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Where Have All the Pitchers Gone? 2025 Edition
Two years ago almost to the day I wrote the post below. Sad to say things don’t seem to have gotten any better so I thought it would be worthwhile to re-post it.
I still believe one of the biggest problems is coaches who are so averse to losing that they won’t give their less experienced pitchers the opportunity to develop. Instead, they go with their Aces all the time, even when they don’t need to. For example, in weekday “friendlies” or pool play games, especially when seeding is going to be determined by a blind draw anyway.
Pitchers who don’t get the opportunity to pitch get discouraged and stop doing it. In the meantime, pitchers who are over-pitched develop over-use injuries and then often become unavailable to pitch when they get older.
It all ends up in a perfect storm of not enough pitchers to go around by the time teams get to 15U/16U. Or sometimes even second year 14U.
Teams need pitchers right now like crops need rain. Let’s try to do better at the early ages and give budding pitchers an opportunity to grow.
Because you never know. Today’s gawky, uncoordinated 11 year old may just turn out to be tomorrow’s stud – if she’s given the incentive to stick with it.
Yes, I know, it sounds like a folk song but it’s a legitimate question. Especially now that we are hot and heavy into the softball tryout season.
If you’re following softball-oriented Facebook groups or forums such as Discuss Fastpitch you’re probably seeing this plea a lot, particularly in the older age groups: Impossibly great team looking for one more bracket pitcher to complete our outstanding roster.
With all the 8-10 year olds jumping into the pitching pool you would think there would be a cornucopia of pitching at every level. It’s not unusual to see box scores on GameChanger that show four or five pitchers each getting an inning of work on a regular basis. And it’s been that way for long before GameChanger existed.
So what happened to all those pitchers?
Well, somewhere along the way they stopped pitching. Or maybe even playing the game entirely.
Sure, some probably found that they just didn’t care for the pressure of being in the circle. And some probably found that they didn’t like all the extra work that goes with being a pitcher. All legit, and to each her own.
But I can’t help but think that the rapid shrinking of the pitching pool might in many cases also be driven by team coaches and parents who are more focused on winning 10U or 12U games or trophies than they are on ensuring their players develop properly.
Take the coach who has 5 pitchers on his/her roster but gives 90% of the innings to the #1 pitcher. Yes, it’s nice to win games and tournaments, but if you’re only really giving one pitcher an opportunity to pitch regularly the others won’t develop.
Then they won’t develop, they’ll fall farther behind, get discouraged by their lack of progress as well as their lack of opportunity, and eventually stop pitching. So now four more are out of the pitcher pool for the future.
Oh, and in the meantime the #1 develops an overuse injury and may end up not pitching either.
Then there are the coaches who set impossible standards for their young, developing pitchers. They tell them in order to pitch they need to “hit their spots” 80% of the time.
Not because it’s necessary – really the only “spots” that are important at the 10U level are ball and strike – but because they heard on TV or read an article that said that’s what college pitchers do. Or because they want to use the vague “hit your spots” as an excuse not to pitch a girl who isn’t going to walk in and dominate every game.
So again, she doesn’t get circle time, falls behind, and eventually gives it up because what’s the point of taking lessons and practicing if you never get to pitch, even in “friendlies” or pool play?
Pitching coaches who say they’re teaching 10 or 12 year olds to throw seven pitches aren’t much help either.
Most 10U and 12U pitchers have enough to do mastering a fastball and and a changeup. Having them work on five other pitches – especially with some of the crazy mechanics I’ve seen them try to use – is a recipe for disaster.
Those pitchers never master their fundamentals. So when the hitters get better all those so-called different pitches turn out to be bullet spin fastballs to different locations that are fairly easy to hit. And then they’re out of the pitching pool because they’re getting hammered all the time.
And the list goes on. If we really want to have more pitchers available at 16U and 18U, parents and coaches have to do more to encourage greater success for more pitchers at the younger levels.
Keep them pitching, keep them developing, and give them opportunities to learn their craft – even when they’re bad at it. Then maybe there won’t be so many teams begging for pitchers or fighting over the same ones at the older levels.
My good friend Jay Bolden and I have started a new podcast called “From the Coach’s Mouth” where we interview coaches from all areas and levels of fastpitch softball as well as others who may not be fastpitch people but have lots of interesting ideas to contribute.
