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Bring It
by Dave
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Here is an announcement from Rich Iorio, founder of a concept called "Bring it to NJ.""I was wondering is it possible to get the word out to the younger rec leagues and girls who are thinking about trying to pitch, on your web site. The info is on http://www.longvalleysoftball.com and http://www.eteamz.com/BringIt2NJ/."
This clinic is just another one of those pitching clinics except for one thing, it is being run by 1998 NCAA National Player of the Year Nancy Evans. Nancy is a former University of Arizona Assistant Softball Coach who coached Team USA member (Olympic alternate) Alicia Hollowell as well as last year's Women's College World Series Most Outstanding Player, Taryne Mowatt.
Nancy, as a player and coach, has been involved in 6 of Arizona's 8 national championships. She was the first in a line of dominant pitchers at AZ which includes Jennie Finch, Hollowell, and Mowatt
A Tucson newspaper report said "Evans was credited with savvy pitch calling as Mowatt led UA to the 2007 College World Series title." If you watched last year's WCWS, you know what is meant by the phrase "savy pitch calling." I don't have to explain that one.
The clinic is being run as a joint fundraising effort by Red Bank Regional HS softball team and Long Valley youth recreational softball. The clinic will be held May 30, 2008 5:30 PM - Jun 1, 2008 - 7:00 PM at Red Bank Regional High School which is located about ten minutes from exit 109 on the Garden State Parkway, about an hour's drive from Manhattan.
Please see the web site for more information. Rich can be reached via e-mail at "bringIt2nj@comcast.net"
I would like to note that this announcement is being published for a very specific reason. I have no desire to turn this blog into a vehicle for announcements concerning local clinics, tournaments and events. I have an ulterior motive behind making this announcement.
I know I've mentioned it before but several years ago I recall watching a college game on TV involving teams from Florida in which one of the broadcasters made an interesting comment. She noted that just a few short years earlier a college would not have been able to pull together a competitive program using all the girls playing softball in the Florida. Let me repeat that in some context because today I find it astounding. When the current crop of college players were born, you could not pull together enough Florida kids to fill one reasonably competitive college team.
Today, May 21, 2008, there are 16 Division I programs left standing as the Super-Regionals get ready to play ball. Among those 16 teams is number one seed, University of Florida. Florida, like most big schools, draws players from lots of locations but more than a half dozen kids on the roster are from within the state. Also, at least an equal number of Florida kids are playing for the other 15 teams. That's not even to mention the several dozen other kids who participated in but are now gone from the overall NCAA tournament. Almost wherever you look in Div I softball, you find Florida kids. The rising prominence of Florida softball is evident elsewhere too. Of the top 25 high school teams listed on the NFCA site, 4 are from Florida. Some of the biggest college recruiting dates are held in Florida each year. At various youth national competitions, Florida youth teams make a name for themselves.
So the question is, how did the state of Florida rise up from the junk pile of girls softball to become one of the most important states? I don't have an answer for you but I can make a guess. I may be wrong but still I think I know the formula for bringing real softball to any place, provided you get buy-in from parents and girls alike.
My guess consists of the formula I believe any state can pull itself up in any sport or other endeavor. Bring in those with world class knowledge to train anybody around willing to listen for a few hours. Keep bringing back the experts until you have developed a critical mass of people with a reasonable level of knowledge. Send forth these trained people amongst the masses and have them teach what they have learned. Interact with (play games against) the very best participants in the activity (sport).
In other words, if you want to bring an activity out of the dregs, hire yourself some folks who know what they are talking about. In softball, that would be people like Nancy Evans, Howard Kobata, and many of the "diplomats" of the sport who are willing to go anywhere in the lower 48 to conduct clinics if they have sufficient interest. You bring in people like this to teach the teachers (coaches) and then, as these folks spread "the word," skills should rise to the point where you can send forth your teams to compete with the best.
