Some comments on common believes and new insights.
- by Richard Todd, WebBall Baseball Instruction Inc.
[Exclusive to Fossil Park Youth Baseball]

PITCHING BY THE NUMBERS

I am not always a fan of statistics. But here are some presented to a group of us recently that are based on several million data points. One of the things to keep in mind is that (as one Texas org. pitching coach puts it), the idea is to stimulate the bat - to get early strikes, put the batter on the defensive, and get nice easy ground ball outs. The stats themselves were rattled off by Tom House and are all from MLB measurements so you might need to assess how they match up with your league or age group (more on younger ages farther down).

• The split in game pitches is 65% fastball, 20-25% breaking pitch, and 10-15% change-ups. So it makes sense to practice throwing in the same ratio and have your hitters practice hitting the same mix. As to what to throw when...
• The only counts on which to throw a breaking pitch are 0-0, 1-2, 0-2 and the best change-up counts are 3-1, 2-1, 2-0 (because the batter is most likely looking for a fastball on these counts - so pull the string. i.e throw the change-up, and surprise!)
• The above is even more relevant when you consider that 1-1 is called the swing count, i.e. the next pitch has got to be a pitcher's command pitch, and that command pitch is what a good hitter will be looking for. Why? Because if that pitch doesn't succeed (from the pitcher's perspective) then the count goes to 1-2, a breaking pitch count. And if it does succeed then the count goes to 2-1 and anything from a change-up to a fastball can work. (Timing is harder to read than movement.)
• You can also assume from the above, therefore, that a 2-2 count is also a command pitch count for obvious reasons. (Of course, as one of the other books recommended above points out, there are some pitchers and hitters who thrive when the count goes to 3-2, but I don't know many coaches who enjoy the experience.)
• As a team overall, here are the stats to live by... a team that gets the first strike on every batter, gets the lead-off batter out every inning, and can hold the other team to zero runs in a half inning after getting a run themselves in the previous half... that team will win 2/3rds of their games. And I don't know about you, but I could have done with a few more .667 seasons.

WHAT I THOUGHT I KNEW

In a new book by Tom House and Paul Reddick, they identify the myths of conventional wisdom (statements heard so often they MUST be true). We have all been victims of conventional wisdom from time to time - some more than others.

Here then are a few of my worst offenses when it comes to understanding and explaining the skills of baseball. Look for some of these phrases to be modified/redefined throughout WebBall. (And if you still spot them used wrongly somewhere, please challenge us on it.)

This is so frequently used (and abused) that I fell into the trap of thinking I knew what it meant. The problem with the phrase, as someone recently pointed out, is that mucles themselves don't have any memory capabilities. The trouble is, it doesn't help to simply say a term is wrong - what do we use in its place? What can we say that is not only accurate but can actually help when applied in instructional situations.

Fortunately, thanks to a recent clinic, I now have a better term for the process - perhaps this is what we should call it... neural pathway programming. What I like about this phrase is that it explains the connection between the sensory feedback from nerves and the instructions sent from the brain (the pathway). It also reminds us that we need to continually retransmit (if you will) so that the proper signal response is reinforced through repetition... this what is meant by the looser term muscle memory. However the other part of the new phrase, the programming, makes even more sense when you consider how it applies in younger players still in growth spurts...

In his writings Mike Epstein often talks about teaching what we think we see. I was that way when trying to explain why kids with growth spurts could be good one season and bad the next. What I saw - and therefore could explain - was the macro growth... longer bones, taller kids from one season to the next who have not built the muscle strength to handle the extra bone length.

To a point sure. But from what you now know about neural pathway programming (aka muscle memory) can you realize what else is going on - the change you can't see. From one season to the next, even from one game to the next, or one inning to the next, a youngster is adding new nerve and muscle cells to his body. (We're talking in millions and billions here.) Those who cells are born ignorant - they have received no signals from the brain, they know nothing. Likewise, the brain doesn't yet know they exist - no pathways, and you can't have a pathway until you first have the endpoints. so it takes time for the pathways to form and for signals to reach the new cells ("swing!") and for the new cells to respond ("do you mean like this?"). The result at both the micro and macro levels is the chaos that turns last week's great slugger into this week's benchwarmer.

Is there a solution? Yes, keep practicing. Don't assume that a lot of intense pre-season training and instruction is all you need. Don't assume that because you practiced hard yesterday, you can take it easy during the pre-game warm-up today. Every week/day/hour, those new cells need new instruction.

The mistake with these two terms is that they have been frequently used interchangeably - not just by me but throughout sites that promote the concept of "rotational hitting" or "rotational vs linear pitching".

