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Nomads
by Dave
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Over the years I have read discussion threads on a few softball forums discussing the issue of "team jumpers" or "nomads" who move from one team to another almost every year. As with all such subjects, there are two sides to the story. As usual, both sides have valid points to make but neither side is always right or always wrong. Often the debate leaves out important considerations, ignores realities, and represents the voice of relative inexperience. I have my opinion about what is right and, as usual, that falls somewhere in between the two poles. Let's get started looking at this.
Those who believe "jumping" between teams is fundamentally wrong often are "traditionalists" who believe perseverance through difficulty is an admirable quality. They also believe sticking with a team through a multiple years commitment is desirable as an end in and of itself. These folks are right to place high value on the quality of perseverance. One of the most important aspects of youth sports is the real life lessons it teaches our children. Teaching a child to run from difficult circumstances is less than ideal. Teaching children to be committed and persevere through difficulty is very desirable. Yet, there's lots more behind a decision to change fastpitch softball travel teams than simple fight or flight instinct or an immediate gratification mentality.
I have read several forum dwellers complain that kids who jump from team to team suffer from bad parenting. The notion is the parents must not understand the value of commitment enough to want to instill it in their children. This type of person laments the failure of modern parents to ground their children in moral values. I don't disagree but, again, jumping between teams in between seasons does not represent a moral judgment, involve lack of commitment, or have anything to say about other aspects of one's parenting skills.
For quite some time in our society, mobility has become a reality in the working world. This began in the post World War II economic boom which saw our nation's economy completely metamorphose into a form which was virtually unrecognizable when compared to that which had existed for the prior 150 years or more. Suddenly people from Pennsylvania or Virginia were taking new jobs in New York, California, or Texas. Suddenly, the best way to locate economic opportunity was to demostrate the willingness to completely relocate to a new part of the country.
In more recent years, the trend toward occupational mobility has not slowed at all. Rather, it has sped up. An employee plodding along at a specific job for more than a couple years is viewed as one who is not capable of doing anything else. And within specific organizations stability isn't viewed all that favorably. Many companies view their human resource function with an "up or out" mentality. An individual must continually get promoted or risk being fired. When companies look for talent to fill a post, they most frequently look outside their own stable because they want "fresh ideas" and want to hire people who are bold enough to look outside their current employer for new challenges.
Without naming names, there is one very large company in this country that has a specific policy which basically states that a given department head is not doing the job unless he or she turns over 10% of the workforce. The theory holds that in any given group of employees, about 10-20% are real achievers, 60-80% are steady and dependable but not giving their all, and 10-20% are slackers. If a manager is doing the job, the bottom echelon will either leave of their own accord or need to be fired. If these slackers are not fired, the company not only suffers their slacking but also fails to motivate the middle group to work harder. Similarly, they believe they must heep big rewards on the top 10-20% while also keeping them motivated by providing competition. They do this by replacing the bottom rung with people from outside the organization. These new hires are all people who are expected to compete not with the middle of the pack but rather with the highest achievers. I have no opinion about the correctness of this policy. But it really exists and is not quite as exceptional as you might think.
Understand that I'm not making a value judgment regarding the current state of affairs in our society. I'm merely pointing out that our culture has certain realities including an economy in which mobility is more highly valued than stability. Neither you nor I can change that. We simply must live within that stark reality. And, when we raise our children, we have no choice but to prepare them for the real world, as opposed to the ideal one.
I believe strongly in the value of perseverance. I would characterize myself as more of a traditionalist but always a pragmatist. In practice, that means I have always tried to stick out the tough times and, then, when things get good and stable, that's when I've made my moves. I recognized that in order to continue to move up the chain, I had to move from one employer to another. I was always told to never run from anything and, instead, always run towards something. Run to an opportunity or new challenge and don't be afraid to do so. On the rare occassions on which I failed to move, that's when I've suffered.
Moving back into the softball world, when one joins a team of any kind, one makes a decision to commit to a certain group of people for a certain finite period of time. Open-ended, semi-permanent commitments made by eight-year-olds are somewhat inadvisable! We don't permit anyone beneath a certain age to marry because they don't have the maturity to make such a long-range commitment. Heck, we don't even permit college coaches to recruit kids before July 1 after their junior years because we don't believe kids that young have gathered enough information or possess the intellectual maturity to make such final important decisions. If we won't allow an 8 year old to pick their lifelong partner; if we won't allow her to start picking a college; if we don't really let her choose her own outfit, shoes, what to eat for lunch, etc., how can we expect her to pick the softball team for which she shall absolutely commit her entire softball playing life?
I suppose the answer to my question is, of course we would never do that. It's up to her parents to pick the softball team she'll remain with until she's 17 or 18! The questions which follow are: 1) based on what information should they make their decision? 2) where do they obtain this information? And 3) How are they supposed to gauge their daughter's interest, her ability, etc. at 15 or 16 when she's just now turned 8 and is looking to play her first year of travel ball?
