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Numbers Game
by Dave
Friday, June 20, 2008
It is going to come as a shock to you but baseball and softball are not really strict numbers games. I guess it is more accurate to say that they are not always strict numbers games. Certainly from a fan or fantasy league perspective, numbers are important. And sometimes players and coaches have to "play the percentages." But, for the most part numbers are not what rules decision making in this game.
I was very amused once when someone tried to tell me, "In softball, a good batting average is .500 and up. It isn't like baseball where .300 is considered a good batting average." What was most amusing to me is the fellow telling me this was comparing up high school fastpitch softball batting averages with those of MLB baseball. It never occurred to him that batting averages were indeed higher in youth, high school, and even college baseball than they were up in the big leagues of baseball. Also, in college softball, batting averages are quite a bit lower than they are in high school.
In our local high schools, once upon a time there was a girl who hit .700 for the season. I watched her play a couple games against some of the better teams and her results were not quite as good. She had an outstanding swing, made good contact against even the better pitchers, but I would say that in top level competition, she was about a .333 hitter. It is relatively easy to impeach a player's high school stats because these are often reported to newspapers by coaches who really do not take this function particularly seriously. often, the kid or parent who keeps the book doesn't really understand how scoring works or how errors should be assigned. They are well meaning but they just don't know.
For example, we see that in high level NCAA play, balls that are struck back to pitchers who apparently boot the play generally do not result in the assignment of an error because it is rather difficult to field a ball hit in the 90s when you are just 37 feet from the contact point. Usually, sharply hit balls are given hits when the pitcher fails to make a play. But most people do not appreciate that.
Secondly, I have heard more misconceptions about when to assign a stolen base, a passed ball, a wildpitch, etc. than I have heard folks bragging about their daughter's .450 batting average. For example, I have seen "WP" written in books on pitches which hit the dirt directly in back of the point of homeplate and which bounced true. I won't argue the point but to me that's not a wildpitch. Similarly, I have seen "PB" written into books on curveballs which bounce in the dirt a foot in front of the plate and fly past the catcher a full two feet outside of their wingspan. I have seen books which reflect a stolen base for the runner from first on double steals on which the lead runner was thrown out at third. I don;t wish to debate particular plays but my point is, the books do not always accurately reflect what has transpired.
Even if books are perfectly kept, high schoolers sporting those .700 BAs do not usually run off to college and repeat their monumental successes at the next level. In Div I college softball, girls who hit .500 and up in high school generally don't come close to that. A .500 batting average is quite rare in Div I play. Anything above .400 is rather stupendous. .300 is often a quite good BA.
On a related topic, I am often amused by youth softball managers and parents who try to use the numbers to make or change decisions with respect to the lineup. One manager once told me that so and so has a really good on-base percentage so we're going to bat her first this (elimination) game. She had been in the 7th-9th spot all season, had maybe two basehits in 40 games, and proceeded to strike out every time up from the first spot in that important game. During the year, she had walked quite a bit, particularly against weak teams. She had walked a lot mostly because, after the first couple of games, she didn't hit and had gone up there trying to get walked. I worked to make her more aggressive at the plate, but she refused and continued to go up looking to walk. Against better teams and pitchers, she often struck out looking. Still, those 4 walk games against weak opponents had her on-base percentage pretty high and the "by-the-numbers" folks were convinced that this mattered. The kid she supplanted at the top of the order, by the way, went 2 for 3 that game. But because she was deep in the order where some of our weaker hitters were and she was left on base every time.
When I try to make out a line-up, I have my own philosophy and I don't want to really get into that. Some coaches try to spread out the real hitters. Some coaches use a traditional baseball approach. But whatever way you try to craft a line-up, the way you evaluate hitters should not be based on the numbers. Lots of kids get most of their stats compiled in games against weak pitchers and the numbers look really good. But when they face better pitchers, their numbers drop off precipitously. Some girls don't get a lot of hits when the team is up 8-0 after two innings. Yet they are the only ones who hit or otherwise get on base in the later rounds of the tourneys. A coach has to use more feel than that.
Once upon a tryout season, a father came to me to tell me that his daughter had achieved a .300 BA and .450 OBA during the previous season. The idea was I should take her and probably bat her in one of the top 4 spots. But her swing was terrible and she went after a lot of bad pitches when the stress was high. I can judge a kid's potential and swing for myself. I don't need to look at her stats. I'm pretty sure other youth coaches, not to mention HS, college and bigger time coaches, feel the same way.
A very long time ago, I played on a baseball team which produced a kid who had a decent major league career. He had a great swing and was an exceptional defensive player. When all was said and done with our summer travel league, I had a better batting average, more RBIs, etc. than this fellow. I know this because the manager compiled stats at the end of the year and went over them with us. You know, that other fellow batted fourth for us in every game while I batted 5th or 6th. There was never any thought of moving him off the clean-up spot. No coach ever contemplated it. I never contemplated it. Nobody in their right mind would have even considered it. It was a far superior hitter than I. Stats be damned. Anyone, especially the MLB scouts, could see he had something and I didn't.
So the moral of this part of the story is, please don't tell me about, or manage your team, exclusively by, compiling the stats in your scorebook and basing your line-up by your hitters' batting averages or other numbers.
