Total Reading Time: 5 minutes

Happy Monday. It can be frustrating when your pitchers don’t compete. In this issue I explain the cause for that along with why we don’t put icing on cake batter - and what that has to do with pitching development.

So let’s Go!

Table of Contents

• The Two Types of Pitchers We’re All Dealing With

• Stop Putting Icing on Cake Batter

The Two Types of Pitchers We’re All Dealing With

For every pitching coach with the exception of maybe two in this country, we’re all dealing with a mixture of two types of pitchers:

• Lesson Pitchers

• Competitive Pitchers

Sadly, the majority of us have Lesson Pitchers almost exclusively, when what we think we’re coaching are Competitive Pitchers.

Let me explain:

Lesson Pitchers are just that. These pitchers grew up doing lessons. Every week. Sometimes twice a week. Lessons in place of practice. Not that lessons are bad. But bad lessons are.

• Lesson pitchers have learned that pitching is deferring to an outsider (the instructor) as the expert. Lesson Pitchers pitch to please the expert.

• They’ve learned that more reps is the solution to any issue.

• That any pitch that can pretty much be caught is a “good pitch” and therefore any “good pitch” is a strike.

• Lesson pitchers are so used to being criticized during lessons - as a result of the instructor usually only knowing what they’re doing wrong and not how to help them do it right - that these pitchers adopt this critical mindset. They’ve learned to only criticize themselves in order to please their instructor so this negative mindset becomes their pitching mindset. This is a HUGE reason these pitchers really resist fixing their own issues or even having a mindset to fix things that they can recognize happening but are unable to intervene and fix.

• Lesson pitchers also get “afraid” during games because they focus on behind hit instead of making their pitches less hittable. Avoiding mistakes is a common attribute of Lesson Pitchers instead of beating hitters.

Competitive Pitchers on the other hand, pitch to compete. They pitch to win, not please.

• These pitchers are much rarer as they may or may not have had lessons, but they see themselves as the cause and solution of all their pitching.

• Competitive Pitchers are empowered to solve issues that pop up during games.

• They also fight to beat the hitter, any hitter, during games (instead of being intimidated by hitters).

Most of us have an abundance of Lesson Pitchers and too few Competitive Pitchers. Asking Lesson Pitchers to “fight”, “compete”, “beat this hitter” are all things we might say - but are things beyond what these pitchers can do. They may be able to do them rarely and occasionally, but not usually on a constant basis, and not usually in BIG moments.

Stop Putting Icing on Cake Batter

Sounds stupid, right?! You’d never put the finishing touches (think icing) on something before it’s finished (think cake is baked). This is so obvious that it sounds absurd. And yet we do this all the time when it comes to pitcher development.

Think about asking pitchers to have 4-5 different pitches (icing) when they can’t spot their fastball and don’t have a reliable changeup (cake).

Our desire to get fancy often overwhelms our senses and forces us to make choices that are out-of-order.

As pitching coaches we’re often stuck between the need to “hit our spots” and the desire to “make the ball move”. It’s a chicken-and-egg kind of thing to figure out which comes first, the location or the movement?

Movement usually wins this argument because it’s fancy and glamorous, while location is boring. It’s great if we can have both, and often we can - but usually, with most pitchers, both can only happen on 1-2 pitches.

It’s when we try to insist that our 1-2 movement/location pitchers have ALL the pitches with all the movement and all the locations that we get our pitchers in trouble. When we put icing on cake batter. The cart before the horse. You get it…

Here’s a post from a terrific mental coach (Zach Brandon @mvp_mindset) about this exact thing - about the cost to our strengths when we try to do too much to our pitcher’s weaknesses:

That last sentence says it all - “you don’t win by becoming a jack of all trades. You win by becoming elite at a few.” Help your pitchers become closer to elite at those few things they do pretty well by having them focus on doing them better.

Stop being fancy when your pitchers can’t handle it - icing doesn’t go on unbaked batter. Bake the cake first.

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!!

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