The Bullpen vs Games plus Managing Walks

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Total Reading Time: 9 minutes

Today we’re going to look at some stats that will help limit your walks, along with some insight and solutions for performance anxiety.

Let’s go!

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

Key Pitching Stat to Help Limit Those Walks

Recently I came across a stat called EARLY and AHEAD Percentage (E+A%). It has both the Early and the Ahead elements combined to come up with the final percentage, but first let’s check out what we’re talking about.

EARLY – Any ball put in play on 3 pitches or less. These are 0-0 counts, 0-1 counts, 1-0 counts and 1-1 counts. So, any ball put in play either an out, an error or a hit, it doesn’t matter. 3 pitches or less with a ball put in play it counts as an EARLY. NOTE: this excludes 2-0 count because that’s a “behind” count.

AHEAD – Any time you get to a 0-2 or 1-2 count. It doesn’t matter if it’s a hit, strikeout, error, groundball or flyball out it counts as an AHEAD. This doesn’t just have to be balls put in play.

Add up all your EARLIES & all your AHEADS, divide by Batter’s Faced and that’s your E+A%

• MLB average is 73.8%

• College baseball average is 68%

Try to get around 70% and watch your Walk Rate drop. 75-80% is elite and Walk Rate becomes minimal

 NOTE:

• EARLIES are only balls put in play.

• You can’t get credit in both columns at same time (for instance if you strike someone out in 3 pitches. That only counts as AHEAD since EARLY has to be put in play.

 I found this courtesy of Jared Gaynor at Pitching Coach U. 👇

Now let’s quickly apply this to you. Your pitchers are doing pretty good, but giving up too many runs in the 1st and/or 2nd innings.

• First, make sure your expectations are reasonable for the strength of opponents you’re playing.

• Next, go back and chart all the games, inning-by-inning, using this A+E% calculation. Be sure to total the A+E% for the complete game - and also for the innings where you’ve gotten in trouble.

• As a good comparison, pick a couple games where your pitchers didn’t get into trouble and chart those for A+E%.

• This will really help you notice on a much granular level just what your pitchers are doing to cause the trouble instead of simply coming up with “they keep getting behind and walking people.” Remember, that outs of any kind are the goal.

Managing Nerves - The Bullpen vs Games

This is a SUPER important puzzle piece for pitching coaches – how come so many of our pitchers are great in bullpens and absolutely suck in games? Aren’t they listening to us?!?!?

Sadly, it usually doesn’t come down to them listening to us, or caring enough, or trying enough. Those things are usually in overdrive, so thinking they need to do them more will only end in greater disaster.

Before we dive into the solutions, let’s look at a couple things that while they might seem trivial, are VERY important:

• First - Nerves Are Normal. Everyone has them, from world-class athletes & Navy SEALS, down to mere mortals.

• Second - Pressure / Stress is Part of it. Accept It and Move On. Feeling like you shouldn’t feel pressure or the stress from pressure is enraging your self-judgement and breaking you down even more. Pressure and Stress are things you have to accept if you want to stand in the circle come game time.

Understanding performance behavior is something that fascinates me, and I’ve recently been deep diving into two different Sports Performance Experts: Alex Auerbach (@AlexAuerbachPhD / alexauerbach.com) and Sam Martin (sammartin.me). Both have free newsletters and both have excellent, affordable eCourses. I don’t work for them, I just love sharing great resources.

Performance anxiety comes down to 1 thing…The fear of Negative Consequences. It’s mental time travel where an athlete will worry about the future – what someone will think like:

• what if I let my teammates down

• if I don’t come through I’ll get benched

• what if I hit her

• I can’t give up another homerun

• I better not wild pitch it

• on and on

All of these kinds of thoughts are futuristic. They haven’t even happened yet and the pitcher is already worrying about them. BIG TIME. Think of it like this…when a pitcher’s in the game she’s being attacked from all sides; the umpire’s zone, her own fielders, the hitters, her own pitches, her own mind, the fans…the list of things she feels area attacking her are almost endless. And her mind is constantly trying to fend off these attackers.

This kind of worrying typically doesn’t happen in bullpens. The fear of negative consequences isn’t really a thing in the bullpen, and as a result, pitchers are freer to focus on what they’re actually doing instead of worrying about all the bad that could happen. There aren’t any attackers in the bullpen so your pitcher’s mind is free to focus on simply pitching.

Over the years I’ve found some ways to almost re-wire a pitcher’s thought process. These “things” are as important as any physical skill a pitcher has. I’ve found that those pitchers who excel in the biggest games have the greatest ability to control their attention, and to keep it zeroed in on the “Keys for This Pitch. Right Now,” versus thinking about the list of tragedies they’re trying to avoid.

Pitch-specific thoughts are a few key things the pitcher must do in order to Nail This Pitch. Crazytown thoughts are the things pitchers worry about “not doing” that only ensure that it’s a speed train to crazytown

You can see that these are simple and specific thoughts, yet they’re vital for this pitcher to ensure her Rise works.

Olympians & World Class Athletes also go through these feelings. It’s not that they have gold medal emotions, but because they perform in such an intense environment they’ve had to build up incredible emotional resilience in order to handle the big wins and the devastating losses – or else they can’t survive at that level.

Great Video on How to Beat Performance Anxiety Fast - Here’s a great YouTube video Sam Martin did that is packed with great information and solutions:

STRATEGIES:

As Sam tells us in this video - the thing is we already have strategies to handle stress. They’ve allowed us to get where we are today and allowed your players to become college athletes – to successfully get through all the stressors in our pasts.

Beat Stress – vs – Avoid It:

1. Don’t try to stop your feelings or emotions

2. Stay present-focused (avoid time travel)

3. Get enough sleep. This one might seem lame but consider that a sleepless night can raise anxiety by up to 30%. And, sleep deprivation is the effective forms of torture.

   a. Stop Eating 3 hours before bed

   b. Stop Drinking Fuids 2 hours before bed

   c. Stop using Screens 1 hour before bed

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!