Everyone can rotate. You can stand perfectly still and start turning around the central axis of your body (your spine, more or less). The trouble with this visualization is that it is purely anatomical - mostly describing how bones link up. Also "rotation" has nothing to do with how power is generated or how the rotation gets started or how the rotational momentum is transferred to what eventually has to be a linear movement - the throw of the baseball or the bounce of the baseball off the bat.

Torque on the other hand explains everything. Torque is the force generated through counter-rotational movement - one part of something turns in one direction (clockwise, say) while another part turns counter-clockwise. Torque is all about power - about stretching the rubber band to build up stored energy (potential) that is released explosively in the opposite direction (kinetic energy).

Think about winding a rubber band around 2 pencils or the old rubber-band powered airplanes. It isnít turning the pencil that matters but applying opposing rotation to both pencils.

How does that apply to hitting or pitching? The key to so-called rotational hitting power is torque -- the shoulders of a batter have to turn away from the hips. When the stride starts the hips, the shoulders have to turn back - the muscles through the abdomen have to stretch, that's the rubber band being wound. Same thing in both hitting and pitching. Unless you feel the torque building, you can't expect the power to be generated or released through the ball or bat.

Think about how this affects the debate about "linear pitching". The idea of linear is to have all effort applied in the direction the ball has to eventually go - down the hill from mound to plate. That's like throwing the airplane in a straightline without winding the rubber band. Even those who promote maxline, or at least those who truly understand the purpose of maxline teaching, will acknowledge the need for torque in the equation. One example pointed out to a group of us recently is Greg Maddux, considered to be one of the most efficient pitchers in baseball (least wasted motion). He seems to move straight to the target - certainly his head does, but beneath the neck he is generating a lot of counter-rotational torque.

Like cells multiplying in growth spurts, torque is another of those things we can't always see. standing drectly on top of a batter or pitcher, the counter rotation between hips and shoulders might be more obvious, but without that vantage point and without using high-speed video capture amd frame-by-frame playback, as a coach it is hard to check. So ask. Make sure your players feel the rubber band inside.

In truth, I've always been a fan of drills in practice as opposed to trying to simulate game conditions. There's nothing worse than watching fielders stand around waiting for a batter to get a hit. (We even have suggestions in our list of drills for ways to make live B.P. better for the whole team.)

But apparently even I never took "drills over games" far enough. The trend in pitcher workouts now is to get off the mound as much as possible. This is contrary to the thinking that if you are going to develop as a pitcher, you need to work under game conditions.

Why the change? Because the object of pitcher training is to work on all the components - dynamic balance, torque, arm action, pitch sequence, etc. - and probably the least important thing to work on is the added force applied to the landing leg when throwing downhill. When a leg strides forward on flat ground the force is 2X normal, but from the mound, the force on landing can be 4-6X normal. So avoid the hill and you avoid the excessive force. This is not just a tip for kids. For instance, Randy Johnson doesn't practice from the mound ever; he's on the mound only for pre-game warm-up and the game itself.

Taking this move away from game conditions one step farther, long toss is best when there is an actual target on the ground - a hat for instance. This forces the throw down and keeps long toss from being just a fielder's throw (which would be a game-conditions throw) and makes it a pitcher drill (not under game conditions but more purposeful).

So is there anything that should be taught in simulated game conditions? Yes. Baserunning, bunt defense, hit and run, pick-offs and other strategies and tactics that work best when the brain is the part of the body being given the most exercise.

Finally, for now, of all the drills in baseball that everyone thinks they know (including what I thought I knew), nothing seems to create more confusion than the towel drill. There have been times when the drill's "inventor", Tom House, has been quoted (or misquoted?) as saying he wished he'd never suggested it. And there have been all manner of variations and interpretation.

For instance, many claim the drill is good - especially when the towel is snapped down hard against the back of a chair - as a way to reinforce the downward drive of the throwing arm on or just after release point. And just recently a WebBall contributor suggested a variation in which the towel's target is a glove held up at the pitcher's release point so that the snap against the glove mimmicked/matched the ball's release.

Both make sense, if that was the intent of the drill - to teach release point. But according to Tom House, the real point of the drill has more to do with stride and forward extension - getting the upper half of the body to come farther forward over the landing leg. The point of this is to get the throwing arm closer to the plate - so the apparent pitch speed is even faster than the actual pitch speed. Example: 5'11" Pedro Martinez and 6'11" Randy Johnson both release the ball at about the same distance from the plate; Randy relies on natural reach, Pedro develops extra forward extension - he releases way past the foot strike position.