Total Reading Time: 4 minutes

Happy Monday. The first weekend is behind us and now the lessons start. Some pitchers had shinning outings, moments or pitches, while others struggled. Let’s dive deeper into a great drill for Focus and how to view your recent pitch calling decisions.

So let’s Go!

Table of Contents

• Knock-Out Challenge for Focus

• How to Grade Your Pitch-Calling Decisions

Knock-Out Challenge for Focus

If your pitchers are anything like ours then they tend to do better in the bullpen than they do in the game. The issue basically comes down to their focus. It’s not that they can’t focus, or aren’t focusing, it’s that their focus isn’t challenged in the bullpen, and is attacked from all fronts in the game.

Pitchers will tell you they’re “in their heads” if you ask them how they’re different - but where else would they be? That’s just something they’ve been told 100 times so they parrot it to us.

The real issue is being in charge of what they focus on instead of it being in charge of them. In the bullpen, there aren’t many distractions so of course their focus is better.

When they get in the game, there’s a million things fighting for their attention - like the batter, the umpire, the other team, their cheers, how their own team is playing, if someone just ran down to the bullpen to warm up, the monster homerun they just gave up…and most of our pitchers look at or think about all of these.

To help your pitchers practice focusing on what helps them the the most under pressure try this simple knock-out challenge:

This REALLY helps our pitchers become more comfortable with the pressure and distractions of pitching - and to do it successfully! Plus, they REALLY like it!

Any pitcher at any point during bullpens can just call out “Knock-Out” and they’re able to decide pitch and location and get the knock-out round going.

Oh - and the Winner gets to pick the playlist for the next day’s practice!

How to Grade Your Pitch-Calling Decisions

With 5 games this past weekend you made over 475+ pitch decisions. Some were good, and no doubt some weren’t.

That’s the thing about strategy - you can make a good decision and not have a good outcome. Think about that for a second…

A good strategic decision is based on considering all the key factors involved. So the evaluation of that decision should be based on whether you considered the right factors - and NOT whether the decision was successful.

Wait, what?! That’s right. The outcome of your 475+ pitch calling decisions this weekend came down to execution - your pitchers and the batters. You can’t control the execution portion of the outcome - only the choice you made based on the factors you considered.

I know this sounds logical, and also crazy - because aren’t you supposed to consider the outcome? That’s my point. The outcome is beyond your control - you can only hope to influence it based on the factors you considered when calling the pitch.

So if you’re frustrated by this past weekend pitch calls, let the frustration go and replace it with curiosity and inspection - did you consider the right factors at the moment? Explore what you might have missed and adjust it next weekend. Then move on.

Learn what you could have done better, or what you overlooked, then move forward. Just like you tell your pitchers!

This REALLY helped out pitchers become more comfortable with the pressure and distractions of pitching - and to do it successfully! Plus, they REALLY liked it!

Oh - and the Winner gets to pick the playlist for the next day’s practice!

Thanks for reading this week’s Curveball Chronicles. I hope you gained some insight, some encouragement, some knowledge or some grace.

Go make this a Great week - and let the season begin!!

Missed some previous issues? Don’t worry, I’ve got them all on my website: https://pitchingcoachcentral.com/curveball-newsletter/