The typical softball player begins her career around 6 - 9 years old. It all begins when her thirty something parents decide to get her into some sport. These parents, in majority, never played softball before, maybe they never played sports at a competitive level. They have no idea what the current state of girls softball is. They may not have ever heard of "travel ball" before or know that the world they are about to enter is as complicated as any other element of their lives. They simply got a bulletin home from school, signed up, and ran out to purchase a tiny mitt made of plastic. Then they received a phone call from their daughter's "coach" telling them when and where to show up.
The next events which color this girl's softball career are likely to be a few very funny, chaotic "practices" in which she learns to hit a ball off a tee, pick up a slowly rolling grounder, and attempt to throw the ball to one of her classmates. That's about the extent of her and her parents' experience at this stage. They go to some games in town, take pictures, and, if the girl is lucky, play catch in the yard every now and again.
Later, the girl's parents may hear about something referred to as "all-stars" or the town "travelling team." Perhaps they will learn of some softball camp or clinic run by the rec league, high school team, or a professional coach. In some circumstances, the girl might play ball for a town travel team or another "travel-lite" team, not affiliated with the rec league, located near her home. The parents will no doubt be astounded by the 10U "travel team" and the level of its play. These girls are much better than the rec league kids.
Maybe during the first or second year of playing 10U travel ball, the girl will encounter some team from far away which is far superior to the wonderful girls on her travel-lite team. Parents will gasp and utter phrases like "how does anyone ever become that good?" They may imagine these girls on the monstrous travel team were hand-picked from all over the country, if not world, and have been fed perfect athletic diets while being home-schooled to make room for their year-round daily regimens involving 8 hour practice sessions followed by weight lifting under the watchful eyes of professional trainers, some with Olympic experience. They'll be overwhelmed by the speed of the girl in the circle while wondering if she takes steroids or other performance enhancing drugs and trying to figure out whether she started playing the game at 2 or 3 years old. Perhaps they will leave the field concluding that their kid is just not that talented nor committed. Maybe she'll stay with the town travel team for the duration of her softball career.
Some relative few girls' parents will instead start asking questions. They'll get the bug in their craws and want to know a bit more about this travel stuff. They may start looking outside their circle and find other travel teams which are reasonably close to home, don't require home-schooling in order to make practice, have 10U or 12U teams which are not in the weightroom for 3 hours a day, 7 days a week, and generally don't require that huge of a commitment.
Perhaps this travel team will regularly play tournaments against the monstrous teams. They'll conduct winter workouts in which the coaches actually understand not only the fundamentals of the game but also how to teach them to 9 or 10 year olds. Then, gradually, the parents will come to see that the monstrous team isn't all that different from other teams. Their team can actually compete with them. They don't beat the monstrous teams, sometimes they are mercied by them, but on many occassions, they are able to keep the games close.
As time goes on, the little girl grows up and finally the day arrives when she will be moving up from 10U to 12U. She'd like to stay with the same team and coach but the situation has changed. Perhaps the coach's daughter decided she would rather concentrate on soccer so he desides he will coach that instead of softball. Maybe the good coach left the year before when his daughter aged out. Maybe she had reached a level at which she needed to move on to bigger challenges so she went and tried out for an "A" level team which draws from 3 states.
Whatever the reason, the little girl moving up to 12U now finds herself looking for a new team. The girl's parents would like to stay within the same organization so they don't have to buy a new uniform, learn 11 other girls' names, give up the people they have become so close with after spending 100s of hours sitting next to them in the midday sun, etc. But they want the best for their daughter. They think she may want to play ball at a high level one day. They would have liked to stay with the old coach and the crew of girls who made up this team but that's not possible. Now they must spread their wings, fly away, and enter the game of musical chairs we call tryouts.
The parents and daughter may visit as many as three team's tryouts, perhaps more, depending on available free time. They already gave up their hopes of an August beach vacation since the 3 teams have two required sessions per tryout and this filled every available free weekend after the travel season was over. Now they make the rounds at tryouts. They watch the tryouts while stressing over their daughter's performance. They talk with coaches while trying to learn: 1) how much does it cost? 2) where do you see our daughter fitting into the team? 3) what kind of practices will you be running, how frequently will they be, where and when? 4) what kind of tournament schedule do you plan, 5) do you think you'll be competitive at an "A" level? And so on and so on!
At some point these parents and the girl will make a decision to join this team or that based on very much incomplete information. They'll pay up their money, choose a number and get sized for uniforms before they see the bruises on the head coach's daughter; watch the truck driver blush when his wife curses repeatedly during games ... while talking to her 11 year old daughter after she makes an error during the team's first scrimmage against 14-year-olds; meet new girls who are "guesting" on the team while their daughter rides the bench, or see the January birth 13-year-old star shortstop pull the cell phone out of her bra during practice so she can talk to her 16-year-old boyfriend who her parents allow her to date because he is a third cousin. Do I need to go on?
So, after this first season, the parents of the little girl, now 12, are happy when the team breaks up because the coach has been put in jail, the truck driver divorces his wife, and/or the shortstop moves on before running away from home to live with some guy she met on the internet. They sort of hope they can stay with the same organization but give up that hope when only two other girls show up for tryouts. They look again for a new team and hope to God that they have a better experience the next time.
