: Coaching
Softball performance program
Saw this over at Stacie Mahoe’s Fastpitch Softball Blog and thought it would be worth passing along. It’s a free program called “How to Overcome Failure and Play as Well in Games as You Do in Practice.” (The link is to Stacie’s blog, which will take you to the program.)
This is a fairly common problem, especially in places like the Midwest where I live, and any of the Northern states where we spend most of the year practicing indoors. It’s one thing to be successful in the batting cages, but it doesn’t always translate to the field. When that happens it can be very discouraging.
This program has a series of exercises that can help a player get back on track. It was developed by Tom Hanson, one of the authors of the terrific book Heads Up Baseball: Playing the Game One Pitch at a Time. That’s a book every player and coach should have on their bedstand.
Give it a look. It just might mean the difference between hitting .250 and .300.
The principle of interchangeable parts
One of the most common complaints a coach hears at the younger ages is that he/she is playing players in too many positions. This complaint, of course, is only heard when a team is losing. 
Fastpitch softball is a sport that requires specialization. Each position is played differently, has different decision trees, and largely requires different skills. Some great infielders never learn to judge a fly ball and are disasters in the outfield, despite being great athletes. Some excellent third basemen don’t have the range to play short. Some second basemen don’t have the reaction time to play third. It all varies.
That, to me, is one of the secrets to success in fastpitch softball — matching the player’s abilities to the position.
Now, at the younger ages, perhaps up to 11U, it’s a good thing to move players around more, at least early in the season. They are nowhere near fully formed yet, so how do you know that the kid you have in right field wouldn’t make a good first baseman with a little work and experience. You won’t until you try her there.
As players get older, though, this scenario becomes less attractive. Moving players around, unless you absolutely have to, can end up in disaster. This goes not only for the average ability players, but also for the studettes.
You see, there is a difference between great athletic ability and the ability to play a position. Trying to force a player into a position where she lacks the skills/knowledge/experience can wind up backfiring on you. I don’t know how others feel, but I’ll take a kid with less raw athletic ability but more knowledge and skill at a position than the reverse.
Now, I know college coaches often talk about taking athletes. Perhaps they have the luxury. Most of us don’t. Besides, their pool of athletes, especially at the upper level, are also pretty darned skilled. And they don’t just arbitrarily stick one of those athletes into a new position on game day and hope they can figure it out for themselves.
Softball players are not interchangeable parts that can be moved around willy-nilly. If you feel a position change is required, be sure to spend plenty of time with that player so she can learn the little stuff about that position. Otherwise, sure as you’re reading this, her lack of experience will come back to bite you at the worst possible moment.
Sometimes ignorance is just…ignorance
Saw this one at a high school game today. It makes me wonder sometimes how people get hired to coach kids.
These two teams — call them team A and team B — had played on Tuesday. Team A had the better record but wound up losing to team B. From what I heard they had a tough practice on Wednesday that consisted primarily of running every time they made a mistake. Keep in mind that they had lost primarily because they didn’t hit very well and team B did.
Tonight team A lost again. They made a couple of fielding errors, but the primary reason was again a lack of offense. So what does the coach do? She decides to have them run a bunch of foul poles. I’m not sure how many since I didn’t bother to count but it was probably close to a dozen.
I have to ask: how does this make sense? I highly doubt that any of those kids went to the plate thinking “What I’d really like to do is ground out weakly to the second baseman” or “Boy, a pop-up would sure feel good right now.” I watched them. They were energetic, kept their spirits up and battled to the end. But they came up short. So the coach, apparently in a fit of pique, decided to punish them for something, I don’t know, I guess for not being good enough.
Personally I think all she accomplished was getting them to hate playing for her. Kids aren’t stupid. They recognize bad coaching when they see it. Now, if she would’ve told them tomorrow cancel your plans, we’re going to hit until your hands bleed it would’ve made sense. She would’ve been addresing the problem. Instead she makes them run. Not for conditioning. Not to improve their technique. Apparently just because she was mad at them — or didn’t know what else to do.