I've gone astray from what I originally wanted to do with this piece. Where I wanted to take this is in the direction of some numbers which are actually somewhat important. The numbers which are actually important, though not controlling in the decision making process are those numbers which college coaches use, at least in part, in their evaluations of players. We are at a time of the year during which players go to these NFCA recruitment camps to show their stuff and some of the numbers which are recorded there can have an impact.
Also, recently, I have received a number of e-mails inquiring about some numbers. Folks want to get some idea of where their daughters stand with respect to other players around the country and, in particular, the "typical college player." I'm afraid I can't do anything for you there. I am unaware of any statistical table which shows pitch speed, catcher pop times, infielder/outfielder throwing and running speed, or anything like that for the country as a whiole at a particular age group or at the high school or NCAA levels. The best I can offer is a proxy, an easily available link to some numbers recorded at an NFCA recruiting camp.
Recently, the NFCA administered recruitment Pennsbury camp in Yardley, PA took place with a couple hundred college scholarship hopefuls and over one hundred college coaches from all levels in attendance. The campers were not necessarily the top prospects within these United States but there were some pretty good players there. The 2008 camp results can be viewed online. And now for my take on these numbers.
First of all, keep in mind that the players who performed these tests are not all juniors and seniors in high school who are headed to play in college. There is an application process by which kids are admitted into the camp. Many seniors who will play ball in college have already performed at these camps. They likely won't participate in the testing if they already know where they are headed. Even many recent juniors are already armed with pens, waiting for July 1, when they can sign NLIs or otherwise formally commit to schools. I can't seem to locate the list of participants at this camp but, in years past, I have seen a good number of middle schoolers, freshman, etc.
Secondly, Pennsbury represents one area of the country. There are five NFCA administered camps in various corners of the country, of which Pennsbury is but one. There are also numerous "NFCA endorsed camps." I cannot speak to the relative talent levels at the various camps. What I can tell you is that conspicuously absent from this camp were any representatives from the PAC 10, Big 10, Big 12, SEC, etc. And while there certainly were some reasonably competitive college programs in all divisions there, even many Big East schools were not in attendance. In short, I'm pretty sure that the best kids across the nation as a whole are not reflected in the test results.
The first thing which interests me is the pitching results. Of just less than 140 girls who had a couple fastballs recorded, the average speed was about 56 mph. The fastest speed recorded was 63 and the slowest (on a fastball) was upper 40s. I don't know about you but upper 40s is shocking to me. I wonder why someone throwing in the 40s would participate in such a camp regardless of what else they might bring to the table.
Of greater interest to me was the disparity between some of the fastballs and other pitches. One girl threw a 60 mph fastball and a 38 mph change-up. Another hit 63 on her fastball and 65 on her curve. While a 63 fastball might not garner a kid a ton of attention in and of itself - not all that many true fastballs thrown at the college level - a good breaking curve at 65 should. You cannot judge a change-up purely by its speed or lack thereof since all change-ups are not equal. But a 22 mph gap between fastball and change is at least noteworthy.
What strikes me in all this is loads of people like to use 60 mph as the measuring rod for their pitchers. I have heard a number of claims that this or that pitcher throws 60. My 13 year old daughter's coach has frequently said something to me along the lines of "how fast do you think she throws, I'm guessing 60." I tell him that I cannot judge pitch speed with my rather poor eyes but I do believe she's mid 50s, maybe 57 on occasion." He usually gets upset with me but I know what I know and 60 is somewhat rare, particularly with 14U players. Apparently, these claims by others are just not valid.
Understand that I'm not dissing everybody on pitcher's speeds. I'm just suggesting that when we stand there along the sidelines and claim this kid throws 60 or whatever, we might be wrong. Also pitch speed is not the only evaluation tool that is relevant to evaluating pitchers. Let's face it, even if the fastball were the only pitch available, some girls might throw a flat 60 in the middle of the plate or not be able to hit corners. Other girls might throw a 58 with sharp break due to good wrist snap, be able to hit corners at will, and have a very crafty approach to pitching in games. Which would you start in your most important game of the year?
The pitching number which intrigues me most on the chart is the rotations per second. Obviously, break on whatever plane is to a high degree controlled by spin. There are other factors but spin is undeniably important. I have no way to evaluate these numbers because this is the first time I have seen them. But I am intrigued by these. I need to get a gun which can give me that. That's got to be my next toy!
Still, you can't evaluate a pitcher simply by measuring her spins. Lots of girls get over-adrenlaized and then overthrow their movement pitches in big games. And aside from not getting the right amount of break, some girls are just so crafty with their curves, drops, rises, and screws, that the pure amount of spin or break is not nearly enough to judge them. The best HS pitcher I have observed is a girl who throws a nasty curve. The stuff itself is nasty but what is more nasty than her stuff is the way she uses it. She throws a drop curve on the outside corner and batter's usually sit and watch it only to go down 0-1. Her next pitch is usually 6 inches off the corner, basically unhittable. Then she's typically up 0-2. the next one might be further off the plate, a backdoor version, or possibly some other pitch in a location which causes the batter to go fishing. She never gets batters out purely via her speed or the amount of rotation on her pitches. She gets batters out by pitching - with her mind as much as her body.
Enough about pitchers. Let's move on to catchers.