After a while they find a new organization and team. They stick it out on a 12U team comprised mostly of 11 year olds even though their daughter is one of only 3 12s. Then after the season, they hope to join the organization's younger 14U team. That thought evaporates when the team coach gets into a fight with the organization and leaves to join another. So they get busy with tryouts again but now they have their eyes wide open, have gained invaluable experience, and know how to evaluate a team and organization. They join a team made up of all girls the same age, ability, etc. Everything goes well with the team getting beaten up a bit at 13 and then playing really well at 14 after only two girls left between years and the two new kids were nice kids and good ball players. The little girl has her first experience staying with a team for more than one year and it looks like maybe she can play here until she gets out of high school.
But now the once little girl is looking to play high school ball in the near future. She has been attending lessons regularly for over a year. She's a really good infielder who has a real shot to start varsity. She says she'd like to play ball in college, maybe even get a scholarship. She's already played on a good team. But now she wants to go to ASA "A" nationals and she has begun looking at Gold level teams since she has that ability and desire.
So let's examine the career of this girl from the point of view of those debating nomads on the softball forums. She's played for 5 or 6 different teams in just 7 years. She's contemplating joining a new Gold one to do showcases and hopefully earn herself some sort of scholarship or at least a solid walk-on opportunity. Is this girl a malcontent who failed to get along with her teammates? Is she "not good enough" to make the grade with one team for her whole career? Was she not taught proper morals by her parents? The answer to all these questions is you just don't know. I haven't given you enough information. Yet it is entirely possible that this is the nicest kid in the world who is extremely friendly, well grounded, and the best possible teammate.
One of the debating points often used to dissuade folks from moving among teams involves the assertion that college coaches evaluating a prospect will contact every single blessed travel ball coach a kid has ever played for to learn about her character. Perhaps they won't even have to do that since, after they see the kid's resume, they won't even entertain the thought of recruiting her! I'm not sure I believe the assertion when it is used to convince someone about a girl with the 67 mph killer riseball, 1600 core SATs, straight A average at a top high school, etc.
College coaches do care about a lot of things, especially character, personality, and grounding. But I doubt they'll call the guy who coached our little girl in her first real travel ball experiences at his cell in the state pen. I do not believe they'll be interested in hearing from the 10U travel-lite or all-star coach. They may not be all that interested in interrogating the 14U coach she played with for two years since she's now been with the same Gold team for 3 years, her private coach also worked with the college's assistant coach, and the Gold team has placed three girls with the head coach over the past 5 years. That's not even to mention that the girl has gone to camp each of the past five years at the college of her hopes and is a close personal friend of the team's head coach!
I guess what I'm saying is college aspirations are not a reason to stay with the travel team filled with future and present juvenile delinquents, coaches who beat their children, or mothers who curse badly enough to make truck drivers blush. I do belive strongly in teaching kids perseverance through difficulties. I think you ought to make a commitment and thereafter live up to it. I just happen to think that when my kid goes to a tryout and is guaranteed a spot on a roster for just one year, the commitment from both ends is one year. If things don't work out for the following year, for whatever reason, I think I should then find a new team. And, if that doesn't work out, I should find yet another one.
If my 10 year old is ready to make the jump from town all-stars to travel-lite, that's what she's going to do. But when she gets better and the travel lite team's highlight of the year is playing at the county fair, I may take the opportunity to join some team which plays Pony, NSA or ASA tournaments. And if the time comes when my daughter wants to play showcases, we'll work on finding another new team.
My kids will never start guesting with all sorts of teams in mid-season in order to jump to whichever one offers the best opportunity and thereby leave teammates in the lurch. They will not play for multiple organizations in one year. They won't leave a team in mid-season unless all the coaches end up in jail or something similarly drastic happens.
I'm not going to insist my kid stick with one team no matter what happens because it was the only one she tried out with when she was 8. If that could possibly cost her a desired college scholarship, the thing wasn't meant to be. There may be lots of college coaches out there who want to talk to "travel ball coaches," but I suggest to you that the coaches they want to speak with are mostly of the Gold variety. The debating point is completely fallacious.
The reality out there is there are many different levels of ball to be played. When girls first start out, they and their parents' learning curves are steep. It takes years to compile a dosier on all the local travel teams. Situations change on teams and within organizations. You can't be afraid to jump teams when circumstances justify it. You should teach your kids perseverance and living up to commitments. But let's get the exact commitments out on the table before we feel obligated to live up to open ended ones. We all have lots of experiences with travel ball. There's room for disagreement. But a little common sense will serve you well.Labels: youth tournament teams
Permanent Link: Nomads
 
Hitting Approach Theories
by Dave
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
When I was a boy, my favorite science fiction series was Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy. I was very happy when, after I finished reading the trilogy, I discovered he had written more of the same. I believe I read them all though it's hard to be sure. I don't read much fiction these days, let alone science fiction, but in my formative years, it was very important to me. Good fiction is good, at least to me, when it can be extended into real life. Good fiction is even better when it can be extended into sports, especially diamond sports!
