2 Keys to Confidence - and - How to Pitch-Call When They Don’t Fit the Scout

Table of Contents

• 2 Keys to Help Confidence

• How to Pitch-Call When They Don’t Fit the Scout

Total Reading Time: 4 minutes

This week we’re going to explore 2 things that can help improve our pitcher’s confidence and look at how to pitch-call for those teams or hitters that don’t fit the scout.

Let’s go!

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2 Keys to Help Confidence

Confidence is crucial for all athletes, particularly pitchers. Any yet finding truley confident players is like searching for a tiger in the wild…we’ve heard they exist but few people have ever seen one.

Confidence is just another word for “belief”. It’s a strong sense of knowing you’re capable of doing something. The more you do something the more belief, or confidence you have that you can do that thing again. Or at least that’s how it should be.

Our pitchers spend so much time pitching, improving their craft, and yet as their skill gets stronger their confidence seems to stay brittle. Maybe because they just “hope” their skill shows up when they need it, and maybe because they don’t want to screw up.

I’m not a scientist so I don’t technically know why, I just know it’s prevelant.

So here are 2 things I would tell my pitchers everyday. Every Day. They’d get sick of hearing me say it - but it helped them A LOT:

How to Pitch-Call When They Don’t Fit the Scout

This time of year we’re spending as much time watching film, scouting and game-planning for our opponents as we do sitting in the dugout calling pitches. Scout, scout, scout - call, call, call.

It’s so addicting when all that effort works out and you shutdown your opponents and call a great game.

But what about those teams, and weekends, that don’t seem to have a pattern. Your opponents are so unorthodox or undisciplined that you can’t nail their hitters down enough to figure out a plan. What then?

If this hasn’t happened yet to you it will. And you’ll notice it in real-time once the game starts, so your adjustments also have to be in real-time.

Even teams have patterns, you’ve just got to look deeper for them. So let’s check out what things you can do to pitch-call in real-time in these situations:

1. First off, know that it’s fairly common that your hard work scouting won’t matchup with either some teams you face, or some hitters on some teams. It’s going to happen.

2. It might also be the case that the pitching you have right now just can’t pitch to the scout, or don’t have anyone who matches up to the scout.

3. When you face a scrappy or undisciplined hitting team this kind of team doesn’t really have a pattern as far as bat path, swing patterns, zone weaknesses go. Just know that there IS a pattern somewhere, you’ve just got to be patient and hunt deeper to find it. Look for things like:

   • do they take the 1st pitch?

   • do they swing 1st pitch?

   • do they swing early in the count?

   • do they watch pitches?

   • Look for ANY patterns you can find without putting pattern types in a box because this can limit your thinking

4. When you run across this in real time and you realize your scout doesn’t match-up at all, stay calm, take your time and look for ANY pattern, or a pattern in their best hitter. AND KNOW YOU WILL FIND SOMETHING.

5. If you still can’t find anything, then forget batter weakness and switch your focus and call to your Pitcher Strengths. Even if your pitchers aren’t very accurate they’ll be more accurate if you stick to their strengths…calling based on batters weaknesses can often result in you calling pitchers 3rd and 4th pitches, so it can appear that your pitchers don’t have good command. Put your pitchers in a stronger position by shifting to Pitcher Strengths instead of Batter’s Weaknesses.

6. Mix in more off speed sand changeups.

7. Ask your catchers what they’re noticing, ask your pitchers too. Games like this are usually “all hands on deck” affairs. That’s ok. They have a different view-point than you do. Plus it empowers them!

8. Finally, games like this are never pretty, easy, or patterned. So trust your gut. It’s as if your Google Maps suddenly doesn’t work, but you know the beach is to the west, mountains to the east and where you’re going is north. You can still get there without a map, it’ll just take a lot longer, so be patient and know you’ll find the way!

I hope you enjoyed today’s Curveball Chronicles Issue.

Be sure to check out PitchingCoachCentral.com for all past issues as well as news on this year’s Pitching Summit!

See You Next Week!