You can find it here on Spotify, as well as on Apple Podcasts, Pandora, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you’re searching, be sure to put the name in quotes, i.e., “From the Coach’s Mouth” so it goes directly to it.
Give it a listen and let us know what you think. And be sure to hit the Like button and subscribe to Life in the Fastpitch Lane for more content like this.
Lead photo by Pixabay 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.
Where Have All the Pitchers Gone?
Yes, I know, it sounds like a folk song but it’s a legitimate question. Especially now that we are hot and heavy into the softball tryout season.
If you’re following softball-oriented Facebook groups or forums such as Discuss Fastpitch you’re probably seeing this plea a lot, particularly in the older age groups: Impossibly great team looking for one more bracket pitcher to complete our outstanding roster.
With all the 8-10 year olds jumping into the pitching pool you would think there would be a cornucopia of pitching at every level. It’s not unusual to see box scores on GameChanger that show four or five pitchers each getting an inning of work on a regular basis. And it’s been that way for long before GameChanger existed.
So what happened to all those pitchers?
Well, somewhere along the way they stopped pitching. Or maybe even playing the game entirely.
Sure, some probably found that they just didn’t care for the pressure of being in the circle. And some probably found that they didn’t like all the extra work that goes with being a pitcher. All legit, and to each her own.
But I can’t help but think that the rapid shrinking of the pitching pool might in many cases also be driven by team coaches and parents who are more focused on winning 10U or 12U games or trophies than they are on ensuring their players develop properly.
Take the coach who has 5 pitchers on his/her roster but gives 90% of the innings to the #1 pitcher. Yes, it’s nice to win games and tournaments, but if you’re only really giving one pitcher an opportunity to pitch regularly the others won’t develop.
Then they won’t develop, they’ll fall farther behind, get discouraged by their lack of progress as well as their lack of opportunity, and eventually stop pitching. So now four more are out of the pitcher pool for the future.
Oh, and in the meantime the #1 develops an overuse injury and may end up not pitching either.
Then there are the coaches who set impossible standards for their young, developing pitchers. They tell them in order to pitch they need to “hit their spots” 80% of the time.
Not because it’s necessary – really the only “spots” that are important at the 10U level are ball and strike – but because they heard on TV or read an article that said that’s what college pitchers do. Or because they want to use the vague “hit your spots” as an excuse not to pitch a girl who isn’t going to walk in and dominate every game.
So again, she doesn’t get circle time, falls behind, and eventually gives it up because what’s the point of taking lessons and practicing if you never get to pitch, even in “friendlies” or pool play?
Pitching coaches who say they’re teaching 10 or 12 year olds to throw seven pitches aren’t much help either.
Most 10U and 12U pitchers have enough to do mastering a fastball and and a changeup. Having them work on five other pitches – especially with some of the crazy mechanics I’ve seen them try to use – is a recipe for disaster.
Those pitchers never master their fundamentals. So when the hitters get better all those so-called different pitches turn out to be bullet spin fastballs to different locations that are fairly easy to hit. And then they’re out of the pitching pool because they’re getting hammered all the time.
And the list goes on. If we really want to have more pitchers available at 16U and 18U, parents and coaches have to do more to encourage greater success for more pitchers at the younger levels.
Keep them pitching, keep them developing, and give them opportunities to learn their craft – even when they’re bad at it. Then maybe there won’t be so many teams begging for pitchers or fighting over the same ones at the older levels.
Yes, Virginia, In Pitching Speed Does Matter
Spin. Spot. Speed. Everyone involved in fastpitch pitching, whether as a player, parent, coach, instructor, or just interested observer loves to talk about those three attributes.
One of the most common statements you’ll see in Facebook fastpitch group discussions is something to the effect of, “Speed is good. But it’s really your ability to hit your spots and spin the ball that matters.”
In other words, don’t worry about whether you have speed. As long as you can throw movement pitches to the spots coaches call you’ll be fine.
The people who say these kinds of things remind me of this little burst of honesty from the movie “Liar, Liar:”
To me, it’s often the same with the speed discussion. “Speed isn’t that important” is usually something parents of kids who don’t have it say.
The reality is, speed is not only important on its own. It’s a door-opener to opportunities someone who doesn’t have it is less likely to get.
Take the idea of playing in college.