One of the elements of the Foundation Series which most intrigued me was a particular group of mathematicians who set out to forecast human behavior based on calculations. While I considered the theory absurd in everyday life, people being rather unpredictable and all that, I could extrapolate it to certain parts of human life such as baseball!
In any aspect of life in which there is a huge volume of actions and reactions, certain patterns develop. They make behavior somewhat, if not completely, predictable. Baseball and softball fit into this universe of high volume action and reaction. I'm certainly not the first person to view them as such. Throughout the sports of baseball and softball, a long sequence of actions and reactions has led to the development of "golden rules" and theories, some of which are essential to playing the game and some of which are questionable at best. We sometimes fall into patterns in which these theories exert too much influence over players and coaches. Today I want to delve into this area as it pertains to mental approaches to hitting though I do so with a little trepidation. There's no way to discuss a subject like this without suffering a bit of criticism. I predict with a high degree of certainty that not everyone will agree with what I have to say on the subject!
Golden RulesThere are a number of theories baseball and softball people carry with them. Some of these are just theories about which there is much disagreement. Some of these are "golden rules" and pretty much everyone agrees with them. Before we get into questioning plain vanilla theories, perhaps we ought to say a word about golden rules.
Golden rules are absolutes. Following them doesn't always necessarily work but over the long-haul, adhering absolutely to them yields the best results. You follow golden rules because over the course of a season, they will result in far more wins than losses. Yet golden rules in baseball don't always work in softball because of differences between the games.
If you read this blog regularly, you know that I advocate most baseball golden rules. That's because they have been so engrained in my head, from my early baseball playing years, that I have trouble deviating from them. The only way I can step away from these rules occurs when, via empirical evidence, I see that they are invalid in fastpitch. Even then, I continue to hold onto them unless they are proven completely wrong repeatedly.
For example, I view the golden rule "never make the first or third out at third base" as an absolute. But I don't hear it uttered all that much in fastpitch and I think that's because it isn't quite as much of an absolute here. Runs come at a higher premium in fastpitch than they do in baseball. Pitching is more dominant in fastpitch. And because the games are shorter, players and coaches feel they must be more aggressive. I can't dispute these facts but still I believe this golden rule works.
The reason you never make the first out at third is because the next batter can bunt you over. If you get bunted over, you can easily score from third on a flyball, more so in baseball than in fastpitch.
From second base, you are already in scoring position, though less so in fastpitch than in baseball. A runner at second almost always makes it home on a basehit to the outfield in baseball. In softball, it is much more difficult yet I would guess that, except at the very highest levels, perhaps even there, the runner will score safely more than 50% of the time.
Still the golden rule is valid because of bunting. If a runner can't make it home from second on a basehit, she still has a better chance to make it to third via the sacrifice than she does if she is out trying to stretch a double into a triple! The reason you never make the third out at third is you can't score while playing defense and being at second ain't so bad. So, to wrap up golden rules and specifically "never make the 1st or 3rd out at third," while I see the wisdom of trying to make third while playing in the 18th inning of ITB, I still believe players should be indoctrinated in the principle and it should be adhered to almost all the time.
TheoriesAside from absolutes, there are a number of theories under which we play this sport. I'm familiar with a bunch of them but certainly not all. Theories are those elements of the game over which there is still some debate. A theory doesn't carry as much weight as a golden rule and can only elevate itself to that stature if it is proven to be correct more than 80% of the time. With hitting, this is virtually impossible and we'll get into that briefly. The point here is, there are a few golden rules in baseball and softball,as well as numerous situational guidelines and other things which are not golden rules. It is these elements of the game about which we most frequently argue. These theories must be examined, tested, and revised based on empirical evidence.
Hitting Mental ApproachI admit that I was raised beliving you never swing at the first pitch. You've got to make the pitcher work. The more pitches a pitcher throws in a game or during a single inning, the more likely your team will score against him or her. If you swing at the first pitch, you are handing the pitcher a gift. You are "helping out" the pitcher. I have known this theory my entire life and never questioned it. Still, when I think of my playing days, I almost always swung at the first pitch! I assumed I was just overly aggressive or mentally too weak to get myself into an 0-1 hole. While that may be true, my limited experience told me that I always saw the best pitch on the first one.
Most baseball and softball people will utter the phrase don't swing at the first pitch. Not many ever question it. But if you look closely, at least one very important hitting coach does, in fact, question the theory.
Charley Lau, Jr. is the son of a major league batting coach. His father taught some of the best hitters in the game including A-Rod, Barry Bonds, Manny Ramirez, and many, many others. He picked up the family business and took it a bit further. The Lau approach is more scientific than their predecessors. The son has an article online which favors swinging at the first pitch. His reasons are purely empirical and impossible to dispute, at least on the surface.
Lau claims, an analysis of "100 of the game's top hitters suggested that (they) ... hit about 70 points higher and slug 130 points higher when they put the first pitch into play than they do in all other plate appearances. In fact, more than 95 percent of the big leaguers hit better and slug better on those 0-0 at bats than in their other bats."
