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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.
No Need to Paint the Corners with a Changeup
Recently my friend and fellow pitching coach Linda Lensch, a trainer with the NJ Ruthless and owner of Greased Lightning Fastpitch High Performance Instruction LLC attended an online presentation about how new technologies are improving and changing the game.
Linda was kind enough to share the PowerPoint of the presentation with a few of us pitching coaches. Included was some data, presented by Florida State assistant coach Troy Cameron, that came out of pitching tracking by YakkerTech at five D1 schools.
One of the things I found most interesting was the heat map on changeup locations and results, which you can see on the far left.
Notice how both the vast majority of pitch locations AND the vast majority of whiffs (swings and misses) aren’t on the corners. Instead, they are dead red.
I have been preaching this for years based on my own observations and experience, and have heard many college coaches say the same thing. You don’t have to be clever or try to paint the corners if you have an effective changeup. Just throw it down the middle, mid-thigh-high or below, and you’ll get the desired effect – a whiff.
Now we have the data to prove it.
I’ll say it again a little louder for those in the back, and for those who have been coaching he same way for 20 years and don’t like new information: YOU DON’T NEED TO PAINT THE CORNERS WITH A CHANGEUP. JUST THROW IT DEAD RED.
What does this mean from a practical standpoint?
For one, pitchers can quit wasting time trying to lean how to paint the corners with a changeup and instead focus their time on disguising the fact that it IS a changeup.
Most pitchers start out learning to throw different pitches down the middle, and then once they can do that will move on to moving them out. In this case, once a pitcher can throw it low and slow without giving it away in her motion she can move on to other pitches.
It also means coaches can quit insisting until their hair is on fire that their pitchers must be able to spot their changeups inside and out. Less stress for the pitcher and the pitch caller.
The pitchers’ parents can also relax in the stands if they see their daughters throwing changeups down the middle. It’s fine, dude or dudette. That’s where it’s most effective.
Why is it most effective down the middle? Now we get into speculation and theories, but I have a pretty good suspicion on that topic based on 20+ years of teaching that pitch.
The whole point of a changeup is to either induce a hitter to swing well ahead of the ball arriving at the plate or confuse her on what she’s seeing to the point where she lets the pitch go by before she can process it. The way you do that is by bringing the body and arm at one speed while having the ball travel at a different, slower speed. Easier said than done, by the way.
It’s like a reverse pitching machine. With a machine, the feeder’s arm usually moves glacially slow (and may even fumble putting the ball in the chute) while the pitch is delivered at 55, 60, 65, etc. mph. The arm speed and the pitch speed don’t match up, so the hitter is perpetually behind the pitch unless she know the keys to hitting off a machine.
With the changeup the opposite is true. The body and especially the arm are traveling through space at a rate of speed that matches the pitcher’s fastest pitch (usually the fastball), but the design of the pitch allows it to be delivered 12-15 mph slower than the fastest pitch without any visible clues that it will be slower.
That’s why you see hitters’ knees buckle when a well-thrown change comes at them. The visual clues and the reality don’t match up and they contort themselves into a pretzel trying to adjust on the fly.
And if you can do that as a pitcher, down the middle works just fine. In fact it’s probably preferable because it can fool umpires too, so why not make it easier for them to call?
Now, before anyone starts saying “Oh, that only works at the lower levels” remember where this data comes from. It comes from five colleges that tracked every pitch of their pitchers and their opponents during home games.
And since these are not cheap systems by any means, you can bet that these were some pretty big schools, i.e., ones you see on TV all the time. They’re the only ones with the budgets to afford it.
So if it works at that level, you can be pretty sure it will work at yours.
The data doesn’t lie. It’s all there in black and white and red.
Quit wasting time focusing on painting the corners with changeups and just turn your pitchers loose to deliver them where they will be most effective based on the data: dead red.
You’ll get better results. And your pitchers will have one less thing to worry about.