The metric most often used to evaluate catchers is called "pop time" which is basically the time between pops - the pop of the catcher's mitt and that of the infielder covering second. Another somewhat though less important measure is overhand throwing speed. At Pennsbury, overhand throwing averaged around 56 and pop times averaged just above 2. I have heard some coaches claim that the cutoff for pop times is about 2 seconds. This is so because average runners get to second in about 2.7 to 3.0 seconds, pitches take about a half second to reach the first pop, and if you're going to throw out a reasonable percentage of runners, anything over 2 seconds isn't going to get the job done even with an accurate throw.
The fastest throwing speeds were around 60 - 64 and most of these girls, though not all, had sub-2 pop times. It is interesting to note that several catchers who were in the top 10 or so of pop times had throwing speeds beneath 60. Also noteworthy is the fact that several girls with plus throwing speed had pop times above 2 and were in the bottom half of all participants in the record. That goes to show you that throwing speed is not everything when it comes to evaluating catchers.
To be fair, pop times and throwing speed, even when combined are not sufficient for evaluation. There are girls who once they are in games, throw a lot less hard or have trouble matching a dry pop time. There are also girls who thrive so much on real competition that when they are in game situations, their pop times and throwing speed can go up. Let's face it, some people are gamers and some are not. And that's why, despite the availability of numbers, coaches still want to see kids in games.
As a final view of pure numbers, several times over the past year parents have written to me inquiring about running speed. What I usually tell them is it depends on position and age / physical maturity, and good times are usually something like below 3 seconds to first. Unlike in years past, I believe, the Pennsbury results do not show running speed to first by position. One speed measurement that was published was home to home and these figures weren't published for all positions. The next best number to home to first was the SPARQ 20 yard dash.
SPARQ stands for Speed, Power, Agility, Reaction and Quickness. It is supposed to be a measure of overall athleticism. I know very little about it and so I won't bother to get into it. If you want to do some research, here is this venture's website: SPARQTraining. I'm not sure how they measure the 20 yard dash but it stands to reason that this should be a close approximation to a run to first. If anything, I would expect the times to be somewhat faster than times to first since, from what little I know, you should get a better start when doing a sprint. Yet, I saw no sub 3 times in this record. And that surprised me.
My kids do some speed/agility stuff, though not officially SPARQ. I'd say one of my kids runs at an above average speed and the other is about average. My 11 year old regularly runs a 3 or just below 3 20 yard dash. She's hit 2.9. My older kid sometimes has trouble getting below 3.1 but on rare occasions she has just barely broken 3. Maybe I better go check the stopwatch of the guy timing them. Maybe there is something flawed about the way they have been measured.
Still, I have always understood that times to first of good runners generally run in the 2.7 to 2.9 range. I'm a little shocked that of all these girls at Pennsbury, some of whom are very good athletes, nobody broke 3. I've seen some of the girls run before and they are quite fast. I cannot explain these numbers but maybe it has something to do with the way SPARQ testing is performed.
Of all the relevant numbers used to measure softball players, I believe running speed might be the best one we use. Batting average depends on who batters are facing, who is keeping the book and other things. A girl can pitch 70 mph but if she throws it flat and down the middle, she isn't going to make a big splash on the pitching scene. A pitcher can really spin the ball when she wants to but she has to find the right speed to throw each breaking pitch, has to have command, and needs some craftiness if she is going to get people out. Catchers can throw very hard but if they are slow to get the ball out of their gloves, if they do not rise to the adrenaline rush of real base stealers running, they are not going to get people out and coaches are not going to be as interested in them. Fast girls can and often are taught how to run bases. yes there is a discernible skill with respect to baserunning. But more and more we are seeing at the college level a type of kid who might be described as a designated runner. She might play soccer, basketball or run track. But she is undeniably quick and college softball coaches seem to feel that they can take these girls and make them pinchrunners.
I suppose people are always interested in some objective measure with which to compare themselves or their kids against others. We throw numbers around pretty loosely. How many pitchers in your corner of the world supposedly throw 60? How many .500 batting averages are bragged about? How many people claim that their kid runs sub 3 home to first, sub 13 home to home? How many people tell you that their daughter throws the ball overhand at about 65-70 mph? How many really good softball players are there? We need numbers to describe things but we should never become slaves to them.Labels: coaching, hitting, pitching, players
Permanent Link: Numbers Game
 
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
Opposite Field Dribblers
by Dave
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Terry writes in to ask:
"I help a couple of girls teams (14U and 18U). We have a very new travel and high school program. We are starting to get some athletes and now more than ever we need to start playing the game better and seeing signs of drastic improvement. Our school has 5 different sports to choose from during the time we play and there aren't alot of girls to go around. I know for a fact we have lost a couple of the better players because the program is new and losing. In the second year our defense really improved with better players and a more solid pitcher. But we still only won a few games. Our problem is hitting. Many of the girls still have rec swing problems and they are hard to solve. And part of the problem is they don't/can't/won't put in the 100 balls off the tee to succeed. Instead of teaching them to hit the right way, I feel like I almost have to break down each kid and work with what they do best. I really want to get these girls in a spot where they can at least enjoy some success. A couple of things that I want to run by someone with some knowledge. One thing these girls lack is strength. I'm trying to work on bat speed while keeping everything still. Is there lack of strength as big an issue as I think it is? Some of them look as if the ball is almost stopping the bat as they make contact, causing opposite field dribblers. Also I've been tempted to try and teach a couple of these girls the Charlie Lau method of hitting but I thought that might me too extreme of a weight shift. My biggest reason for thinking this was to get rid of the typical rec league knee bend because the pitch is coming in so slow. I'm a baseball guy and I know this is a different game just for the fact of the distance/speed. What suggestions would you give?"