As an aside, I'm using baseball stats because they are more readily available than softball ones. In this day and age, computers allow us to not only calculate a hitter's batting average but to do so in and after every possible count. If you page through baseball web sites, such as Yahoo's MLB stats, you can view the batting averages of individual hitters's in every possible situation: 0-0, 0-1, After (0-1), 0-2, After (0-2), 1-0, After (1-0), 1-1, After (1-1), 1-2, After (1-2), 2-0, After (2-0), 2-1, After (2-1), 2-2, After (2-2), 3-0, After (3-0), 3-1, After (3-1), 3-2, After (3-2).
I was looking initially for stats which would support Lau's theory so I pulled the situational batting stats for A-Rod, Bonds, Ichiro, Jones, Holliday, and Ramirez, arguably the game's best current hitters. I summed up their plate appearances and sorted the data by batting average. Understanding that my work did not involve 100 hitters - I'm too lazy for that - what I found did not support Lau's theory of first pitch hitting.
The 6 hitters collectively hit best on 3-1. To me, that's kind of a no brainer. Hitters hit best when ahead in the count, better still when way ahead. And most MLB hitters will not often swing when up 3-0 (but see below). Also, as you might expect, they collectively did worst when down 0-2. Again, a no brainer. Of the 23 possible scenarios, the best 5 were, in order from the top: 3-1, 3-0, 2-0, 2-1, 1-0. The bottom 5 were, in order from the bottom: 0-2, 1-2, After (0-2), After (1-2), 2-2.
(Just to clear up any confusion I may have caused, the stats I used viewed the batting average of a hitter on a specific count - when he hits the ball into play - and after the count. What I mean is a batter who stands in at 2-1 could end up 3-2 after two more pitches. How he hits on the pitch at 2-1 is necessarily different than how his average at-bat goes on all pitches after a 2-1 count is reached. But we cannot include in the analysis "After (0-0)" since that is every at-bat. And I believe this analysis is more telling than merely looking at batting average on each of the nine possible specific counts, before hitting, walking or making out, because it is a more complete way of viewing things.)
There aren't many surprises in my analysis. I expect it is more than conventional wisdom that the batter does better when he or she is up in the count. But the most interesting item I found while performing this analysis was not only that the batting averages on true "ahead counts" of 3-1, 3-0, 2-0, 2-1, and 1-0 were higher than 0-0, but also the even count of 1-1 and the down count of 0-1 were higher. These batters did better taking a first strike right down the middle than they did first-pitch swinging.
Lau could be forgiven for an incomplete analysis if, for example, the study he cited merely compared first pitch hitting with the players's career batting averages or slugging percentages. That isn;t the complete story, obviously, since in real life batters face all the possible counts many times in their careers. Hitting better 0-0 than one's career average does say that first-pitch hitting is a good idea but there's just more to it than that.
I could offer my own theory or the conventional one, in contravention of Lau, by telling you that you should always take the first pitch but, then again, that would be absolutely wrong too. And this is where I'm trying to take this little lecture.
There are fundamental problems with taking an absolute approach at the plate based on analysis of major leaguers. Of course, we are talking about people who have spent perhaps 30 years perfecting their swings in order to face pitchers who can kill an ant on the face mask of their catchers while throwing 90 miles per hour. Almost everything these batters and pitchers do in a game is entirely on purpose. If every major league hitter walked to the plate taking the first pitch, every major league pitcher would then throw a strike on the first pitch. If every major league hitter walked to the plate looking to hit the first pitch, every major league pitcher would then throw a ball. There are no golden rules which apply to first pitch approaches. They are situationally determined. The same is true for beginner baseball and fastpitch softball at most levels.
Lau's article includes the following comment: "Pitchers, after all, are programmed from the first day they ever toe the rubber to get ahead in the count and throw strikes. That means throw a strike on the first pitch." There's certainly some truth there but I think it is an incomplete thought. If you took away the batter from a major league pitcher and made him pitch a simulated game of simple balls and strikes, unless he entended to throw a ball, I doubt he'd ever throw more than an occassional pitch that got away from him. So, at least at the highest levels, a pitcher is almost always able to throw a strike, if he wants to.
Put a hitter in against our major league pitcher and everything changes. He doesn't want to just throw strikes. Sure he wants to be ahead in the count but getting the batter to swing and miss on a ball is just as good as, perhaps better than, throwing a called strike. Pitchers at the highest levels are not programmed to throw strikes. They are programmed to get hitters out.
In little league baseball and early age group softball, pitchers struggle to throw strikes. Their coaches, the other players, and even their parents try to program them to throw strikes. "Let her hit it!" But once they learn to throw strikes, the next step is to learn to throw balls! "Don't just hand it to her on a platter!!"
In 10U age group ball, the pitcher who can simply throw the ball fast over the plate is often rewarded with the victory. But move it up a few notches and the opposite is true. Even in 12U ball, throwing the ball hard down the middle of the plate is the single best way to get yourself hurt. At 11, we start teaching young girls to hit the corners. Once they master throwing less "perfect strikes," we start teaching them to purposely throw balls just off those corners. By 14U, most if not all outs come on balls out of the strike zone, excluding, of course, called third strikes. In the upper age categories, the pitcher who is most devastating is the one who can come into and outside the strike zone at will. The pitcher who wins has command of her stuff. She throws a strike when she wants to and then tries to get the batter out with balls just outside the zone.