A college coach goes to watch a travel or high school game. The pitcher on one side is hitting her spots but doesn’t throw very hard, roughly in the mid-50s. She is getting people out primarily with weak hits, and maybe 3-4 Ks.
The pitcher on the other side is throwing gas, perhaps in the low to mid- 60s, but clearly has control trouble. Still, despite walking 6 hitters she also strikes out 10-12. Which one is the college coach going to talk to after the game?
If you guessed the girl throwing heat you’re right. The college coach will figure he/she can teach that girl to hit her spots a lot more easily than he/she can teach the other one to throw 65 mph.
The same is true at travel ball, high school, or even rec league tryouts. Coaches are generally going to pick the girl who throws the fastest with less accuracy over the one who is spot-on but has mediocre speed at best.
We really saw that at the 2021 Womens College World Series. In closeup after closeup, the camera showed “rise balls,” “drop balls,” “curve balls,” “screwballs” and whatever other variations there were being thrown with bullet/gyro spin.
That’s a ball that isn’t likely to actually move much at all horizontally or vertically, unless there is some seam-shifted wake action going on.
But those pitches, when thrown at 70 mph, were more than effective because, well, it’s just darned hard to hit a pitch going that fast no matter how much of a direct line it takes from the pitcher’s hand to wherever it ends up by the plate. Even if it’s well out of the strike zone by that time.
Here’s another reality. Take two pitchers who are struggling to get hitters out. One is hitting her spots, but the team’s opponents are crushing her in game after game.
The other is more random, but gets more Ks, swings and misses, or weaker hits because she just flat-out throws harder than the opposing hitters are used to seeing. Which one do you think the head coach is going to give more leeway to, or give more chances to prove herself?
Of course, this is about the time that people say, “But Cat Osterman…” Or baseball fanatics say “But Greg Maddux…”
Yup, I will grant you that, although neither were exactly slow. Cat in her heyday threw in the low 60s, which especially at that time was only a few mph under the top speedsters. And Maddux threw around 93 early in his career, which is hardly slow.
So here’s what I’ll on that. IF your pitcher can move the ball like Cat (or Greg), she can probably be pretty successful with just spot and spin. But that’s a pretty big IF.
If not, it will probably be in her best interest to work on adding as much speed as she can, which will make everything else she does more effective.
I’m not saying she has to be Monica Abbott or Yukiko Ueno or Rachel Garcia or any of the other members of the 70 mph club. Those are rare birds.
She may never even hit 60 mph. That’s still kind of a magic number in womens fastpitch softball for a good reason – not everyone can do it, whether due to genetics, training or the desire to work at it.
What I am saying is don’t go thinking if your favorite pitcher is hitting her spots and getting some spin on the ball that the speed of her pitches doesn’t matter. It does.
Keep working at it. Put in the time in mechanics, strength, speed and agility and whatever other training you can find to help her elevate her pitch speeds to the highest level of which she’s capable.
It’s well worth the investment.
Remember, They’re Still Kids
I am sometimes shocked at the expectations coaches (and parents) seem to have these days for their youth fastpitch softball players. I’m talking pretty much everyone below college players.
You’ll hear coaches rail to 14 year old pitchers about the importance of pitchers hitting spots – by which they mean not ever missing them, not even by a couple of inches, or only missing two or three in a game. You’ll hear coaches telling 12 year olds about the importance of bat control and being able to hit behind the runner. You’ll see coaches yank a 16 year old out of a game in the middle of an inning for misplaying a hard-hit ground ball. And so forth.
Yes, it’s definitely easier to coach if all you have to do is turn in your lineup card and sit back while all your players execute everything perfectly. You can look like a real genius that way.
But the reality is, those players out on the field are still kids. Which means they’re subject to the kind of mistakes kids make.
It’s unrealistic to expect a team of young players to execute the game at the speed and skill level of the players you see on TV. Especially during the Women’s College World Series, when presumably the best of the best are playing.
(Of course, even those players make mistakes – sometimes on what seems like very routine plays. Oddly enough, their coaches don’t scream at them or yank them out in the middle of an inning. But I digress.)