Terry, your question is a complicated, multi-part one. As I try to answer it, I'm going to break it down into several parts and try to address each one in order.
1) Is lack of strength a big issue in girls softball and what do I do about it? Are baseball and softball swings really different as a result of this or something else?
I do not believe lack of strength is an issue which is broadly spread throughout the girls fastpitch softball world. There are plenty of strong girls out there who do hit with authority. There are certainly plenty who do not but the issue is really an individual one rather than gender specific. Any girl can easily gain sufficient strength to swing a 22 - 24 oz. stick hard enough to propel a 6.8 oz. object.
It does not take a steroid-propelled, gym rat, Adonis to swing a bat. It takes some strength to do it but the greatest baseball and softball players to ever take the field were not the strongest men and women on Earth. If the key to diamond sports success were strength, we would see bigger fellows (300+ pounders) playing baseball than we see playing football since the money is better and careers longer. That's just not the case.
I recall an article, I think in the New York Times, which discussed a coach going over to Russia to train a men's baseball team. The coach noted that his athletes were all 6 foot 3 and chiseled like statues. They were all exceedingly athletic, fast, strong, agile, etc. He proceeded to hit a few grounders and was shocked when these perfect specimens picked up the ball and "threw like girls." My apologies for the "threw like girls" comment. Obviously this coach never saw girls throw like I have.
The point of the story is no matter how strong and well trained an athlete is, he or she still cannot perform the mechanical skills necessary to play diamond sports unless he or she has been trained to do so. I believe the same principles we talk about in throwing a ball apply to hitting since both are acquired skills. Technique trumps everything else in this sport. Appropriate strength is necessary in all sports but technique is more important.
We recently had a hitting practice with a 12U team. The smallest girl on that team is tiny, you'd almost say puny. She's a youngish 11. I'm guessing but I think she is maybe four and a half feet tall and weighs 60-80 pounds. I have trouble guessing kids' weights but suffice it to say she is a peanut. She does, however, swing the bat pretty well. One of the coaches was throwing her soft toss and he got a little too far in front of her. Then he mistakenly tossed the ball a little too far outside and this girl drove it opposite field ... right into his forehead, just above the eye. The coach went down and there was blood everywhere. Three stitches later, he seems to be coming around from the incident, although I suspect he's a bit embarrassed. He shouldn't be since that girl probably hit the ball near to 80-90 miles per hour. I consider him lucky to have not suffered a concussion or fractured skull.
The girl who drilled the coach is not particularly strong. She's a good athlete but she is pre-pubescent, does no weight training or other strength exercise, and is not in any way susceptible to being called a "bruiser." She is, however, able to swing the bat hard by using pretty good technique and propelling her body's inertia into the ball the right way.
The best hitters have A) technique, B) tremendous hand-eye coordination (enhanced by experience), C) a good bat and D) moderate strength. We can address the first three at a different time since your question right now deals with the strength issue.
I suppose many would argue that strength is a key issue and that is why we have seen the development of "rotational" hitting mechanics in our sport. The discussion which most gets on my nerves occurs when someone talks about how softball hitting is different than baseball and the difference is "all the best softball girls use rotational hitting mechanics." If I had a nickel for every time I've heard that one! Guess what? Rotational hitting is a baseball concept. It is traceable to Ted Williams. It didn't develop in softball. It cannot even remotely be called a "softball swing."
The fact is, if we are talking, in both baseball and softball, about swinging a stick at an object hurled in our direction, it amounts to fundamentally the same thing. The acts of hitting in both sports are so similar that it defies reason to claim that the fundamental mechanic in one sport is completely different than it is in the other. Yes, girls and boys have different physical make-ups. Yes the softball arrives in the hitting zone with greater force than does the baseball, despite the slower pitch speed, thanks to the greater weight of the ball. Yes, the spins are different, the size of the object to be struck is different. The games are generally quite a bit different. Yet the mechanics of propelling a lever with as great a force as possible just cannot be fundamentally different in the two sports. 99% of the action is identical. So the fundamental mechanics must be identical.
The power with which the ball is struck in both sports is dependent upon bat speed and intertia of the lever machine at contact point. You want to hit the ball hard, so swing the lever hard and use your body to form a heavy, strong machine. In order to do that, you've got to have some strength in the key muscles, swing properly in a mechanical sense, and use your hips, back, legs and arms properly.
2) How do I build strength so the girls can drive the ball?
The pathway to strength is, obviously, exercise. The muscles necessary to hit the ball are many and varied. All need work. Big biceps do not determine whether a girl can hit with power or not. Core muscles (abdomen, etc.) and legs are probably the most important groups. Any sort of exercise which strengthens the quadriceps, stomach and back muscles is going to help you hit. All those speed and agility exercises you think you are doing exclusively for fielding and base-running purposes actually do matter for hitting as well.