The single most effective high school pitcher I ever watched was a girl who was a master at throwing balls on purpose. During her senior year, there were, I think, just 4 runs scored off her in over 30 games. I was speaking to the head coach of one of two teams which beat her. She had played Div I college ball and had participated in the WCWS one year. She was huge on the mental side of the game. She observed this pitcher through her team's first two games against her, both losses, and saw her again on a couple other occassions when she had the opportunity. She came to the conclusion that this girl never, or at least infrequently, threw a pitch for a strike.
The coach programmed her hitters to take anything that was not in a certain narrow piece of the strike zone. During practices leading up to the game, she made girls run or do push-ups if they swung at anything outside her narrow channel. When I watched the final game between the teams, I was unaware of the strategy being employed. I was surprised at this pitcher's lack of control! Later I asked her pitching coach what had happened. He didn't offer anything up and didn't disagree with my conclusion that she had just had bad control that day. Later I had the discussion with the coach who had figured her out and she told me about the strategy.
I imagine that had this pitcher known her opponent was deliberately narrowing the strike zone down, in terms of what they would swing at, she would have thrown strikes just outside the hitting zone. That's the kind of cat and mouse game which goes on in higher level fastpitch. It's certainly not a situation in which the best pitchers throw a strike on the first pitch.
I'm going to add another little anecdote into the equation. For a long time I had the opportunity to watch 10U girls pitch when they were first beginning to develop change-ups. Almost every time one of these girls would go up 0-2 on a hitter, the next pitch was a change. They never threw one on 0-0. They never threw one 3-0, 3-1, or 3-2. Infrequently, one might be used 0-1, 1-2 or, far more rarely, 2-2. I vowed to never get myself so patterned that I always called a change-up on 0-2 and never any other time.
A few years later, at a higher age group, I found myself calling pitches in a game against a pretty good team. I don't remember specifically what I called because there was no easy pattern to it. But say my pitcher had 5 pitches: fastball(1), change-up(2), screwball(3), drop(4) and curve(5), my pitch calls might have looked something like:
1st batter: 1-1-2-5-2
2nd batter: 2-2-3-5
3rd batter: 4-3-2-5-3
After this game, the opposing coach approached me and asked who had been calling the pitches. I was surprised by the question but felt so reason to refuse to answer it. I said, "I did. Why do you ask?" We then got into a brief discussion about how he was impressed that we didn't just use the change-up on deep 2 strike counts. He noted that in all his experience he almost always saw a change on 0-2 and almost never anytime else. Afterwards I thought about this quite a bit. I didn't deserve any accolades for being different than "everybody" by calling changes in "odd" counts. I have seen many pitchers who seem to use the change only on 0-2 but I have also seen a large number of effective pitchers who do not fall into this trap.
Similarly, I have observed a number of pitchers who always throw strikes on their first pitch of the game and, thereafter, to most batters on the first pitch. These inexperienced pitchers usually do not deliberately throw balls out of the zone unless they are up 0-2. And almost like clockwork, you see them throw a ball on 0-2 and then have trouble getting their release point back after that. This flies in the face of another of our theories (if not a golden rule) to protect the plate aggressively on 0-2 but that's another story for another day. The point is experienced pitchers do not simply try to throw strikes all the time. They pick and choose their spots. It is a cat and mouse game except at the lowest levels.
So, I suppose the question is what do you teach your hitters? What mental approach should you tell them to adhere to when their turn to hit comes? I don't believe it should be always anything. You can't tell them to stand there with a blank look on their face and take the first pitch right down the middle on every at-bat. You really cannot tell them to always swing at the first pitch because it is always the best one they're going to see. It isn't regardless of what some might try to tell you. I suppose the best advice you can give an experienced hitter is to look for "her pitch" on the first pitch but be prepared to take it if it isn't something she can really drive. It's OK to take the first pitch if it isn't something you like. It's also OK to swing at the first pitch if it is in your zone.
I also suppose that the best thing coaches can tell their teams is, you will always examine a pitcher's tendencies during games and sometimes you may tell them to go up there swinging, sometimes you may suggest they take the first pitch, and sometimes you may leave it up to them. Presumably you have signs which instruct your hitter when you want them to take a pitch or swing away aggressively. Presumably you have a bench coach who is offering advice to girls before they step out into the on-deck circle. Presumably the two coaches are "talking" to each other before and during innings at-bat. You ought to be able to observe a pitcher for the first couple of innings and thereby judge what kinds of actions you feel might work against her. If these things are not true, what exactly is it you do during games, flirt with the single parents?
In conclusion, there is no golden rule of hitting which tells a batter to swing or not at the first pitch. The common wisdom that we need to make pitchers work is not necessarily valid since being in an 0-1 or 0-2 hole is an easy way to lower your average. Charley Lau's advice to always go up there swinging because the top 100 MLB hitters do best when they take that approach isn't a panacea since MLB circumstances are somewhat unique and, in fact, my little analysis says somebody got the stats wrong or performed an incomplete analysis. These hitters do not hit best on 0-0 counts. They do quite a bit better when they are up 2-0 and in several other types of counts, not just when they are ahead.