I really think the key is we get so caught up in trying to win games that we forget those players we see are on the field are just kids. So to put it into perspective, I thought it might help to make a list of OTHER things a college-age person might do, or be allowed to do and then ask: would you let your young child do this? For example:
- Drink alcohol (given that the legal drinking age is 21)
- Rent a car (the minimum rental age is 25)
- Drive an Uber/Lyft/Taxi, even with a valid driver’s license
- Buy a new car without a co-signer
- Vote
- Rent an apartment or office space
- Buy a house
- Sell real estate
- Purchase airline tickets
- Purchase lottery tickets
- Gamble in a casino
- Fly an airplane
- Get a safe deposit box
Many of the things on this list are simple, mundane things adults do every day and take for granted. But there is no way you’d want your 12 or 14 year old doing any of them, and probably wouldn’t even want an 18 year old doing most of them.
Why not? Because they’re kids, and as such they don’t think like adults or act like adults so they’re not ready for adult responsibilities. They still have growing and learning to do before they can be held to the standards required to do those things on a regular basis.
So what would make you think they’re ready to play fastpitch softball at the same level as the upper half of 1% of college players you see on TV?
Kids make mistakes. That’s often how they learn. Some kids develop slower than others and may not quite have the hand/eye coordination of their peers, much less players who are 6, 10 or more years older.
Kids mature at different rates too, and while any kid should have some measure of self-control, it’s harder for some than others not to have a mental meltdown when they feel they’ve let themselves, their parents, their coaches, and their teammates down. They just may not have the experience with failure yet to be able to “just shake it off” and bounce right back.
So as you watch (or coach) youth games this weekend, keep in mind all the things you wouldn’t want the players on the field doing outside of softball. Then remember why – because they’re kids.
Maybe it’ll help you lower your blood pressure a bit and enjoy the games a little more.
Another Approach to Improving Pitchers’ Ability to Hit Spots
A few months ago I put up a post that showed a way to help fastpitch softball pitchers who were struggling with hitting their inside and outside spots by exaggerating the locations. The idea is that by making the adjustments larger you can help them get a feel for what it takes to move the ball from side-to-side.
Here’s another way to do it, using kind of the polar opposite approach. This is more for fine-tuning, when the pitcher is already pretty good at going inside/outside but you want to make it more precise and reliable.
All it takes is some scrap wood and a couple of pool noodles. What you want to do is create two narrow barriers, then have the pitcher attempt to throw the ball between them. Here’s how it looks from the back side:
What you’re trying to do is create a visual that helps the pitcher home in on exactly where the ball needs to go. Sometimes, when they’re looking at a catcher against a background, it’s hard to focus on that small spot. This setup helps narrow the field so to speak.
Pretty fancy, huh?
The holders for the pool noodles were a couple of scraps of 1×6 pine board with a hole drilled partially through them. The holes should be just slightly larger than the diameter of the dowel rod.
Once you cut the dowel rod to size, glue it in place and then drive a screw in from the underside. That should hold it securely.
This side looks even better.
As you can see in the photo and the video, I didn’t use a very long dowel rod, which means the pool noodles aren’t very straight. I could have gone longer, but if the pitcher hits the noodle (as she is likely to do) and it is rigid the deflection could hurt whoever is catching if they’re not wearing equipment.
Besides, when they’re hanging over like this you can create some interesting holes to throw through, such as having the tops touch to work on keeping the ball low as well as on the corner.
You can do it from a 45 degree angle, like Juliana is doing here (due to a sore knee) or from a full pitch position. You may want to start with the former just to get the feel down before moving on to the latter, which will be more challenging.
Once the pitcher is becoming more consistent you can even make a game out of it, challenging her to make 7 out of 10 to win a prize or suffer a consequence – whichever fits your coaching style. That will add a little more game pressure too.
Or, if you have two or more pitchers there have them compete for who can do the most.
The overall idea is to aim small and miss small. So if you have a pitcher who needs to gain more precision in hitting her spots, give this drill a try.
Drill for helping softball pitchers learn to go inside and outside
It’s no great revelation to say that working the corners by being able to hit your spots inside and outside is a critical skill for fastpitch softball pitchers. The easiest pitches to hit are the ones down the middle, so once you can do that reliably the next step is learning to never throw there again (except maybe on a 3-0 count).
Of course, it’s easy to say “you have to hit your spots.” It’s another thing for fastpitch pitchers, especially younger ones, to be able to do it.
There are a lot of moving parts involved in fastpitch pitching, and going inside and outside reliably requires being able to make fine motor adjustments. Not every pitcher is able to do that on-command.