There is an exercise we do which is ostensibly for fielding which I'll discuss here. You place 4 cones in a square ten feet apart from each other. Two girls, each holding a ball, stand on one side of the square, each next to a cone. A third girl stands on the other side of the square and gets in a fielding ready position. One girl rolls a ball to the cone opposite the fielder and the fielder shuffles across, feet moving heel to heel. She fields the grounder, rolls the ball back to the thrower and then shuffles back to the other side where the other girl has rolled the ball to the other cone. She continues performing this drill, back and forth, until a timer calls it "over," say after 30 seconds. Then the girls switch positions and the fielder becomes one of the rollers. We rotate the drill so that each kid gets at least 2 chances as a fielder. If you've got the time, rotate more but you won't get through as many of these as you might think.
To make this drill fun, we turn it into a contest. The teams of three compete to see which individuals and which groups can get the most number of fielding reps in each 30 second interval. At the end of each turn, we ask how many and the fielder is required to keep count. We have a contest to see which girl can field the most balls in 30 seconds and which team can get the most in a full rotation.
This exercise looks a lot easier than it is. 30 seconds generally has the fielder pretty tired. Two rotations have the girls all red in the face, huffing and puffing. Every once in a while I get carried away since I don't have to perform the drill often and do not have appreciation for how intense it is. The result is the girls legs are wobbly and they're extremely tired. One time we had a number of girls at practice which was not divisible by three. I stood in as the third person, a roller, with one group. When we got to the end of the drill, we asked each team to choose a member for one last try to see which group could get the highest number. My team chose, you guessed it, me. I wasn't going to lose to a bunch of girls! So I pushed my body as hard as I could and won that little competition. I was shocked how winded I was and how badly my quads burned for a good half an hour afterwards. I was pretty useless for the duration of practice!
This exercise is great for speed and agility but more importantly, it helps build the quadriceps muscles while also strengthening one's core. This drill along with the usual litany of speed agility stuff will make the legs, back and stomach stronger in terms of explosive force which is what we're after when we're at the plate. Any other exercises you can come up with that build explosive strength in these muscles are good for hitting assuming you've also got good technique and the other important muscles are strong too.
In terms of the arms, more important than the biceps are the muscles in the back of the arm and in the wrists. The triceps, back of the arm, can be worked many ways including push-ups or taking swings. Similarly the forearm and wrist muscles also improve by doing these exercises. The legs and core muscles are also strengthened by swings - dry, at the tee or whatever way you choose. The trick when you take swings is to pay attention to mechanics - take proper swings. Don't just swing the bat perfunctorily to get through 100 swings.
The forearms and wrists can also be strengthened by doing wrist curls and other exercises. A device which aids hitters is the Marcy Wedge which isolates the wrist muscles in a curl exercise. It costs about 40 bucks and lasts a long time. We own one and I recommend getting one if you want to improve your hitting strength. In lieu of the Wedge or in addition to it, using light dumbells is also a good way to improve strength. We're not after huge rippling arms. Light weights, 2 to 5 pounds, provide sufficient resistance for the task. And rather than performing full curls which generally work the biceps, perform wrist curls and other exercises for the triceps. Also those balls which you grip and squeeze can help develop the lower arm muscles necessary for swinging the bat well.
I discussed this briefly but I want to emphasize that the batting tee is a great place to work all these muscles too. I'm not a huge fan of the parachute you attach to the bat or those weights which slide on because they alter your swing. If you dry swing an ordinary bat 100 times, I would guess that you get at least as much benefit as swinging the bat with a chute or weight on it 80 times. And dry swinging does not require you to alter your swing. Instead you get to work proper swing mechanics and build motor memory while you strength train.
Another technique you can use involves a basketball. Obviously a basketball weighs quite a bit more than a softball. Yet, hitting one should not alter your swing. You hit at it as if it were a softball and attempt to drive it. We do this off the tee into a net but you can also do it using soft toss into a backstop. I've seen a lot of heavy hitting teams work with basketballs and while I cannot directly attest to it making a difference, I think logic dictates that girls have to get their body weight into the swing in order to drive it. It reinforces good swing mechanics.
I'm not going to go into swing mechanics here because Terry indicated that he is already familiar with Charlie Lau and his particulasr question involved issues of strength. But I do want to say that any human being who uses proper swing mechanics can drive the ball regardless of strength. That's because the most important aspect of your swing is your body's inertia. Even a "90 pound weakling" can drive the ball if his or her mechanics are very good. That's what I was trying to tell you when I mentioned the story about the little 11 year old girl. And our specimen 6 foot 3 muscled Russian Adnonis will have trouble getting the ball past the pitcher if his swing stinks.
3) Should I try to teach the Lau method of hitting or continue to handle problems one at a time on a per girl basis?
There is a problem with handling problems one at a time or trying to improve a fundamentally poor overall swing mechanic. The problem is that you will most likely end up with kids who can hit no better than they could before batting practice started. What I would suggest you do is start with an overview of a proper swing. For this, I don't care if you use a conventional linear hitting model, Charlie Lau or the rotational method. But I do care that you use one of them and remain consistent about it.
Once you've chosen your poison, develop a very good understanding of what you want to teach. Then break it down into stages. And teach every kid the same way. When you start to try to look at a kid's swing and then make alterations based on the model you use, you get a kid who is 90% wrong and maybe 10% right. Save tweaking for only those kids who do 90% of everything right. For those kids who do 90% wrong, try to wipe the slate clean and start it all over again.