You cannot merely send forth willing victims to be mauled by highly skilled opponents and expect them to be made stronger because they survived. There's a time and place for that but before you engage the "enemy," you've got to learn the skills. Many involved in this sport at high levels are willing to travel to conduct clinics. I've been to maybe a half dozen such clinics involving people from thousands of miles away. The kids certainly benefit but any parent paying close attention to the goings on is going to come away with an education too. I haven't observed Nancy Evans teaching pitching before but I imagine that she has a wealth of knowledge to impart upon the girls and their parents.
Many organizations are looking for ways to raise funds for tournaments, travel, uniforms, etc. Sponsoring clinics such as these can be a better way to raise substantial amounts of money while also doing something for the general state of the sport in your area. I know of one very well respected organization in Ohio which conducted a Kobata fielding clinic. A couple organizations by me sis similarly and we attended those. I wasn't there at the counting of the green but I can operate a calculator and know most of the associated costs involved. This can be a very lucrative venture. In one fell swoop, a softball organization can raise money, increase the skill level in their area, and make a name for themselves with the local youth. That's a win-win-win situation.
Yet, it can also backfire on you. There are certain fixed costs associated with conducting a clinic like this. And, if you fail to schedule the thing at a time convenient for the masses, if you fail to properly get the word out, if you do not get yourself a bona fide draw, you can end up sitting in a big facility, rolling your thumbs, and wondering what you did wrong.
The announcement above was not particularly well timed and Rich freely admits that. He did not consider that most local travel teams, the people who are familiar with Nancy Evans, would be playing tournaments during this clinic. Also, many high schools in the region have proms scheduled for the same day. Normally you would expect a "name coach" like this to draw every travel ball player within an hour's drive of the area. You'd have a bigger job explaining to people why you don't have room for them than you would promoting the event.
I've been to a couple events at which "big name" coaches have taught and entire teams arrived wearing their practice "uniforms" complete with t-shirts listing their biggest wins, etc. These kinds of things can really be a lot of fun since you don't often get to practice alongside the very same people you will despise at your next tournament!
And the level of instruction is usually extremely good, whether that be on fundamental skills or mental aspects of the game levels. I've yet to be completely disappointed in a clinic run by a "name coach." Even at extremely crowded events, you can walk away with one very important aspect of the game which you had not previously considered.
So to the youth reasonably close to Red Bank, especially those who already pitch or might want to give it a try, I urge you to attend the above clinic. Even girls who have never pitched will gain something from this. To those who want to bring the game in their area or state up, I implore you to find ways to attend similar clinics or host some of your own. Support the local softball organizations, if you can, and at the same time bring your children's skill levels up. To parents and coaches, I command you to pay strict attention when a giant of the game is conducting such a clinic and your kids are there in attendance. You may be the future teachers who bring the level of play up to national prominence for the next Florida!Labels: lessons, pitching
Permanent Link: Bring It
 
Breaking Views
by Dave
Monday, May 19, 2008
I have to admit that when the NFCA held their caucus (no not for the US presidential nomination) and decided to alter the strike zone a bit for NCAA games, I never heard anything nor paid much attention. But anyone who aspires to the next level ought to give this a good long think. And the powers that be in high school and youth fastpitch softball also should take this into consideration as we move forward.
First of all, the NCAA strike zone is now from the top of the front knee to the bottom of the sternum when the batter takes up her natural stance. Take a look at the chart at the bottom of this web page: NCAA Softball Rules Changes for 2008 for a visual aid. At first glance, this doesn't seem to be much of a big difference. Looking at the picture, it seems to be maybe two inches. But, in practice, this is a huge difference.
The reasons I feel this is a huge difference is because it moves the umpires focal point to anything at his eyes down to the knees to a spot below his normal eye level. Human beings, being fallible, will have a tendency to frame this new strike zone a bit lower than it might have been, that is, the actual strike zone in practice will be lower than the bottom of the sternum. As it was, umps hade a tendency to call strikes above where it was supposed to be. They didn't stop at the arm pits of a batter taking up her natural stance. They called anything near the shoulder a strike. So, I suspect the actual strike zone has shifted downwards more than the 2-4 inches which should result from moving it from the arm pits to the sternum.
