Tips for Playing that Conference Game 3

Table of Contents

• Pitching Coach Central - My New Website

• Tips for Playing that Conference Game 3

Total Reading Time: 4 minutes

Today we’re looking at some things you can do in Game 3 to keep the advantage along with an exciting announcement about my new website!

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

Pitching Coach Central - My New Website

With the growing popularity of this newsletter along with the Pitching Summits, I felt it was time to make it easy for everyone to find things by putting it all in one place - on a website.

Sounds easy, but for anyone whose ever done it, it’s anything but. It’s taken a long time but Pitching Coach Central is now live at PitchingCoachCentral.com

Here you’ll find ALL my past newsletters in one place, all the info on the upcoming Pitching Summit (there isn’t any yet - ha), and the scoop on

This website is about all of us. It’s meant to be a resource for college pitching coaches to Learn and Share, Grow and Develop. Look it over. If you have any suggestions on how to improve it - please let me know!

I hope you enjoy it!

Tips for Playing that Conference Game 3

Most of us started conference this weekend, or will soon enough, and this changes things. Instead of playing 4 random teams once, you now play one team 3 times. This ups the degree of difficulty, by a lot.

It sounds like a joke, like something “ripped from the headlines”, but here’s some actual 3rd game scores from today: 13-12, 10-7, 14-3. 14-5, 8-5, 10-2 on and on…

While pitching in today’s climate is tough, it’s tough-squared by the time they’ve seen your pitchers for their 7th, 8th and 9th at-bats of the series.

The hitters know what your pitchers have, plus they have a $500 bat. But fortunately, there are some things you can do to try and better deal with this 3rd and critical game of the series.

The 3rd game is usually a slugfest so brace yourself for it. Plus:

• Have all your pitchers on red-alert and ready to see action.

• Know you’ve seen their batters 6 times too so use this knowledge to your advantage.

• How have they adjusted - moved up, moved back, crowded the plate, backed off the plate? Note it, and gameplan for it.

• Use your pitching changes strategically - which pitchers matchup better against which hitters? Which hitter in their lineup is “hot” for the weekend? Who don’t you want to beat you? They’ve played their hand so be ready for it.

• Call your game with a different wrinkle. You’ll have the same pitchers with the same pitches, but put them in different order, use the changeup as the fastball (pitch backwards if it works for that pitcher), don’t try and be cute with pitches that your pitcher can’t command.

• Get the outs you should get. Walking the 8 & 9 hitters because you didn’t attack with your best pitches to stay ahead in the count will eventually kill you.

• Work with your catcher to help settle your pitcher down if she needs it, or to break the other team’s momentum.

• Avoid mound trips too early since you’ll likely need them…possibly lots of them.

• Prep your pitchers for a high-scoring game. Let them know that doesn’t mean you think they suck, but things change drastically for the 3rd game. Let’s do our best and let’s finish with 1 more run than they have.

• Keep your cool. A pitcher who did well in game 1 doesn’t mean she’ll do the same in game 3, but it doesn’t mean she can’t win. Pitchers need your support and encouragement during this likely scoring barrage since they’ve been brainwashed to think they need to throw a complete game shutout - othwewise they suck.

I’d love to hear your approach to game 3. Let’s talk about it on today’s zoom - join us!

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!