Also, it bears mentioning that if you have any kids who go to batting clinics somewhat regularly, you don't want to start messing with their swings. I've seen this done almost as many times as I've heard some genius talking about how linear is a baseball swing and rotational is a softball one. The way it happens is some guy gets a little bit of knowledge and then starts coaching by using that knowledge. A girl who is about 10 and learning linear hitting gets herself a coach who knows 5% of rotational mechanics and he starts tinkering with her swing. The result is inevitably a tragedy.
So pick your poison and break it down into stages. Then teach all the girls, excluding those who go to a coach, in the mechanics you have chosen beginning with the stance and proceeding through the follow-through. I would prefer if you taught your team from the ground up even if it meant they still didn't find much success in games. At least that way, perhaps the next year they would hit. If you tweak their mechanics, chances are pretty good they won't hit better anyway. At least if you teach the full motion, they'll have a foundation on which to build.
4) My girls refuse to take 100 swings per day at the tee. What can I do about that.
Well, you can lead a horse to water ... What I have seen coaches do in this regard is continue to reiterate the point whether the team obeys or not. Don't get discouraged because nobody seems to be listening. Just keep telling them what they ought to do if they want to get better. Eventually somebody is going to listen to you.
In the meantime, if you feel your kids are not taking 100 swings on their own, make sure they take 150 at your practices, every practice. If your pitching and fielding are pretty good and you are losing games because you have no offense, make sure they take plenty of swings in practice, work on mechanics and strength, and, perhaps most importantly, make sure they see some live pitching as often as possible.
All other things being equal, there is no substitute for facing live pitching. Have your pitchers throw to batters whenever the opportunity arises. Play lots of scrimmages and tournaments against myriad teams. Keep the girls away from the Iron Mike overhand pitching machines many teams use because they ain't got nothing else. Watching a ball released above the shoulder is not helping a softballer to pick it up out of a windmiller's hand. Before you use a pitching machine, make sure it throws the ball from a point below your waist. Don't have such a machine, fine, use the tee and soft toss instead. There are no benefits to hitting off an overhand throwing machine.
In conclusion, mechanics are the key to driving the ball. They're far more important than strength. You should do some strength training. However, it doesn't have to involve power lifting. Some of the speed and agility stuff you should be doing anyways will help. The girls should hit off the tee. If they won't do it on their own, make them do it in practice. It only takes about 15 minutes to take 100 swings. If your kids do not have overall reasonably good hitting mechanics, take them to school starting with the ABCs. Don't try to teach a little calculus to girls who can't do multiplication tables and aren't all that familiar with algebra. Pick your swing mechanic and teach it from the ground up. Break it into steps. Then drill them on this as often as you practice.
Remember what Vince Lombardi once said, "practice does not make perfect, only perfect practice makes perfect." So its mechanics, strength, repetition, live pitching. That should get your girls to hit the ball better.Labels: batting practice, coaching, hitting, Offense, rotational
Permanent Link: Opposite Field Dribblers
Just Hit The Ball
by Dave
Friday, June 15, 2007
This one is meant especially for parents of fastpitch softball players who themselves never played the game. By never played the game, I mean fathers who, though they may have played some youth baseball, never faced pitching over say 70-75 mph, and/or mothers who never faced a windmiller throwing in excess of 50 mph. I know the world is full of these folks. I see them all the time at tournaments. I've met many on teams I've been involved with. And I want to give them a special message to contemplate when they sit there angry with their child because she just struck out, maybe even looking. You parents have good reason to calm down and my objective with this pieceis to clarify that point.
Let's break this down. I know I've done this plenty before but the point is so important, I feel it needs to be driven home as often as possible. I just checked a conversion chart and one mile per hour converts to 1.467 feet per second. If your darling daughter just rose up to 12U ball and is now facing pitchers throwing in excess of 50 mph, she has approximately four tenths of a second to see the release, determine if it is going to be a ball or strike, decide to swing and then execute a swing.
A world class athlete is able to make a decision to act and then initiate that act in about .15 seconds. The average human reacts somewhere between .2 and .25 seconds. That's simple reaction time but when the action in response is more complicated, the total time of decision making is longer. For example, when automobile experts examine accidents, they use a reaction time of somewhere around 1 to 1.5 seconds. When they look at the fender bender you were in last year, they assume it took you 1.5 seconds to step on the brakes. That's why tailgating laws generally require you to stay back one full car length or more for every ten miles per hour you are driving. In the UK and some other places, they prefer you to keep a car and a half length behind the next car per 10 mph speed.
So where does this leave your daughter? She uses a little more than half her allotted time - after the pitcher releases the ball - to decide whether she should swing or not. After she has decided to swing, she gets a whopping additional .2 seconds to execute the swing! That includes deciding where to swing in order to hit the ball.
In order to demonstrate this fraction of second concept, I'd like you to borrow a stopwatch. All I want you to do with this is start and stop the watch repeatedly until you can get the thing to read .4 seconds and then try to reach .2 seconds. Go ahead. I'll wait. This is important stuff.
It isn't quite as easy as you thought, is it? I can get the stopwatch to stop about a hundredth or two on either side of .4 and .2 but it takes me a lot of tries. And pushing a button is a heck of a lot easier than swinging a stick. Add location to the mix and it is near impossible. Yet they do it, don't they? Remember that weak groundball your daughter hit to second the other day? She DID hit the ball. That should amaze you! You should be in awe of her.
But she was a great 10U hitter!?
