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Magic Number?
by Dave
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
I have read numerous pieces and heard plenty of discussions recently regarding the wisdom of developing three pitches and only three pitches. Three seems to be the magic number. A recent piece in Fastpitch Delivery discussed this notion while providing many further thoughts about how one should go about developing three and only three. Additionally, I have heard several coaches at levels from 10U up to and including Div-I college criticise any pitcher who claims to have more than three. I believe I understand what these coaches are talking about and don't necessarily disagree with their philosophy. At the same time, I do not believe it is good advice to tell a developing pitcher to get to the magic number and then stop. I believe this advice is absolutely wrong but I need to develop the topic in order to explain why I feel that way.
Some college coaches ridicule the notion that pitchers have 6, 7 or possibly more pitches in their mix. The rub is, when the coach goes to scout the pitcher, views her video or just happens to watch her pitch, she really only has 3 "good pitches." Additionally, many coaches advise against "using everything" or trying to make sure a good percentage of the pitches you have learned are used at least once during a game.
I have tried out too many pitchers to count. Indeed many times girls tell me they have 4, 5, 10 different pitches and then, when I ask them to throw these, I cannot tell the difference between pitches. I have tried out girls whose fastball is 53-54 and change-up is 51-55! I have seen girls who claim to throw a drop but it doesn't drop as much as their fastball. I have seen righties throw a screwball which moves more to the catcher's right than does their curve. I have caught girls who throw ten pitches which not only all do the same thing but on which their delivery is virtually identical - they make the same hand and lower arm motion on the drop as they do on the fastball, curve, change, etc.
I do believe that many times when a girl claims to have more than 3 pitches, either she really does not or everything beyond three is not ready for prime time. It takes a ton of work to have more than three pitches. Most are not willing to put in that amount of work. So attempting to have more than three can pollute the other pitches and cause everything to mish into a mash of mud. So from that perspective, keeping it to three is probably good advice.
Many coaches believe most pitchers should focus on what they are good at and what is working while ignoring their other alleged pitches. I would also agree with this. When Taryn Mowatt pitched her team to the NCAA title, she did so throwing a vast majority of that famous backhand change-up. That pitch was really working for her on that day. She needed very little else. So she shouldn't really have tried to throw much else.
My daughters pitch and many times the worst mistake I can make while calling their pitches is to force them to throw something else after they have been shutting down an opponent over several innings using mostly one pitch. My younger daughter has quite a good dropball. She also has a good change-up. In one game, the drop was putting the batters down pretty easily. So, what did I do? I started calling the change! And they started hitting her!!
When I think back over the several big games she has pitched over the past 3 years, she has mostly used the drop when she was successful and everything else when she wasn't. It finally struck me very recently that I have been mixing it up too much and need to just begin each game expecting the drop to be her number one pitch, period. We will spend more time perfecting the drop, perhaps throwing two to three times as many drops as other pitches and work towards getting her real command of it. We'll work on other pitches, of course, and I'll get into that soon. But it should have been plain to me that her best pitch is the drop and most of the time, that's what she should be throwing rather than trying to "use them all".
I get the idea that most pitchers do not nearly own quite as many pitches as they lay claim to. I also get the idea of using what is working and laying off everything else. Just to be clear, that doesn't mean you use one pitch 100% of the time but it does mean that you use the one that is working more than 50%. Other pitches can be worked in but their purpose is mostly to set up the one or two main pitches.
Still, when we are talking about a girl who is not a Div-I ace, I think the advice to develop three and only thee pitches is not particularly useful. The first, most obvious question is, "which three?" In fact the article in Fastpitch Delivery tried to hash out that specific issue and conclude which three the writer felt were correct.
It is pretty easy to examine college ball and determine which pitches the majority of coaches want their prospects to possess. Most likely those would include straight drop, riseball and something else with a different speed like a curve or change.
To the uninitiated, the fastball drops out of the game picture as soon as other pitches are mastered. I recognize that many pitchers early in their career throw nothing but fastballs. I suspect that many top level pitchers in years past arrived at high school or college with little else. But in today's game, even the fastest fastball gets rocked at very young ages like 12U. Some few incredibly odd girls play 12U ball at the highest national levels with little more than a 55-60 mph fastball. But the kid who tops out at 55 at 12U and 14U will be hit by even average teams which do their batting practices with the machine turned up to 60. Most good age group players can hit the fastball. Young girls in today's game can hit almost any speed.