Golden rules are an important part of our sport. So too can theories be important guidelines for playing well. But just as, despite Asimov's fiction, it is not possible to predict what human beings will do at any given moment, there is no mental approach to hitting which should dominate the approach of a batter every time she steps to the plate. Different pitchers, different levels of play, different game and inning circumstances dictate that each at-bat is a new experience. This is a thinking gal's game and no single approach at the plate is going to yield desired results every time up or even a majority of times.Labels: batting, coaching, mental toughness
Permanent Link: Hitting Approach Theories
Fundamentally Flawed
by Dave
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
There is a common mistake many of us make whether we are players, parents or coaches. I call it results-oriented mechanics. It is an easy mistake to make because it is based on positive feedback we get in real games. I've made this mistake as a player, parent and coach. What it boils down to is using improper mechanics because they "feel" better and because they get the desired results. The cost may not be results today but rather results in the future.
Everything we do in sports of all kinds is work on fundamental skills. From the time we first step onto the soccer field, basketball court, softball diamond or any other athletic field, there is a right way and a wrong way to perform certain skills. When girls are first starting their softball careers, coaches take aggressive steps to "correct" errors and instill proper mechanics. I'll leave the discussion about when coaches don't know the proper mechanics for another time. For now, we'll ignore any coaching shortcomings. As girls get older, mechanics are often given less attention because the focus of many coaches, rec, travel ball, etc., is to win games. If a girl gets the desired results, coaches don't usually spend all that much time correcting even obvious errors.
To demonstrate what I'm talking about, let me craft an example from personal experiences. There once was a very young shortstop who was athletically far superior to the others on her teams. She always got a hit, usually an extra-base hit. She fielded anything that came close to her and threw the runner out most of the time. For a while she pitched and because of her strength, she often struck out most of her opponents. She was the rec team or young travel team star player. Her parents basked in the glow of the compliments other parents heaped upon her playing abilities. Everyone knew she was the best player on the team, a natural, and was happy she was on their team rather than the opposent's. Nobody ever corrected this girl after she was about 8. In player drafts, teams would fight over her. At travel tryouts, multiple teams made offers for her to join up. She was a 10U star!
At age 11, she moved up to 12U ball and other girls started catching up to her. Still she was a very good player, if not quite dominant any longer. But you could see the places where her game was breaking down. Her body posture was not particularly great when she fielded balls. Her throwing arm, while still stronger than most, was beginning to drop down to a three quarters or sidearm motion. Her swing had many holes in it. But because she "got results," most coaches wouldn't try to correct her. They were too busy working on the weaker players' skills. Even if a coach did try to correct a fundamental mistake, the girl's parents would get edgy and annoyed. They might go so far as to pull the kid from a team and move to another to avoid the coach who deigned to correct their "star." The girl herself developed a bit of a superior attitude because she knew that she was probably the best on the team and her parents had told her that her coach "doesn't know anything."
The parents never bothered to get the girl any sort of instruction because they believed results speak for themselves. Let those other girls, the ones who can't hit, can't field, and can't throw, waste their money on lessons. Our kid is the best on the team anyways. The natural players will rise to the top. She's a gifted athlete and that's not going to change.
When this girl turned 13, she tried out for a new travel team, a better one than she had ever played for. The girl and her parents were surprised when the team's coaches never called to invite her to the team. They instead joined a lesser team and wrote off the experience with the better team as just one of those things. They felt the coaches of the team were arrogant anyways. They didn't like it when the head coach tried to "change her swing" or told her to get her butt down lower when fielding grounders. They were sort of happy the team never called back.
When the girl tried out for middle school ball, she made the team as a 7th grader. She wouldn't play shortstop but she might play second or get some time in the outfield. After some errors in the field and several swinging strike-outs, she was relegated to the bench. Another girl, one who had played on this girl's team for years, took her place. She wasn't the greatest ballplayer ever to take the field but she did things with far superior fundamental technique than the "star" did.
During her first 14U travel ball season, things started to really fall apart. She continued making errors in the field, couldn't hit worth a darn, and started making throwing errors. Her parents chalked up the breakdwn in the girl's playing ability to physical changes from puberty. Eventually she was moved off of short and into another position. She dropped from third in the batting order to 7th. She didn't get many hits after that. She continued to have trouble in the field.
The girl did better the next year in middle school and travel ball but she never regained her dominant player status. She never again played shortstop. The other girl had supplanted her in that role on both the school and travel teams. The "star" was now a middle of the pack player when she was at her very best. At times, she demostrated such poor ability that she thought about quitting the game. She was better at other sports and softball was becoming a negative experience for her.