I've gone over this before but, again, I think it is necessary to state it again in this context. Girls change a lot both physically and mentally between the ages of roughly 9 and 14. The body grows and then the nerves race to catch up. Add the raging hormones of puberty into the picture and what you've got is one big mess. Now add the advancement which pitchers make in this age span and I think you'll see that you've just got to calm down.
I may be off a bit here but my observations of top notch 9 - 14 year old pitchers go like this: A good 9 year-old will throw around 40-45. A stellar 10 year-old will probably be around 50 but that's with the 11 inch ball. A very good 11 year old is most likely in the neighborhood of 50 with the 12 inch ball. Top 12 year olds throw in the near 55, the best 13s are 2 - 5 mph higher than that, and 14s add a few mph. I've seen 12s who can throw 60. I;ve seen decent 14s live around 53. There are a wide range of speeds at the various ages. But when you look at average pitch speed in the various age classes, I think what you're left with is the realization that the biggest jump occurrs between the 10U and 12U categories. 14Us generally improve just as much as 12Us but their improvement is often more about location, pitch selection, and movement.
Just because your superstar hit great at 10U does not mean she's going to knock the world over at 11 in 12U ball. It will take her significant time, lots of at-bats, to make the necessary adjustment to the increased speed. And just when she begins making the adjustment and hitting the ball, she'll undoubtedly face some kid with a great change-up or one with better than average control who knows how to throw the ball just out of reach of your daughter's bat. It is an intensely frustrating game. And there's good reason why many claim that batting the pitched ball is the most complicated act in sport.
She hits the ball but she swings or hits it so weakly
We've gone over the amount of time needed to decide to swing and execute it. We've been over the fact that pitchers improve a lot during this 9-14 age span. You understand all that but you just can't come to grips with why your daughter swings so weakly. She's hitting the ball now that she's been in 12U for half a season but everytime she hits it, it's an easy grounder to second. Why doesn't she hit it harder? She was a homerun hitter (get back, get back, get back) just last year. Why isn't she hitting with more authority?
Well, first off, if she's jumped from 10U to 12U, the 12 inch ball is quite a bit heavier than the 11. It's a bigger target but when you make contact, it feels like a bowling ball. That has to do with both the weight and the speed at which it is pitched.
An 11 inch softball weighs around 6 ounces. An official 12 inch softball weighs in at around 6.8 ounces. If you pick up something which weighs 8 tenths of an ounce, you will notice that it seems very light. But the percentage increase from one ball to the other is almost 15 percent. That's significant and more so when it's weight is being moved at, say, a 20% greater speed. So, while making contact is enough of a chore, actually driving the thing is even more difficult.
Also, consider that you got upset when she swung and missed so many times early in the year. Her reaction to that was to try to just hit the darn ball and get mom or dad off my back. Maybe if I hit it, they'll stop bugging me. If you are having trouble hitting something because it is moving too darn hard, your first reaction is to swing less hard. To demonstrate, go to your local carnival and pony up a couple bucks to play "whack-a-mole." What I want you to do is swing your absolute hardest every time one of those moles sticks his head up. After you have done this once or twice swinging as hard as humanly possible, I want you to try it again a few times, this time trying to hit as many moles as you can. I'll wait. I;ve got nothing better to do.
OK, so how was the carnival? Was it more crowded than you expected? You shouldn't go on bracelet days. Everybody goes then. Did you find a "whack-a-mole" game? Good. How many did you hit with your hardest swings? I see. No, I didn;t think you'd hit many. How did you do the other times? Oh, you won a prize? Good for you. That's what you really need in your house, isn't it, more junk.
Anyways, if you did my experiment, I think you'll see that when you want to hit a fast moving object and you experience some difficulty, your first reaction is to shorten your stroke - to make it weaker, more under control. This happens a lot at 11 years old. The emphasis is placed first on just making contact. That's why so many 11 year-olds ground out to second when they first start making contact against 12 year-old pitchers.
This problem of the weak swing will be overcome through experience. The more pitching one faces at fast speeds, the more quickly the good swing will come back. It is, after all, the good swing that we're after more than anything else. That's where your emphasis should be placed rather than on your daughter making contact or driving the ball.
If you examine the top hitters in sport, I believe what you will see that they all have in common is a very good swing. They also possess excellent reaction speeds but this is less evident as the only way to measure that is which testing. They may possess fast hands too but that's more a gift than it is something which can be developed. The only thing you can really work on via repetition in practice is a good swing. The other elements of successful hitting are more reliant on experience, lots of experience. So when you work with yourdaughter to try to help her hit better, what you must focus on is a good swing. You can also9 try to get her out to the batting cages where you'll have her face the fastest pitching available but the emphasis must be on a good swing.
Why can't she hit the change-ups?
For some reason, folks get it into their heads that if a kid is having trouble hitting fast pitching, she should at least be able to get a good hack at a change. I don't see why that should logically follow. She's up there tense, getting herself ready to pull the trigger on a 55 mph fastball, and when the thing comes hurling at her at 40, she acts as if she cannot even see the ball. That's pretty natural. It is difficult to hit a good change-up. Unfortunately, I do not have a handy experiment to demonstrate this to you but if you watched the Women's College World Series, you already know how difficult it is to hit that pitch.