You can look to pitchers like Japan's Ueno and conclude the fastball is not out of style everywhere. But Ueno does more with the ball than merely throw it fast. She puts movement on it via subtle hand manipulations and then of course also throws it hard while changing speeds at will. She also can put it just about exactly where she wants it!
I don't know why we don't teach this approach in the US but we don't. I've yet to find a pitching coach who teaches it. I think it could add something to a pitcher's game that isn't there now. But we do not use subtle fastball movement (the equivalent of baseball's cutter and two seamer) in today's American fastpitch softball.
As an aside, I have my daughters experimenting with two seamers but it's just an experiment. We do it to break up the monotony. My younger daughter claims that it is "fun." I disagree. When I try to catch two seamers, I have difficulty predicting where the ball is going to go. There are a few welts on my legs as a result - such fun! Perhaps in time, through numerous repetitions, this may become a little more predictable. For now it's just "fun."
Back to the subject, when a girl begins lessons, she starts with the fastball and the emphasis is and should be on mechanics. Once she has gotten into a pretty good routine on the fastball, once her mechanics have been built up pretty well in her motor memory, she usually begins learning the change. Some coaches begin this right alongside the fastball, before the fastball mechanics are set. Some coaches don't really emphasize changes until much later. I don't understand this second approach. Up until 14U, a pitcher can get by with a mediocre fastball if she also has a very good change. There are also valid arguments against teaching anything but the fastball until the motor memory has been solidified. I tend to agree with that thinking but I also know that even 10 year olds can get hit pretty hard if all they have is a fastball.
Later on, coaches begin working in other pitches. Usually this indicates what the coaches like to teach rather than any sort of logical progression. Some coaches have thought out the issue of what to teach next based upon many years experience of watching their students struggle with one pitch while quickly learning another. That's probably the better approach. Still others watch the way a kid learns something and may make adjustments, moving to other pitches if they feel this kid just isn't going to learn that pitch right now. That's probably the best and most efficient approach. Don't try to pound a square peg through a round hole.
Many coaches get bored or feel their student is getting bored when all they do is work the fastball or fastball and change. They get to the third pitch, whichever one it is, pretty quickly. Then, after the third, a fourth, fifth and whatever is initiated. Usually pitching coaches will move on to other pitches long before the student has mastered the second, third or fourth. They do this mostly because they are being paid and feel pressure to make sure their clients are satisfied they are getting their money's worth, not because they philosophically believe they should be doing it. So the typical young pitcher after about a year or two of lessons will claim she knows 4, 5, 6 or possibly more pitches. This is the phenomenon I witnessed while trying out pitchers.
By the time a pitcher gets into high school and perhaps is in hot pursuit of a college scholarship, she probably lays claim to 5 or more pitches and believes she really owns these. So when she makes her college video, it is normal for her to want to include fastball, change, drop, screw, rise, and several other pitches. That's true even if she really uses primarily one particular pitch in games. She believes she has lots of stuff and she wants to display her stuff to the prospective college coaches. Coaches, of course, get bored to tears when they view such videos and cannot distinguish the fastball and drop from each other. They automatically discount whatever else they may have seen in a positive light.
But in the early years, what sticks out to me is how a parent, coach or pitcher would know, before trying out many pitches, what is going to work for her. We all have slightly different bodies. Every kid learns different things at different paces. One girl will generally struggle with the drop and the curve while progressing speedily through the screw and then the rise. If she doesn't try them all, she is not going to know which one works for her.
Also, even when a kid seems to learn one particular pitch very quickly, that doesn't mean that a year or two from now, she is going to continue to progress with it. Many times I have seen pitchers who learn the drop very quickly in one year start losing it sometime later and instead develop a killer sweeping curve. They appeared to develop a good drop early on but some of that was luck, some of that was physical, and they were never really all that comfortable throwing the thing. Later, their bodies matured, they found "religion" with the curve, and that is the pitch they enjoyed throwing more than any other. So they worked harder on the curve, enjoyed throwing it - were willing to throw curves all day until dad refused to catch anymore, and developed relative mastery over it. Thier drop falls by the wayside and is not used often thereafter.
