Great video, Coach Dan! I always say the most important pitch is strike 1, the most difficult pitch is strike 3. I commonly remind parents who grumble about getting that 3rd strike that it is the most difficult strike to get! There's a RU-vid vid of Greg Maddux talking about not wasting pitches on strike 3-yeah, he's gonna get hit, but he will also get a lot of outs!
High strikeout guys also are not on the bump at the end in any league playing with pitch counts... I watched a LL pitcher throw a complete game (6 innings) and only threw 39 pitches... I don't know a coach who would complain about that... Greg Maddox was the poster child for it and Mariano Rivera also made his career being a pitch to contact guy.. I know for me as a coach, I love seeing 3-pitch innings.. where each pitch was put in play and the D got the out.
Your pitching videos are so incredibly insightful for young players. Pound the zone and don't waste pitches. Trust your stuff and the game will come to you. Get ahead on the edges, and don't make mistakes trying to make the perfect pitch if you're a starter
Great stuff Coach Dan. I tell my kids to just throw strikes. The ideal number of pitches to get out of an inning is 3. Pop fly or ground outs is what we want. We don’t want to give a free walk. They gotta earn it to get on base.
🤯 I didn’t even know constantly pitching for swings and misses out of the zone was a thing? In the late 90’s we threw the L. 2 strike pitches would flirt with the zone but only ahead in the count. We threw our nasty’s to the corners of the zone. If you couldn’t throw a pitch for a strike, it was useless. But this was an era when our idols were Clemons, Pedro, Glaven and Maddux. All had exceptional control.
'Splain something to me. I watch a number of college, college summer league, and occasionally high school games, so the coaches are mostly calling the pitches. Pitcher gets an 0-2 count. Pitches 3 and 4 are nowhere close, and the count is now 2-2. Am i missing something, or is the coach not following your advice to pitch to contact? So is this more a pitcher problem or a coaching problem?
part of that is poor execution. it's fine to go for a strikeout on 0-2 - i recommend that. but most coaches do call terrible games (I have a video on this topic as well)
I see conflicting advices with regards to 0-2 mindset from your vids where on 0-2 you recommend pitching for swings and misses, and if it's a ball it's ok, either swing and miss or go 1-2 and pound the strikezone with some nasty stuff. I wonder now if there's a pitch to contact mindset for 0-2, is the mindset more balancing out the swing and miss pitches with locating a pitch on the corners of a strike zone?
its not a conflict. pitching to contact is an overall mindset. when you're 0-2, it makes the most sense to try for a strikeout. there is nuance to this but way too many pitchers - hence this video - look for strikeouts as an overarching end goal
I understand and see pitchers doing this all the time, yet on the other hand as a batter if I knew the pitcher is going to try to stay zone, I would light up the hits all day long. Unpredictably I believe is the strength of a pitcher - just my two cents
You get more misses by changing speed than by changing locations. Don’t throw the same exact speed twice in a row. If your peak fastball is 70, throw some at 68 on purpose
its not advisable to throw slower versions of fastballs - 2mph is not enough to be useful, and if anything, very harmful - a much easier version to hit.