So with that in mind, here’s a quick video blog that shows a drill to help pitchers get the concept of making adjustments by starting broader and working their way back in. The drill will work no matter what technique you use to throw inside/outside.
It’s being demonstrated with an outside curve ball, by the way, but it will work for any pitch.
Tip to help with throwing the outside pitch
A couple of weeks ago I was working with a new student named Jasmine. She is a high school pitcher who had received some good training previously, but still needs some refinement in a few areas. 
One thing we were working on was throwing to locations – inside and outside. She was doing fine with inside – I find most pitchers have a side that comes easily and a side they struggle with, and for most the easy side is inside – but having trouble with the outside pitch.
Each time she tried the ball either went down the middle or off to the right. She just couldn’t quite seem to hone in on the mechanics to go left.
The cage we were working in had a protective screen for pitchers (or coaches) to duck behind when throwing batting practice. And that’s when the idea hit me. I dragged the screen about 15-20 feet in front of her and basically cut off everything from the center to the right.
Jasmine gave me a nervous smile at first but gamely decided to give it a try. With the right half cut off she was able to focus on the left and get the feel of throwing properly outside. After a few successful pitches with the screen in place we removed the visual aid. Lo and behold, she started popping the glove right on the spot.
If you have a pitcher who is struggling with hitting a spot, give this a try. Just be sure to set the screen up far enough away that if the pitcher does hit it the ball doesn’t bounce back into her. (Don’t be fooled by the photo – objects in picture are farther away than they appear.)
Pitching: hitting your spots not the be-all and end-all
Back to focusing on softball with something that’s been on my mind for a little while. It never ceases to amaze me how obsessed coaches often are with whether their pitchers hit their spots. Especially at the younger ages.
It’s almost like that’s the only thing they know about pitching. Anytime a pitcher gives up a hit (or even comes close to it) some coach is likely to yell “you need to hit your spots.”
There are a couple of flaws in that thinking. The first is that the value of hitting a particular spot when it’s called is directly proportional to how good the person calling the pitches is at setting up hitters.
I’ve known of coaches who basically call low and outside fastballs 90% of the time. I’ve heard about coaches that call screwball after screwball because, well, they saw screwballs work on TV. I’ve seen coaches refuse to call the changeup because they prefer that their pitchers throw heat.
The problem with that is predictability. If you’re throwing to the same location all the time it probably won’t take long for hitters to figure it out and adjust. Speed kills, but as we saw in the last WCWS, even a 70 mph pitch isn’t enough alone to overcome good hitters. So sure as shootin’ a 45 or 55 mph pitch won’t be. You need a mix of speeds and locations.
There’s also an art to setting up a hitter. It takes time and effort to learn how to do it. For example, when a hitter fouls a ball straight back, a good follow-up pitch is a changeup. Of course, if you do it every time you become predictable.
When you get ahead in the count 0-2, you don’t want to throw a strike – you want to throw a ball that looks like a strike. Maybe a curve, maybe a high fastball or rise. But again, you need to mix it up to keep hitters from settling in.
An inexperienced coach often doesn’t know that. So they’ll call that favorite pitch even when it isn’t appropriate. The pitcher would actually be doing the coach a favor by missing the spot, truthfully. I’ve seen more than one coach saved by a pitcher who didn’t throw what was called.
The other reason hitting spots is often overrated is that it isn’t the best measure of a pitcher. Coaches like it because it can be quantified. They also like it because they can use it as justification for elevating one pitcher over another – i.e., pitcher A hits her spots and pitcher B doesn’t, so A must be better than B.
But the truth is the single best measure of a pitcher is whether she can get hitters out. She may not put the ball exactly where the coach called it, but if she’s getting hitters out what difference does it make? Hitting spots alone doesn’t get hitters out. You get no credit for that from the umpire, just as having a perfect swing doesn’t entitle you to get on base. I’ll take a sloppy pitcher who can get hitters out over a precise one who can’t any day of the week.
That’s not to say pitchers shouldn’t work on hitting their spots – they should. If for not other reason than they may play for a coach who actually does know how to call a game – or better yet how to teach a catcher to call one. If they can put the ball right where they want it they can really take command.
But coaches, don’t let it become your determining factor. See the whole picture and give some space to the pitchers who can get people out.
Life in the Fastpitch Lane 