The same sort of dynamic can happen with any pitch. You won't know until you try them all. And it is often not the first impression which dictates what is going to be good several years into a pitcher's career. I know that when Jelly Selden arrived on the scene, she was said to be a riseball pitcher. I don't remember her throwing very many drops early in her college career. Then Lisa Fernandez began coaching her. This past year, I would say that Jelly threw predominantly dropballs in the games I saw.
Another pitcher I have watched used to throw mostly rises and now it seems as if a variety of drop-curves and screws are most dominant in her repertoire. That could be the result of many factors but I don't care to analyze what those factors might be. The point is, nobody really knows what a pitcher is going to use one, two or three years from now. So telling her to learn only three would seem to be counter-productive.
There is one issue I would like to raise in this context. The issue is what I call "pitch pollution." Pitch pollution occurs where a pitcher does not have relative mastery over one pitch and then tries to learn a very similar one before really owning the previous one. If we think of the possible hand manipulations as a clock, a straight drop would be 12-6. A sweeping curve could be described as 3 o'clock to 9 (or 9 to 3). Then the drop curve is somewhere between the two. If a pitcher tries to master all three pitches simultaneously, she can run the risk of all three coming out as if they are the same pitch. Her straight drop doesn't drop straight down. Her sweeping curve tends to drop and sometimes doesn't really curve. Her drop curve is sometimes a straight drop and sometimes a sweeping curve. That's pitch pollution and the result is three pitches that are really just one.
The way to avoid pitch pollution is to really master one before the other, similar pitch is learned and then, after both are fully being implemented, to practice them alongside each other while paying special attention to distinguish between the different rotations and action of each. What we seek is pitch purity - true desired action on each specific pitch. I talked about drops and curves but this is also true with respect to rises and screws.
Many times pitchers who lay claim to a rise are throwing screws with slightly less screw. They don't angle the pitch in the way they might a real screw. They are trying to throw the rise but the spin does not show a straight 6-12. Instead it is off kilter and the result is it doesn't rise. (No, lets' not get into the debate about whether a rise actually rises). Sometimes a pitcher might have a pretty good rise but her screwball goes all to heck because she can no longer get any lateral movement on it. It has been polluted by the rise snap. This is why, it is so important for pitchers to throw as much as they can. They need to continually purify pitches and that takes a lot of work.
In addition to experiencing pitch pollution over the course of an early career, you can also experience this after a long lay off. Some pitcher genuinely owns numerous pitches on multiple planes one year. She then takes off for a month or two during the winter. She starts throwing everything again in January aiming for the spring season. But early on, her fingers, wrist and arm get themselves confused and her cruve is a drop and her rise a screw yet again. This can be very frustrating even for a well experienced pitcher.
I suggest trying to plan a natural progression in the early pre-season to purify one's pitches. The first time out maybe just throw. The second time, throw the fastball and change. The next time out throw a few fastballs to warm-up, enough changes to feel like you are getting it back, and then one other pitch. Stay with these three until the third feels right and progress with a fourth which involves another plane. Then gradually work all your pitches into the pre-season workout while making doubly sure they are working on the right planes, with the correct spin.
Getting back into the subject of the magic number of pitches - whether that is to learn 3 total pitches or to use just one or two in games, there is yet another consideration. One of our pitching coaches like to talk about pitches "taking vacations." On any given day, a pitch can decide it is going on vacation and not coming back until you really invite it home. There is little you can do other than to simply keep working on it until it comes back. And, more importantly, you really cannot predict when one might leave or know for sure when it will be back. So what are you supposed to do when one of your pitches goes on vacation and cuts your selection from three down to two?
There have been way more times than I can possibly count in which a pitcher has lost one of her mainstays for a game or for several tournaments. One pitcher Ican think of, off the top of my head, had a pretty good dropball. But when she tried to throw it on one particular field, the landing area was so chewed up that she could not get the thing for a strike. She walked several hitters consecutively and was in big trouble. There was no way she was going to be able to land a drop that game. There was no field crew around to fix the mound area and if there had been, they didn't have equipment or dirt to fix it with. She had to use something else or we were going to be eliminated. But she had nothing else. She was stuck with just 3 pitches and one was not going to show up. Her fastball was pretty good but the opponenet could hit it regardless of where she placed it if that was all she threw. Her change was reasonably good too but it was not a good enough difference in speed to really matter ... unless she also had the drop working. So we had to pull her.