When she entered ninth grade, the girl tried out for the high school team. Her parents had hoped years ago that she might make varsity as a freshman. That didn't happen. She wasn't cut but she was placed on the freshman team, played average, and after a time saw somewhat limited action. Th eparents went to the first half dozen games or so and were surprised to see the same girls they had been watching for years starting ahead of their daughter. Whenever oine of these girls made an error, the parents thought to themselves our little star would have made that play. Too bad the coach doesn't see her real abilities. Sometimes, after a game, one of the parents would comment to the daughter that it was too bad they had so and so out at short or third or wherever since she obviously can;t play the position as well as you can. After a time, the girl asked her parents to stop coming to games since, she said, they were making her nervous.
When the girl was in tenth grade, she was on the JV team but didn't see much action. She no longer wanted to play travel ball and got her parents consent to quit it. When she was a junior, she started enjoying the game again. Her classmate who had taken her slot at short was up on varsity so the girl saw her chance, worked really hard, and won the starting JV slot. She played OK and even got a few hits against the inferior pitching. Finally, when she reached twelfth grade, she was placed on the varsity team, though she did not expect to see much action.
In the middle of the varsity season, the girl who was the starting shortstop suffered a bad knee injury. This girl's parents were convinced she would finally get her shot to start a varsity game at short. They encouraged her to make the most of the opportunity and "show everyone" that she was the better polayer all along. At the next game, the parents showed up fully expecting the girl to start at short. That didn't happen. Instead the coach pulled a girl off the freshman team and she was perhaps the best ballplayer the parents had ever seen. She was graceful and fast. Her mechanics were vrtually flawless. The girl batted fifth and drove in several runs with what the father thought was the best swing he had ever seen. It finally occurred to the father that fundamentals do matter, even in a girl's game.
Does this scenario sound at all familiar to you? I have seen pieces of it dozens of times. Often the young girl who makes all the plays and gets all her team's hits at 10U grows into problems later on. Not all such girls have these kinds of problems. Many of them work quite hard and develop proper mechanics. Those who have natural talent and who work like demons are usually the best players in the long run. But those with natural ability who never get correct guidance and never develop the solid fundamentals seldom remain dominant players. The result can be devestating for a young girl accustomed to star status.
So my lesson for the day is whether you (your kid) are the absolute best or worst kid on the 6U, 8U, or 10U team, work fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals. Don't allow flaws to become habit even if they don't hurt results in the short run. As a girl move up, the other girls are getting better. Good pitchers will begin to see the holes in your swing and start taking advantage of them to get you out. Mechanical throwing errors will manifest themselves more as your arm gets stronger. Fielding becomes much more difficult when the girls start pounding the balls harder and harder. This is a fundamentals game. Ignore them at your own peril.
The part of a player's game which often gets insufficient attention, or more precisely, is allowed to atrophy most is the swing. If a girl gets hits, folks don't bother her much. She goes to her travel team's twice or thrice weekly practices and does a bunch of ground ball and throwing drills. Then she steps in for her 25 or 50 swings at machine pitched balls. That's just not enough to establish and maintain a quality swing.
The best approach to gaining a better swing is to learn what it should be and then establish the motor memory necessary to always swing properly. he first thing you need to do is learn what a proper swing looks like and how to produce it step by step. Go to a coach or purchase books or videos. It isn't my purpose in this piece to list out the books, videos, etc. you should use so I'm not going to do that. I'm also not going to get into linear vs. rotational here. Decide for yourself what style of hitting you want to use.
I do like anything produced by Charley Lau, Jr. And that will tell you I generally favor a linear approach with modifications. Charley's father was a major league battingcoach and one of the first practitioners of a scientific approach. His site is located here: LauHitting.comif you need some guidance. The bottom line is get yourself some solid hitting mechanics advice in whatever form you can.
If you can, find a place in the basement or garage and put up a blanket or net into which you can hit balls from a tee. Set a schedule under which you will take swings 4 times each week. When you have these sessions, take at least 50 to 100 swings, more if you like. Because you can't see yourself hitting the ball over the fence or past the outfielders, concentrate on just taking a propermechnical swing and hitting the ball true. If somebody with knowledge can watch you swing, tell them what you are working on and have them play coach for you. This may not be a perfect scenario but it beats nothing.
What we are after here is developing good swing mechanics and making sure they are set in stone. Even the top level players perform the ritual of taking hundreds of swings at the tee in order to perfect their swings. You can take the same approach. But if you do this half heartedly, don't focus on mechanics, take just 20 swings per session, or do it once a week, don't expect to get results like the pros.
The same approach to hitting should be used for other aspects of your game. That;s true whether the player in question is a little kid, a travel player in 14U,. a high school starter, or even a college player. This is a sport of fundamentals which rewards repetitious work. If you are working on your infielding skills, learn the proper posture and motions, then practice regularly for extended periods. Make sure somebody can keep your mechanics honest and then listen to them when they correct you.
I suppose what I just wrote is a long winded way of answering the age old question "how do you get to Carnegie Hall?" The answer,of course, is "practice,practice, practice." I'm a firm believer in this for almost all pursuits in life. But I doubt I've ever seen a pursuit or game in which it is more important than fastpitch softball. Well, perhaps it is even more important in golf. I can't stand golf. And, yes, I am terrible at it.Labels: batting practice, coaching, hitting mechanics, parenting, practice, Training
Permanent Link: Fundamentally Flawed
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