Running shouldn’t be a punishment. It shouldn’t be used to embarrass your players (this little display was done at team B’s field while team B was working the field after the game). It should have a purpose. If your team doesn’t field, hit, get the bunt down or run the bases well enough, have them practice fielding, hitting, bunting or running the bases. As far as I’m considered the person this coach embarrassed the most was herself.
In a little postscript, one of the players who was made to run had an asthma attack in the middle of it. Out of fear of the coach she kept going until she got to the point where she couldn’t breathe at all. It took her at least four hits on her puffer to stop wheezing so loudly that it could be heard across the field. I was getting ready to call 9-1-1 it sounded so bad. She got to stop, but the rest of the girls were made to keep running.
I ask again how does this make sense? Who is it good for?
Blasting balls at fielders
You see it everywhere. Teams of younger players out on the field for fielding practice. A big coach (usually a guy) standing at home plate. He tosses the ball up, takes a powerful swing, and blasts a hard ground ball at one of the girls, who does her best to field it and make the throw. The coach is hitting the ball hard at the girls with the best of intentions. He wants them to learn to handle hard hit balls, and to improve their reaction time. Yet what he is more likely doing is practicing to lose rather than win.
Think about it. Let’s say the team is 10U or 12U. How many girls that age can hit a pitched ball as hard as a large, grown man can fungo it? You can probably count them on the fingers of one ear. Once in a blue moon a ball might be hit that hard, but it’s certainly the exception.
By hitting hard ball after hard ball, the coach is teaching his players to sit back and wait. He’s also teaching them that the elapsed time from contact with the bat to contact with the glove is one second or less. Yet that’s not really what happens on the field. It’s more likely that the ball will be hit softly, requiring the fielders to charge it. But since they’re used to sitting back so they don’t get killed, they’re slow to charge the batted ball. In the meantime, the batter is running up the first base line. The throw gets there late and everyone is unhappy that the fielder got to it late.
The other thing that happens with hard fungoes is the practice becomes more about survival than technique. The fielder may learn to knock the ball down or stab at it, but she’s not really learning proper fielding technique that will translate to the field. She’s less likely to be able to get her butt and glove down properly, receive the ball gently, scoop it cleanly and make the transition to throw. She’s just going to grab it and go.
Contrast that with what I see when I watch college teams practice. They often roll the ball by hand to players so they can work on their fundamentals — even before an actual game. When they do fungo ground balls, they’re hit lightly so the fielders have to be aggressive, rather than sitting back passively waiting for the ball to nearly overpower them.
It applies at every level, but especially at the younger levels. If you’re smacking hard grounders at your players, make a pledge to stop now. Hit the ball at the speed they can reasonably expect based on your level of competition so they set their minds on making the plays you need them to make. Believe me — if anything is hit harder and right at them, they’ll make the play out of self-defense. Coach for the majority of what you’ll face instead of the minority and you’ll make more plays and win more games. It’s just common sense.
Outs are the clock in softball
“Outs are the clock in softball.” This is a phrase I heard or read earlier in the week. Can’t remember who said it — perhaps my friend and fellow coach Rich — but I think this is a great way to think of outs and what you want to do with them, especially late in the game.
To put it into perspective, let’s think about a different sport that does have a clock. I love football, so let’s look at that.
Let’s say you’re losing by 10 points and you have 2:30 left to play. To tie the game you will need to score twice — at least a touchdown and a field goal. To win you will need a two-point conversion as well.
Two minutes and 30 seconds is not a lot of time, but it’s doable. What it means is you need to score quickly, using as little time as possible, then get the ball back and try again. Ideally you’ll score the touchdown first, which takes some of the pressure off.
There are all kinds of plays you could run to try to advance the ball and score. The smart play is to pass, because generally speaking you can move the ball farther and move it closer to the sidelines to get out of bounds and stop the clock. Also, if you’re unsuccessful the clock stops, giving you more time to plan the next play.
You could also run the ball. But it’s tougher to get the ball out of bounds that way, and a good running play generally goes for about four to five yards. If you have a lot of ground to cover you’re expending a lot of time to try to get that score.
It’s all about clock management. Being able to stop the clock without expending timeouts will give you a better chance of scoring. The clock is your enemy at this point, so you need to conserve as much time as you can.