I expect many of you watched some of the NCAA Regional action this past weekend. We recorded hours and hours of these games since we were at tournaments and then watched them a little too late into the night. While watching these games and many others in the weeks previous, several effects of the strike zone change struck me.
I would like to see a statistical analysis comparing run production 2008 vs. 2007 for the entire college game. I don't have that nor the resources to put together a proxy. But I'll go out on a limb and say that I believe run production was up this year. I may be wrong but that's my perception. I can't say that more homeruns were hit but the scores I saw were definitely bigger than in year's past. Before I ever heard anything about the strike zone change, I felt run production was up. I was actually a little shocked at the amount of hitting and run scoring there was at the college games I attended. Again, I have no statistics to back up my claim but those are my perceptions.
I believe this was the objective of the rule change. In softball as in baseball, folks have been eroding any advantage pitchers have in order to slowly change the game from one dominated by pitchers to one dominated by the offense. The same way we have watched a steady, though deliberate, gradual changing of the rules of the game to make more "hitter friendly." The pitchers plate was moved back to 43 feet from 40 in college and higher level youth and international play. We have begun to see a greater focus on the legality of the pitch including the amount of time a pitcher can stand there while a batter gets tighter and tighter, and to a lesser extent, pitchers remaining legal with their feet and hands.
(I still say the foot work rules are not enforced in a meaningful way but they are sometimes enforced as they were against Finch in the B-4-Beijing tour and several college pitchers at various times. My thinking is that since the same infractions were occurring over and over again yet the illegal pitch called no more than 2-6 times per game, the rule isn't being enforced in a meaningful way. Yet, if some umpire decided to really make an issue out of it, that would really kill a game. You'd have perhaps some of the greatest pitchers to ever have played the game breaking down in tears in the circle while runs were pushed across the plate by multiple, consecutive illegal pitch calls! &nbasp; We want hitting to be more important in the game but we don't want to go through transitional experiences like that to get us there.)
The objectives of ruling bodies has clearly been to inject more offense into the game. Nobody really makes any bones about it. There are still too many 1-0 games well into extra innings where the winning run scores primarily because of the ITB plus a misplayed ball or two in the field. We set our game length limits to 7 innings because we feel that is how long a game should be. The ITB is used because ... well ... this thing has to end sometime. I am one of those purists who loves a well pitched and played 1-0 game but even I have to admit that when only a handful of balls are put into play, I sometimes find myself confused, waking up in a beach chair with a terrible sunburn and bug bites at a field after everyone has long gone home. In other words, even I get bored when 21 outs are recorded, 17 of them by the K, or when the game is decided on an error in the 19th inning by some girl who really needs to get to a doctor's appointment and is getting nervous that she'll miss it if this blasted game doesn't end.
So I think the objective of shrinking the strike zone has to be about getting more offense into the game. Rule makers, in effect, wanted to neutralize the most dominant pitch, the rise ball.
I believe over the past several years (perhaps longer than that), it became clear that the riseball was the "Cadillac" of all pitches. Pitching coaches worked hard to teach girls to throw it at younger and younger ages. Even when they didn't specifically teach a particular girl an actual riseball, they were focused on skills which would eventually lead up to it.
On the whole, the most effective pitchers I observed (particularly in HS and college) all shared one thing in common, an effective riseball. I can't count the number of times I saw pitchers who relied upon the rise. There was one well known college pitcher who during her freshman year seemed to throw 60-80% rises with tremendous success. There were some extremely effective drop ball pitchers too (including obviously Texas' Osterman and Alabama's Stephanie VanBrakle) but I believe the vast majority of effective college pitchers relied upon a good riseball. Certainly many of the top strike-out pitchers like Abbott were riseball throwers. Osterman's success with breaking stuff cannot be disputed but the largest percentage of dominant strike-out pitchers used the rise.
