Total Reading Time: 7 minutes

Happy Monday! It’s Fall ball games for many of you and Fall Break for others. Either way, the Fall is flying by. Today we’ll look at how one of the best uses pitches when pitch calling, and a checklist for your attention and the must-have skills as a pitching coach.

So Let’s Go!

Table of Contents

• What Championship Pitch Calling Looks Like

• Harness Your Attention to Harness Their Skill

What Championship Pitch Calling Looks Like

Oklahoma’s pitching coach, Jen Roche is one of the nation’s greatest pitching coaches, and pitch callers. While she and Missy Lombardi are both tied with 4 Sooner national championships apiece, Jen was part of both Florida national championships before coming to OU. But either way, Jen and Missy are in rarified air.

I’ve known both Missy and Jen since their playing days at OU, and both are insatiable learners, curious tinkerers and constant teachers.

In an NFCA Coaching College course (The Battery) that I taught with Jen (along with Sam Marder from Oregon), Jen talked about her pitch calling - particularly in the post-season, and highlighted a few things that are key to her:

1. Minimize the number of pitches each pitcher throws

2. Focus on their Best Pitch, their Change Up, and 1-2 dependable Setup Pitches.

3. Throw their Best Pitch the Most - followed Closely by their Changeup

4. Use the other 1-2 pitches to change an eye level or to accent the Best Pitch.

Let’s look at two examples of Jen’s post-season games and the distribution of her pitch calling with two very different pitchers:

• Nicole May - Curveball / Riseball pitcher

• Kelly Maxwell - Dropball pitcher

In Oklahoma’s 2024 march to their 8th national championship they played Florida State in the Super Regional. In Game 2, Nicole May pitched OU to a 4-2 win using her Curve, Rise, Drop and Changeup in the following percentage distribution:

While you might think the Curve and Rise were clearly her best pitches (almost equally) - together, they make up the percentage that Jen called her Changeup. And when you combine the Changeup (44%) with the Rise (21%) and the Curve (23%) - the total for those is a whopping 88% of all pitches she called!!

The Drop was thrown to simply change eye level or get them looking if they were sitting a pitch.

Now let’s look at another pitcher - Kelly Maxwell. A downball pitcher. Kelly threw Game 1 of their Championship Series against Texas, winning 8-4.

Again, Jen focuses on the Changeup and Kelly’s Best Pitch (Drop) - throwing them 76% of the time combined. She mixes an Off-Speed Drop and Rise in equally (only 20% combined) to change eye levels and speed looks.

In both of these examples the stakes were extremely high, and yet Jen Roche stayed very simple in her menu of pitches as well as staying simple in her reliance on each pitcher’s Best Pitch and her Changeup.

Too often we find ourselves calling a game based on what we think the opposition might pick up about our patterns or pitches so we steer toward a more complicated gameplan and use far too many types of pitches. Which then steers our pitcher away from her best self.

Help yourself and your pitchers this coming Spring by working to get a GREAT Changeup this Fall, and a dependable, repeatable Best Pitch. Throw them half the time and accent with 1-2 dependable and purposeful alternatives.

Thanks Jen Roche for always being willing to share your knowledge and your experience with us!!!

Harness Your Attention to Harness Their Skill

There’s no doubt that being a pitching coach now is incredibly hard. Gone are the days when all you needed to know were some mechanics and call some pitches.

Now pitching coaches need to be data scientists, motor learning specialists, analytics masters, people specialists, planning and development experts, time management gurus and bp pitchers. That’s a pretty tall order for anybody.

While mastering that list is tough, it’s vital. This list alone will attack James Clear’s quote above by forcing your to do lots of things. The key is - you won’t do all of them at the same level!

You’re naturally going to gravitate toward areas that fall within your comfort zone, and shy away from ones you aren’t as strong in. That’s normal.

But in today’s ultra-competitive college softball landscape, it’s super imperative that you do some of these things every day, and all of these things every week. In order to do that, you can’t let your own lack of focus or off-job interests add items to the list. You’ve got to manage your focus, your time and your planning. In other words, you’ve got to be disciplined with your attention.

Your FOCUS: - To manage your duties and responsibilities you’ve got to pay attention to what you pay attention to.

• Instead of jumping on social media when you get to the office

• Jump on a YouTube video to get stronger at one of these skills that aren’t your strength.

• Or connect with a friend to pick their brain.

• Ask questions and search out answers in areas where you aren’t as comfortable or as strong.

• Notice what you AREN’T including each week that will be vital to your pitcher’s growth and development, and start directing some focus into those areas.

Your TIME: - There’s only so much time, notice where and how are you’re spending it.

• Can you plan your mornings better to get to the office earlier when it’s quiet and you can get 30 minutes of concentrated work done?

• Can you give your players time limits in your office so they don’t just waste an hour of your day because they’re in-between classes?

• Where you spend your time is where your staff will grow and develop. Use it smarter and more specifically.

Your PLANNING: - The season will be here whether you’ve planned to be ready or not. You’ll be as good as your plans.

• I can’t state this one enough - write down what things need to be grown, adjusted, changed, eliminated…and put a timeline to each of them with realistic check-points…for each pitcher and for each of her pitches.

• These are then slotted into your seasonal, monthly, weekly and daily practice plans.

• Allow for testing and adjustments along the way.

• If you will plan the details the details will develop - and if you don’t, well, they won’t.

You don’t have to become somebody you aren’t. But just as you ask each one of your pitchers to work harder to become better - you need to do the same thing.

Grow yourself in uncomfortable directions. Challenge yourself to learn new, and maybe intimidating things. I try to expose new ideas in this newsletter to do just that - nudge each of you in new and stronger directions.

Discipline your attention. Your pitchers - and YOU - will be better for it!

Thanks for reading this week’s Curveball Chronicles. I hope it helped give you some insight to help your pitchers, and to give yourself some encouragement, knowledge and 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/