Now let’s bring it back to softball. Unless you’re playing in a tournament with a time limit, your “clock” is the number of outs. The more of them you use, the fewer you have left to try to score. If you’re in a close game, say down by one run, it may be a good move to trade an out for a run. But if you’re behind by two or more, it may not be such a good idea.
Let’s say it’s the top of the sixth, your team is behind by three runs, and you are the visitors. You now have six outs to try to score a minimum of three runs to tie or four to win. (You also may want a couple more to give yourself some insurance.)
In any case, that’s a lot of runs in two innings. You’re probably going to need every out you can get. What that means is you don’t want to be throwing them away by sacrifice bunting, attempting steals (unless you’re positive you can beat the throw) or using other such strategies. You don’t want to send a runner around third on an iffy play either. You’re going to have to trust your hitters to put the ball in play. It still may not work out, but it’s your best bet. You want to extend the inning as long as you can. That means not using up your outs on purpose.
Of course, one other factor that can have an effect is what the actual score is. There’s a huge difference in offensive potential between being behind 16-13 or 4-1.
In a seven-inning game, both teams start with 21 outs. How you use them from there often determines your fate. If you purposely expend one per inning, and your opponent doesn’t, you’ve just cut your allotted number of outs to 14. That’s a pretty big advantage to hand your opponent for no reason other than you don’t know what else to do, or you’re stuck on a single strategy.
If you were told that the local rules dictated that your team gets two outs per inning while your opponents get three, there’s little doubt you’d either protest or leave the contest entirely. But that’s exactly what you’re doing to yourself when you don’t use your outs more intelligently.
Before you just start giving them away, keep that idea in mind. Outs are the clock in our game of fastpitch softball. Don’t run the time needlessly off of yours.
What it’s all about
Had another one of those moments last night that reminds me of why I love coaching. One of my students came to her lesson all excited. She had pitched what the parent of another student called the game of her life against one of the top 14U teams in the area. She said she was throwing really well, all her pitches were working, and she was completely baffling them.
Although her team eventually lost the game 2-1 on two unearned runs in the bottom of the last inning, she felt like she’d won. She definitely made a statement.
Here in the midwest we spend a lot of time indoors working on pitching. In fact, often we spend far more time indoors than outdoors. The summer season runs from about April to August, with fall ball encompassing September and October. With so much time in the gym it’s easy for pitchers to lose perspective and forget why they’re practicing. Games like the one Rachel had this past weekend are the reward for what can often be long and tedious hours spent throwing ball after ball indoors.
I can tell you this much. Not only did she come in pumped up, she was as attentive and worked as hard as I’ve ever seen her work. A little taste of success can sure leave you hungry for more!
More on the sacrifice bunt
My pal Rich sent me some information today that further confirms what I said earlier — the sacrifice bunt is way over-used relative to its value.
Here’s a link to an incredible article that really breaks down the chances of scoring with various numbers of baserunners with 0,1, or 2 outs. This is not some guy offering his opinion on the way things should be. It’s an academic type performing a statistical analysis that Billy Beane would be proud of. Be warned — the article (or more accurately academic paper) is long and very mathematical. But it certainly reinforces the points I and others made before.
The basis for this paper is the analysis of the actual outcomes of at bats in Major League Baseball. It talks about how many runs are scored per inning on average in each of the situations. More than that, though, it also breaks it down by who is hitting, i.e. where in the lineup you are. The numbers are a little different for an 8 hitter than a 3 hitter, so this takes it into account. It also accounts for the DH in the American League v. having the pitcher hit in the National.
Let’s take a look at a classic scenario. The leadoff hitter gets on base, and the #2 hitter in the lineup bunts him to second. If you do that all the time, the probability of scoring at least one run is .439. If you leave the runner on first and have the #2 hitter swing away, the probability of scoring is .483. So you’ve actually hurt your chances of scoring by giving up that out to advance the runner.
Ok, that’s the top of the lineup. Let’s look at the #7 hitter getting on and the #8 hitter at bat. In that case, the probability of scoring from second with one out is .379, while the probability of scoring from first with no outs is .393. Hmmm. So why are we bunting again?