You can argue that a riseball can be brought even with or under the sternum but this is not its most effective location. The most effective location is just above the armpits (the old upper limit of the strike zone). It gets into the eyes of the hitter and, at first, looks like a meatball that she is going to drive out of the park. Then as the pitch gets into the no-see zone (the last .15 seconds of its trip), it drifts up and out and there is no way to keep your hands on top of it. It is a swing and miss pitch except on those rare occasions you can make contact with it and pop it up to the infield.
Yes, an effective riseball pitcher can throw it in the zone as well as out but if the thing is thrown too low, it truly can become a meatball and end up on the wrong side of the outfield fence. And the riseball thrown under the armpits was always a set-up pitch, a set-up for the one thrown just above the zone. You brought a rise into the zone say on 3-0 and then threw one above it on 3-1, then maybe again on 3-2 after the batter swung and missed on 3-1. It also complemented an effective screwball since batters might misread the rotation and react to the screw only to swing and miss as it rose up and tied up their hands.
So the principal advantage of the rise has historically been as a swing and miss, just out of the zone pitch. And moving the strike zone downwards is a way to neutralize that particular pitch. One of the observations which surprised me while watching this year's NCAA Div I Regionals was the transformation of Jelly Selden from a riseball pitcher into a dropball one. Jelly can certainly still throw the rise but she doesn't necessarily rely upon it. She throws drops in and out, mixes in other pitches including the rise and she gets girls out with the breaking stuff. I believe we will see more of that from all college pitchers in the future.
I totally get that this change will not completely erradicate the riseball from the game. You can get a girl to swing at a high one regardless of where the strike zone is. I assume we will continue to see efective rises thrown on say 0-1, 0-2, 1-2 counts. But I don't expect to see its use be as dominant as it has been in the past. That is because any good batting coach, who has many empirical observations in which the rise is called a ball, will eventually begin working with his or her hitters to lay off the pitch, even at the risk of being punched out by umps with an over-extended zone. Eventually college hitters will lay off the rise the way many do the low thrown change-up.
This development has many far-reaching implications for high school and youth-play girls who aspire to play at the next level. For one thing, pitchers are going to need to work the low, breaking stuff more. It is no longer going to be in a pitcher's best interests to go through youth with a killer fastball and change while having other pitches but not having relative command of them, then as a young high schooler, develop a rise.
Pitchers who want to get the attention of college coaches are going to have to have good breaking stuff and laterally moving pitches. The softball strike zone is still fairly broad and pretty low. Who knows, those may be the next things to go? But for now, merely grazing the sides and bottom of the zone have become the most effective pitches. And a pitcher is more likely to succeed by "expanding" the zone laterally rather than trying to push it up, at least in the college game. Sure there will be fewer Ks as badly hit balls will be the sign of a pitcher who is on. And as the riseball is made more and more ineffective by the confluence of umps not giving the pitch and batters being trained to lay off it, the pitchers who will dominate the game going forwards will be throwing breaking stuff.
As a result of this development which I think will take place over the coming years, batters will, of course, have to adjust to the gradual change in the pitching they see. I don't believe I will get an argument that some girls are better low ball hitters than others just as some are better high ball hitters. You can work to change your swing but some girls physical make-up puts them in a better position to hit lower balls than others. The girls whose bodies make them better high ball hitters will have to adjust. And the world of hitting instructors will also make the adjustment. As another aside, I believe it is just possible that we'll see further inroads made by those who teach more of what is referred to as "rotational hitting" mechanics in which the bat head is often held below the hands - something you can't do when facing a riseball pitcher. But I'm getting way ahead of myself. I don't want to expand the restriction of the upper strike zone quite that far.