I've talked about Arizona ace Taryne Mowatt's change-up in a number of columns recently. Her best fast pitches clock in at about 65-68. Her change-up is closer to 45-50. She had blister problems and had to throw the change far more than anyone ever imagined. And the Tennesse hitters were unable to hit it even when they should have known it was coming. That's a bunch of world class hitters unable to meet a 50 mph pitch with no particular movement on it! If that doesn't tell you everything you need to know, I really suggest you pick up a bat and take your best shot before you get mad at your daughter for striking out on a change-up.
In closing, I want to leave you with a picture. In a championship tournament in my state, there was a girl pitching who is headed for a top division one program. She brings it in as high as 67, some claim she hits 70 occassionally. She also has several very good movement pitches, changes speed extremely well, and hits her spots on almost every pitch. This girl threw a perfect game against an otherwise good hitting club. But that's not the amazing thing. The amazing thing is in a top level game, against a good hitting club, she struck out 20 of the 21 batters she faced. No ball was hit into fair territory until the final batter who grounded weakly to an infielder and was put out at first. Something like 10-11 kids who have all played fastpitch softball for the better part of ten years and found decent success were unable to touch this pitcher. That happens more frequently in this game than it does in baseball. The deck is stacked against your softball-playing daughter. Give her some support rather than grief. Be amazed on the few occassions she hits the ball at all, let alone drives it hard into the outfield.Labels: hitting, parenting
Permanent Link: Just Hit The Ball
2007 Anderson Rocket Tech
by Dave
Monday, September 25, 2006
Well, I don't know about you but I'm excited about the recent approval of the 2007 Anderson Rocket Tech (actually spelled RockeTech) fastpitch bats. The bat will be available for sale October 1, 2006. If you're getting in line to get yours, you can line up behind me, cause I'm now ahead of you!
Our hitting coach suggests that once you perfect your swing, everyone will want to see what brand of bat you're using. I agree. A bad swing with a great and expensive bat is still a bad swing. And if you can't hit the ball, it doesn't much matter what kind of bat you're using. Even considering this, I now can say with complete confidence that not all bats are created equal.
At the beginning of last spring season, I wrote about several good bats with an emphasis on Louisville Slugger's Catalyst which comes in both -10 and -8. I was sold on the -10 because I liked it so much. I put my money where my mouth is - I bought one for a good price (beneath $200) and had my kid use it for awhile. She liked it a lot, at least until she borrowed a Rocket Tech.
The Rocket Tech was weighted quite a bit differently than the Catalyst. I believe the term of art is "end-loaded." This means the end of the bat has more weight on the end than those which are not "end-loaded." If you try swinging bats which are end-loaded and then those that aren't, the difference becomes easy to understand. The handle also felt more comfortable but the weighting difference made her swing more comfortable. She switched over to the Rocket Tech and began hitting more than my pocket hard. Several members of her team also switched from the Catalyst and the results were amazing.
Keep in mind that the ASA has speed limitations for girls fastpitch softball bats. All the top priced bats come in at about the same place on the tests the ASA conducts. So, there is no scientific way to say this bat hits harder than that and so forth. But because of the difference in weighting, my daughter's hitting dramatically improved.
Now, I've read a lot of negative comments about the 2005 RockeTech. Most imply that those who use them have an unfair advantage and, therefore, the bat should be banned. ASA never did ban the bat due to excessive speed. But there were some concerns with the Rocket Tech pancaking over time through use. Pancaking occurs where a bat begins to flatten out. If you've ever stood through an umpires bat examination, you will see most umps use a device which checks the roundness of the barrel. If the bat has flattened out beyond a particular point, it is disallowed. Our Rocket Tech nearly suffered this problem. A Pony ump first disallowed it and then after we asked him to reexamine it, it was allowed. But our bat was pancaking after just a few months use.
The 2007 Rocket Tech is supposed to cure the problems past models have suffered especially with respect to pancaking. Anderson has made some changes and this current model should not give you these problems. Obviously I have no experience with it since it isn't yet available but if I do, I'll let you know right away. And if you experience pancaking with this model, I urge you to share it with this site as well as the company itself.
You can make a purchase of a new 2007 Anderson Rocket Tech in a number of places. Dick's Sporting Goods offers it at under $250. Sports Authority offers it at the same price with free shipping and you can get 10% off orders over $100 at SportsAuthority.com which makes it perhaps the best buy of all. You can find these and other bats on ebay and perhaps you may find a bargain there. But since this is a new model of bat which isn't available today, don't expect vendors to offer cheap prices. And don't forget to add shipping to your total cost before deciding from whom to buy. Labels: hitting
Permanent Link: 2007 Anderson Rocket Tech
Interpreting Common Bunting Terminology
by Dave
Thursday, September 21, 2006
A reader writes in:
"Please explain to me what are meant by the terms "slap bunt," "drop bunt," "drag bunt," "push bunt," etc. I'm driving myself batty trying to understand these apparently basic terms when I discuss softball with my daughter. No matter how hard I try, I am always wrong and just don't know anything. Help!
Always Wrong in Peoria"
Peoria,
I'm afraid I can't really help you. No matter how hard I try, I'm always wrong too. Depending on who is doing the talking, I just cannot seem to use the right phrase to describe bunting. It is a constant source of annoyance to me. But let me explain the way I see these terms.
First off, when I was a wee tike, we played baseball. In baseball, dur | |