Where the sacrifice bunt does seem to make sense is with no outs and a runner on second. But it seems like a lot of softball coaches never give themselves the chance to get in that situation. They knee-jerk bunt as soon as a runner gets on first and regardless of whether a weak or strong hitter is at the plate. They take themselves out of more innings than they create opportunities.
Now I’m sure there are some who will say softball is not baseball, the bases are shorter, the pitcher is closer, blah blah blah. That argument may have been valid 15 years ago, but it’s not anymore. Today’s athletes are bigger, stronger, faster and better trained. Third basemen in particular make their bones by fielding the bunt and making the play, often times getting the lead runner. Hitters put in more work than they used to, and have bats that are a lot hotter than they used to be too. There is a much greater chance that they’ll put the ball in play and get a big inning started. One check of the local newspapers for high school games or the NCAA Web site will show you that the days of 1-0 15 inning nail biters are long past. Offense is all the rage, and those who can’t generate it by swinging the bats are doomed to wind up on the short end of the stick.
As Mike Hanscom pointed out before it’s a little different at the younger ages. But even there, better teams are starting to play the bunt better. You don’t see as many balls thrown away or as many runners reaching base safely as you used to. The expectations are higher.
Does all this mean you should never bunt? No! When the defense is playing back, or you know you’re playing for one run, or the defense has shown it’s a little sloppy on the bunt you should take advantage of it. It’s still a good weapon. But it’s not the be-all and end-all of fastpitch offense, and it shouldn’t be an automatic. If you’ve trained your hitters to hit then let them do their jobs. In most cases you’ll increase your probability of scoring. Not because I say so, but because the numbers don’t lie.
Playing hurt – a coach’s dilemma
About a week ago Coach Greg wrote to me to tell about his team’s performance in an early spring tournament. They came in second, which was a great start to their season. Along the way, though, he brought up an interesting topic.
It seems that one of his pitchers had hurt her wrist. Greg knew it was painful but the girl said she was ok to go, and she wound up pitching four innings. Later she went to get the wrist checked out and discovered it wasn’t just sprained but broken.
Greg said had he known the injury was that severe he would never have allowed her to pitch. The girl probably knew it too, soo she hid the true degree of her injury from him. Therein lies the dilemma.
As coaches, we have to rely on what our players tell us regarding injuries. We can try to test it, of course, but without formal medical training we’re really just guessing. The mind can be a powerful thing, even when it comes to pain. If a player wants to play bad enough, she may be able to push pain out of her mind in order to stay on the field.
The problem is pain is there for a reason. It’s our body’s way of warning us that something is wrong, and that we should cease whatever we’re doing before it gets worse. When we ignore those signs we do so at our own peril.
While there is a very small percentage of coaches who would knowingly allow a player to play with a major injury if they thought it meant winning a big game or a tournament, most would not. The key word is knowingly.
In the end, you have to follow your gut. I’ve certainly allowed players to play on serious injuries because I’ve wanted to believe them when they said they weren’t hurt too badly. But somewhere deep down inside I knew.
Players who are wincing every time they perform a skill, or who are favoring an arm, leg, or whatever are hurt enough to come out. Better to get them out now than risk more serious damage to their careers or their bodies down the road. They may not like it, but there’s a point where you cease being tough and instead are just being stupid.
By the way, this also applies to heat exhaustion and heat stroke. Players who are sick to their stomachs, dizzy, pale, etc. have no place on the field. Take care of them even when they’re not willing to take care of themselves. It’s your responsibility as coach.
A drop is the same as a fastball to a blind horse
Calling pitches is as much an art as a science. There are all kinds of rules of thumb you can follow, but the truth is some people have a better feel for it than others.
If you have the knack for it, or have a coach or catcher who does, consider yourself very fortunate. It makes things a whole lot easier for everyone.
But what if you are a pitcher (or the parent of one) whose has someone calling pitches that just doesn’t have the talent for it? Especially the kind who calls a fastball down the middle when you’re ahead in the count thinking you’ll go for the strikeout?
If you can blow the ball by the hitters it’s not that a bad a call. But as you move up the ladder, it becomes increasingly difficult to make that fastball stand up. Give a good hitter too many looks at the plate and it’s like letting her hit against a pitching machine. Sooner or later she’s going to figure out.