The bottom line in all this is what are high school aged players going to do about it? I expect pitchers will work the breaking stuff more and hitters will change their swings to adapt but the major consideration which I think must be looked at is the way high school and youth umps call the game. We conduct neither youth tournaments nor high school games in order to provide talent to the colleges. The largest percentage of age group and high school players will never set foot onto a college diamond. We don't need to alter their game in order to prepare the few college prospects to play at the next level. Yet, the history of all games begs the question of why we would want the thing played differently below 18 than it is above. In baseball, the game is essentially the game, in terms of rules and the way it is played, from say 14 years old onwards. The same is true of most, if not all, other sports. Why should we have different rules between HS and college just for girls softball?
While we don't want to change the game only so the colleges have a small percentage of kids prepared to play, there is no reason to penalize the kids who will move on in order to keep the HS and youth games stagnant. If the lowered strike zone is good enough for the college game, it should be good enough for every level of competition from say 14U up. And if the rule changes could make for more offensive production in games at these age levels, why not adopt them? What are the affirmative reasons to make the game different for these slightly younger age categories?
Having said this, I just realized that perhaps the HS strike zone has already changed but I did not bother to check that. And even if it did, it isn't being enforced properly, at least not in my state. I've been to dozens and dozens of high school games already this year with hopes of seeing maybe another dozen in the coming weeks. HS umps are definitely still giving the high rise continued importance in that game. Several times I have had to wonder if the strike zone ended at the chin, nose, eyes, or top of the helmet of the batter! I have had the opportunity to observe a few senior pitchers who have already signed NLIs as well as many juniors who may this July and several underclassmen who have either already gotten the attention of college coaches or may this summer. Most of these kids, not all, at least in their high school personas are riseball pitchers.
I cannot say with any certainty that high or low ball hitters have been the focus of college coaches but I have to wonder if this might be a consideration going forwards. If they start looking to recruit dropball and sideways movement pitchers, you really have to wonder if simultaneously they'll be looking to pick up low ball hitters.
Well, I hope this piece provides you food for thought. Obviously, there is, as always, a fair amount of my own personal opinion here. I have to say that I'm a little late to the picnic. This rule change has been out there the whole college season. I didn't know about it until recently. I thought I saw more offensive production in colleges this year but I really didn't know why. I also thought I saw fewer riseballs being thrown and, again, wasn't sure why. Maybe I'm just making a mountain out of a mole hill but I suspect my observations are right. I don't mind if you disagree with me and as always, if you do disagree, please feel free to write. The only thing I will warn you about is, if you write, I just may publish your opinion!
Scott from Texas writes in to offer his opinion:
Baseball moved from pitching advantage to hitting advantage because scoring meant more fans. I think in general that has proven true. As a dad like yourself with two pretty decent softball girls, I have fallen in love with the game and wish it had more of a fan base. So I would love to see the strikezone get a bit smaller and generate some more scoring. We also have a hard time keeping girls interested in the game, because unless you are the pitcher or the catcher, not a lot of action. Hitting is the funnest part of the game and it would go a long way to keep girls playing this sport instead of soccer or basketball.
I say this as a pitcher's dad as well (and travel ball coach). My daughter isn't old enough yet to pitch the rise ball - she is just 12. However, we are ahead of the curve on the drop and curve and screwball - most of her peer pitchers are fastball/change up pitchers. I love that she can spin the ball and I think it makes her game a ton of fun, trying to outwit her batting opponent. I get really bored with pure power - I'm more of a Greg Maddux fan. Most of the pitching coaches I've interacted with are teaching power pitching and I also believe it leads to injuries that are unnecessary, particularly for the age that we are in.
So all in all, I believe the change would be good for this game. I am probably reaching a bit, but it could also be a formula that re-instates it as an Olympic sport. Right now, what chance does the rest of the world have against the US and Japan with the pitching as dominant as it is?
Labels: hitting, pitching, rules
Permanent Link: Breaking Views
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