What's Happened to Our Pitcher's Control?

Table of Contents

• What’s Happened to Our Pitcher's Control?

• How to Coach Them Through the Ups & Downs

Total Reading Time: 4 minutes

Lots of ups and downs this past weekend so I’m diving into your Pitcher’s Control along with how to coach them through the Ups and Downs. Plus - we’ve got another Pitching Zoom this morning - join us!

Let’s get to it!

I’d love to have you join our community of curious pitching coaches!

What’s Happened to Our Pitcher's Control?

I don’t need to tell any of you that control is a HUGE issue right now. There are lots of reasons for this beyond the fact that “my pitchers just can’t throw strikes.” So let’s look at a couple:

• Right now the game is designed to favor the offense

• We’ve got a pop-tart sized strike zone

• Bat technology is constantly improving (think Mizuno bat)

• Film on top of film on your pitchers

• Travelball pitchers come to college used to anything close being called a strike

• Pitchers focused on the movement of a pitch instead of controlling the movement into the zone

• A huge focus on velo at the expense of any control

• Pitchers are used to only throwing a certain pitch to a certain zone instead of conrolling the movement and throwing it to another zone or side of the plate

• Just to name a few…

I saw a stat recently that made me realize this lack of command isn’t exclusive to college softball. Last year, in Major League Baseball pitchers had an average miss of over 14 inches!!!

Since the MLB homeplate is only 17 inches wide, this means pitchers are missing almost an entire plate away from their intended target! Major League Pitchers.

After looking at this graphic I don’t know if it helps make us feel better, or worse. My initial reaction was damn, they miss too! But then I quickly thought, crap, now what…

I don’t think it’s as important to figure out WHY they’re missing, as it is to understand WHERE and on WHAT.

One way to quickly start regaining your pitcher’s control is to Work With Her Misses. I know this might sound weird, since you’re trying to get your pitchers not to miss - but that’s a longer term project, intended more for the Fall. Using their misses is something that can happen sooner without getting your pitchers to feel crappy about themselves.

To help figure out how to “figure out their misses” look at the chart below. This is a simple low tech way to know how your pitcher’s pitches move, so that you can start working with her misses.

To do this chart you just stand behind homeplate (or behind the pitcher - whichever is easiest in your setup), and have your pitcher throw 10 of her top pitch to it’s top location, So, in this example, it’s Fastball to the Top and Middle Right, Drop to both Inside and Outside low locations, Curveball to Outer Middle and Riseball to Outer Up.

You simply put a dot where each pitch lands. Keep in mind that misses aren’t good or bad, we’re just trying to learn “how” your pitcher misses and then use those misses to her advantage.

In this chart, I think we can agree this pitcher’s Curve-Out, Fastball-In and Drop-Out are pretty spot-on. Another thing to see from this chart is that ALL of her pitches are consistent - meaning, they’re all located in pretty tight clumps. Its just that the clumps aren’t close enough to their intended targets.

What “Using Her Misses” means:

• Fastball - Top Right: she’ll need to aim a little more UP and LEFT for her Fastball - or else use this pitch as a Screwball instead of expecting it to stay straight (it tends to drift armside).

• Riseball - Top Left: She needs to aim about a glove’s length lower (unless they’re swinging at this pitch the keep throwing it there. But know where this tends to go and have her aim accordingly)

• Drop - Bottom Right: She might need to aim this a bit higher, unless she’s getting swings and misses from it, then leave it as is.

None of this is rocket science, but what often happens is that pitchers (and too often us as their coaches) expect NEVER to miss, so we see misses as bad, instead of learning how to use them.

Learning how to re-aim will be foreign to your pitchers as they’ve let themselves believe that their pitches “break too much”, or “break too soon”, or “just suck”.

Right now, in the heat of the season with games coming at you like rockets, it’s going to be tough to make 3”- 4” inch adjustments to 3 different pitches in 3 different locations. Not that it can’t be done, but you’re always under a time crunch in-season, so the quicker adjustment is for your pitcher to:

1. See where she tends to throw the pitch

2. Know the adjustment she needs to make in her aim

3. Accept “being close” vs “perfect”

4. You might need to change how you call pitches to better utilize her misses

We can talk more about “control” on today’s Pitching Zoom - 9am pt, 10am mt, 11am ct, and noon et. See you soon!

How to Coach Them Through the Ups & Downs

Right about now you’re definately dealing with a multitude of personalities, mentalities and adjustments within your staff.

Certain pitchers are struggling and having a hard time coming out of it while others might have a rough game but turn it around on their next outing. Some of it is helped by data and approach, while most of it is helped by attitude and mentality.

I saw something today that really resonated with me, and clicked in regards to helping our pitchers. This statement about “Glimmers” is simple, but brilliant. It basically is saying that whatever you focus on you bring more of into your life.

This applies to our pitchers, and to US. If we’re constantly yapping about mistakes our pitchers are making we’re going to keep seeing them, just as those things keep sticking in our pitchers brains so they keep creating them.

But, if we were to practice “Glimmers” and comment about any positive things and moments that happened, we’d start to see more of them. I’m not saying this will turn around a pitcher’s performance in an afternoon. But I am saying we find in life what we look for.

Of course this doesn’t mean we’re going to ignore any teaching moments, or just coach like there’s nothing but rainbows and unicorns. But nobody is getting better when all they see, say or hear is negative. That bums us out and it bums our pitchers out too.

Instead, try starting with something like “let’s talk about any Glimmers we saw today”. They don’t have to be huge, but they do have to be true. Think of Glimmers as magic glitter sprinkled into the universe. Who doesn’t want magic glitter?

Hope you enjoyed today’s Curveball Chronicles Issue. If there’s something specific you want to read about send that to me at [email protected], or text me at (813) 368-2048

See You Next Week!