On a few occassions,pitchers I have worked with have experienced the loss of a pitch for several weeks. Even my own daughters do this from time to time. One kid has cruised along with her screw doing the majority of the heavy lifting until one day we found ourselves in a tournament and the screw stayed in bed because it was tired. Luckily she had something else to go with the other 2 pitches and they pulled her through. In the specific instance which first comes to mind, this involved an elimination game in which the fastball and changes were OK, the screw was not working but two curves, one underhand, the other overhand with very different action, came for the party. That was a very good game in which few runners got on base and all of those were early on, resulting from base hits on poorly thrown screws.
As a further comment on limiting the number of pitches, there are times when a limited pitch selection can play right into an opponent's strong suits. There have been many times when a pitcher was throwing perfectly well. She had all her stuff on her three main pitches. And the other team was teeing off on her. Many teams have one particular style they teach their batters. All styles have their own strengths and weaknesses. And it is just possible that a pitcher with particular strengths can sometimes run into a team whose strengths exactly match hers. In those cases, she needs to adjust. But if she does not have something to pull out of her hat, she is out of luck.
On one fine summer day, a fairly well experienced pitcher faced a very well experienced team. The pitcher threw good screwballs, a very good change-up, and a reasonably fast, well located fastball. Her opponent was an extremely well disciplined rotational hitting team. They sat on pitches they knew they could hit. The pitcher's first pitch was a fastball on the outside corner but called a ball because this particular ump had a narrow, low strike zone. Her next pitch was a high and tight screwball which clipped the inside corner of the "objective strike zone," the rulebook strike zone. Ball two! Her next pitch was also a screw but she brought it down a bit to see if the ump would give her that corner, if the pitch was lower. That ball was retrieved a few minutes later after the field ump had stopped twirling his hand and the batter had rounded the bases.
So, there she was, facing a good rotational hitting team. She thought maybe the ump was pinching the zone. So she threw a change-up, strike one. Then she tried a fastball on the outside corner again. The disciplined batter did not go for it and the ump did not raise her right hand. 1-1. Another fastball, closer in, ball 2. Change-up, strike two. Change-up, strike three. One out, down 1-0. The next batter stood in and she threw her fastball on the corner, ball one. Screwball high and tight but over the plate, ball 2. Change-up, double.
At this point, it was pretty clear the ump would not give either corner. She could and did throw it high to the batters and sometimes it would be a strike. The change was working pretty well but a few batters were sitting on and driving it. The screwball was pretty much out of the question. The choice was throw something else or you are going to be eliminated. So throw something else, she did. And those pitches worked. She threw some drops and learned that the ump was pretty liberal down, even away. Drop-curves also brought up the umps arm. And the batters could not hit drops away and drop curves. In fact, they started being very vulnerable to the change when they tried to adjust. Then they started swinging sat the high and tight screwballs when those were reintroduced. As batters began to sit down rapidly, their discipline fell apart and the outside fastball which would not get a strike call started to be swung at. The result of having one or two more pitches than the magical three was a very good outing when disaster would otherwise have occurred.
In conclusion, I understand what college and other coaches are getting at when they reason that a pitcher needs to have "3 good pitches." I am also hip to the idea that a pitcher need not throw "them all" in one game - go with what is working best. But I do not believe that pitchers going through early development stages ought to be told to learn just three pitches and then achieve mastery over them and afterwards stop learning new ones. If you never learn a pitch because you already have your 3 good ones, how do you know whether you might not be a better pitcher by learning the fourth and then maybe dropping one of your existing three? What do you do when one of your good three goes on vacation? What do you do when you have three good pitches and your opponent likes all three?
We do need to simplify the equation. We do need to take steps to avoid pitch pollution and achieve pitch purity. We do need to keep pitchers from laying claim to pitches they don't own and make them work towards perfecting each one individually. When pitchers begin training for the new season, they need to strive for purity rather than being in a rush to get everything back at once. We do need to tell pitchers not to throw 10 different pitches on their college videoes that when taken together as a whole leave the impression that the pitcher really only has one pitch. But young kids should not be discouraged from learning more than three pitches. They should be taught pitches they can learn in a logical progression and be led down the path by coaches and parents away from pitch pollution. There really is no magic number.Labels: pitching
 
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