A Great Strategy Practice for Your Pitchers

Having pitchers that are confident in mixing their pitches during a game leads to successful game pitchers. Create more teachable moments using a simple strategy drill.

While mechanics and pitches are certainly important for a pitcher to practice, she’s also got to be able to use those pitches successfully in a game. Using pitches comes down to figuring out what the batter’s weakness is and being able to attack it, and figuring out what she’s trying to do and preventing it.

So often, pitchers are simply told to go to the bull pen and do their workouts. To most pitchers, that means doing the same thing over and over again. That “thing” is no doubt a workout that focuses on either some form of mechanics or pitch control, and while both are important, they don’t help the pitcher understand when or how or why to use her pitches.

Even if your pitchers don’t call their own games and instead, throw exactly what you call, it helps them a ton if they can understand the reason behind the pitches you’re calling. Pitchers become more committed to their pitches if they can understand their ultimate purpose.

So here’s a very simple way to help your pitchers practice the strategy of pitching, put more thought into what they’re doing pitch-by-pitch and make practice more fun.

Here’s how it works – Make up some situation cards on simple notebook paper. 3-4 is enough as long as they deal with different hitters, situations and counts. I use 3 since that number allows the pitcher time to warm up and get through all 3 in 30 minutes. If your pitchers practice for an hour you could have more than 3, or let your pitchers practice their different pitches for the first 30 minutes and then do situations the last 30 minutes. How you use them is up to you, but let’s take a closer look at one of my situation cards so you can get a better idea on how they apply to a pitcher.

As you can see below, I simply write out 4 bullets that tell the pitcher:

• Runners – how many runners are on base and where are they?
• Outs – how many?
• Type of Batter Up - A right handed power hitter, a left handed power hitter, an average righty hitter, a lefty slapper…
• Count – what’s the count?

I purposefully avoid the inning and the score because I don’t want to overwhelm the pitcher with information. I want them to simply focus on the pitch that needs to be made based on the current situation in regards to these 4 factors.

So based on this situation card, there are Runners on 1^st and 2^nd base, there are 2 outs, there’s a Lefty Slapper up and it’s a 1-1 count.

So, as the coach, we need to help our pitcher think through this situation by talking about it from the batter’s point of view. Here’s an example of me talking this through with a pitcher.

Me – What is the batter likely to do or trying to do? We have lefty slapper up. Usually they try to hit the ball to the left side of the infield. Which under most circumstances is a pain to us on defense, BUT, in the case of Runners on 1^st and 2^nd base, it’s helpful. If we can get this slapper to hit the ball toward 3^rd base or Shortstop it will make it easier for us to force the runner out at 3^rd.

Pitcher – OK

Me – So, what part of the strike zone would make it easier for the batter to hit the ball to the left side of the infield?

Pitcher – An outside pitch!

Me – Exactly! Now what pitch are you the most confident in throwing outside to a lefty?

Pitcher – Drop

Me – Great! Let’s start off with a drop outside to a lefty.

As the count progresses you can help the pitcher think through the advantages and disadvantages of throwing to different locations based on how the batter’s needs might change.

OK, you get it. But, we don’t stop there. We play this entire batter out until the pitcher either strikes her out or walks her. We imagine the batter doesn’t swing so we have to constantly re-think how the change in count might change where we’re trying to throw the ball.

Now let’s look at card #2 to the right. We’ve got a Runner on 1^st base, 0 outs, the 8^th hitter is up and she’s a lefty, and there’s a 2-1 count on the batter. So here’s how my conversation with the pitcher would go:

Me – Runner on 1^st base, 0 outs, a lefty hitter up whose their 8^th hitter and a 2-1 count. Let’s start with the batter. How strong is the 8^th hitter usually?

Pitcher – not very strong.

Me – right. She might be really weak, or she could be a good hitter on a crazy-good hitting team. But it’s probably safe to say that this isn’t a really strong hitter. So with 0 outs and a runner on 1^st, what do you think they’re going to try and do?

Pitcher – Bunt (they’ve all said this)

Me – Right! So where can we throw that will make it really hard for them to successfully bunt?

Pitcher – I don’t know

Me – When you’re bunting, are you trying to bunt the ball in the air or on the ground?

Pitcher – the ground.

Me – Good. So where can you throw to make it hard for the batter to bunt the ball on the ground?

Pitcher – High.

Me – Exactly. So what pitch do you feel the most confident in hitting a high target?

Continue helping the pitcher think through each pitch based on making it as hard as possible for the batter to do what she’s trying to do. That can change as the count changes so this really helps the pitcher think about how all of her different pitches fit into a cohesive plan.

Also, your pitcher will start to notice the pitches she feels the most confident in based on the pitches she throws the most often when she needs a strike.

The final card I use is shown on the right. In this situation the bases are loaded with the other team’s cleanup hitter up and nobody out. While this one gives the pitcher much more leeway in regards to the count, it does make the pitcher have to carefully consider each pitch based on the quality of hitter up, and the cost of a potential mistake. This type of situation is a great way to help a pitcher understand how it can be better to end up walking a hitter instead of risking throwing too good of a strike.

In practice I take all 3 of these situation cards, fold them, hold them out and let the pitcher pick one. We go through that card, then I let her pick between the remaining 2 cards, and after she throws that one she throws the last remaining card. The pitchers like picking the situations at random since it makes it a little more fun.

This type of practice creates little teachable moments that enable you to help a pitcher understand how she can use her pitches instead of simply learning how to throw them.

For more help with this topic check out the following online Clinics:

• The Art of Calling Pitches: All the Things You Need to Know to Call a Great Game
• Pitching Charts – How to Use Them to Win More Games
• Critical Counts: How to Stop the Walks