So what do you do if you know the person calling pitches is making bad calls? If it’s the catcher, you can always shake her off. She may not like it, but you have to throw what you’re comfortable with. Hopefully the pitcher and catcher can talk and get on the same page.
What about if it’s a coach, though? This gets a little tougher. Hopefully you have the type of coach you can talk to. Let the coach know it’s not working and you’d like to try something else, then make the suggestion.
If you don’t have a coach who’s open to suggestions, you may have to take more drastic action. One thing you can do is substitute a peel drop for the fastball. A pitch with movement is much tougher to hit, and a peel drop pretty much looks the same as a fastball, especially from the bench. For hitters who tend to stand up as they swing it’s a great pitch, because they’ll pull the bat up and over the ball as it moves down. For hitters who can follow it down, the tendency will be to hit ground balls; hopefully your infield is up to fielding them. Either way, it’s better than watching a home run go over the fence.
Understand that this strategy is more of a last resort. You shouldn’t go changing the pitch calls on a whim. But if what’s going on just isn’t working, and your “survival” is at stake, you may need to take things into your own hands. You’ll be doing everyone involved — including the coach — a favor.
Bunts, outs and strategy
Of all the offensive strategies in the game of fastpitch softball, none is more time-honored than using the bunt as a means of advancing a runner into scoring position. In fact, you could say that offensive strategy #1 goes like this: get your leadoff hitter on base, then have the next hitter sacrifice bunt her over to second.
That’s the way it’s always been. And for many that’s the way it continues to be. Yet there is a question as to whether it really makes sense to automatically lay down the bunt when you get a runner on base with no outs, no matter the quality of the opposing team or where you are in the lineup.
Major League Baseball once did a study on the chances of scoring a runner from first base with no outs v. from second base with one out. It came from the study of 50 years worth of statistics. (MLB and the people who follow it intensely love to make with the stats.) According to Cindy Bristow’s must-have book Softball Strategies, Coverages, Signals & Charts, the chances of a runner scoring from first with no outs are 43%. The chances of scoring that same runner from second with one out are 45%. Is it really worth giving up an out automatically to increase your chances of scoring by 2%? It’s a good strategy sometimes — like when you’re in a tight, low-scoring game where you need to play for one run, when your team’s hitters are being dominated by the other team’s pitcher, or you’re in the part of your lineup where rallies go to die.
But it may not be such a good idea when you’re early in the game and you know you can hit the opponent’s pitcher. Why not play for a big inning by letting hitter #2 swing away? She may advance the runner a lot further than second, and you still have all three outs left to try to get her home. Even if she only gets to second, the chances of scoring go up to 60% with no outs. If she makes it to third, you stand a 70% chance of getting her in. I’d say 70% looks a lot better than 45% — and 60 feet away looks better than 120 feet. After all, from third all you need is a wild pitch to score.
I’ve even seen some teams waste two outs trying to bunt a runner to third. Let’s look at the stats there. Again, with a runner on first and no outs your chances of scoring that runner are 43%. If you expend an out to bunt her to second and then another to bunt her to third, your situation is two outs and a runner on third. Your chances of scoring now have actually gone down. Statistically, you have a 32% chance of scoring — 11% less than when you started. How does that make sense? Unless your team is so horrible at swinging the bat that they have no chance of putting the ball in play, you are better off trying to hit that runner around and in.
If you follow softball 101 and bunt her to second, you’re still better off swinging the bat and using a hit to advance her to third. The chances of scoring a runner from third with one out are 54%. That’s a slight advantage over the “house” for you gamblers. Does it really make sense to give up 22% to get that runner to third? I don’t think so. Half of 54% is 27%, so you’re basically cutting your chances of scoring almost in half by sac bunting the runner to third. Who in their right minds wants to cut their chances of scoring in half? Yes, you might get lucky with a wild pitch now and then. But the higher a level you play, the less likely you are to get that luck. In the meantime, you’ve given up a lot of outs — and potential runs — for no reason.
Bunting is a great technique for advancing runners when used intelligently. I’ve done it myself lots of times. But it can also be a liability. Do the math. Make your bunts more strategic and you’ll generate a lot more offense.
Life in the Fastpitch Lane 