Fouts pitching out of her glove.

[uncdrew]

My guess is that seeing the ball, period, is far more important than actually picking the specific pitch.

That makes more sense to me.

 

[uncdrew]

See what Hillhouse said, but it's generally coaches who are picking the pitches. Yelling something as simple as "SIT" when you pick a change up grip or "UP" when you pick a rise can make a huge difference. Also, depending on the pitcher, hearing that the other team has picked her pitches can wreck her mindset. I saw it happen early in the regionals last year but can't remember who it was.

So the coach sees it, and while the pitcher is lunging towards the plate they yell something, and as the ball is in the air the batter hears that and makes an adjustment?

 

[uncdrew]

This is wrong, sorry drew. First, more and more coaches are learning how to pick pitchers (and the ones that aren't are morons for not trying). this is why you see more and more pitchers doing that stupid, ridiculous twist of their body to the side as they get their grip, believing this is preventing the coach from picking them. LOL. They do their little twist, then drop out of their glove to show everyone what they are hiding in the first place when they do their backswing. Ugggh.

Anyway, usually from day 1, a little girl is told to focus on the pitcher's hip, that's where the ball comes from. Pitchers who either swing back or simply drop out of their glove early are giving those hitters the chance to see the ball and it's grip at the very place they were told to look at from the time she was 8 yrs old. Anyway, it's rare, almost unheard of, for a pitcher to use the same grip for each pitch. There's differences in 99.999999% of pitcher's grips. (here come the emails about how someone's kid throws with the same grip on all pitches!! lol). And, it's not just a knuckle being tucked. It can be the amount of hand seen, the side of the ball the hand is on, or any other subtle difference that can show a hitter what pitch is coming. And this is why I have said, idk 2 million times??, that there is a big difference between hitting coaches teaching a swing and teaching them to hit. There's big differences. More and more fastpitch people who know how to pick pitchers are helping today's ball players, and the results are there to be seen. Both the way the pitchers are trying to avoid being picked, and the results of the hitter learning how to do it themselves (or help from a coach).

Picking a pitcher can be a lot of things, I don't even consider it "picking the pitcher" when they do the backswing. As a hitter in fastpitch softball, I'd call that a gift. Picking is when they aren't showing you in advance what's coming but still being able to see it somehow. This can be little things that only the observant see, maybe the hands come together higher on the stomach for one pitch, and lower on the belt for another. Or the hand is further in the glove for one pitch, but more out on another. Maybe the glove is tilted or angled on a particular pitch but not on others. There's a lot of ways to pick and be picked. I knew a guy who would give his change up away because he unknowingly would stick his tongue out onto his upper lip when throwing a change up. If we saw the tongue, we knew the change was coming.

Quite often someone smarter than me will show the reaction time a hitter has to hitting a softball. Starting from 43 feet (although we all know it's released much closer) and before there was multiple girls throwing 70mph. The reaction time was ridiculously fast. So, are we to believe they are just that fast at reflex's on when to swing, but are incapable to seeing the pitch ahead of time? Why does the reflex only work on reaction time but not in the ability to see the ball, grip on the ball, before it's thrown?

Knowing what's coming is 1/2 the battle for a hitter. And you might thing I'm making this up, but if anyone goes to the men's world championship, it's not uncommon for a pitcher to be seen wearing one long sleeve and one short sleeve on his undershirt. He will cut the sleeve off of his glove hand's arm but, leave the pitching arm covered. Why? Because hitters are looking at his forearm muscles to see them flex or twitch for certain pitches. I know I did that one time when I thought that's why I was getting picked. Turns out it was the catcher giving away the pitches on accident. I'm harder to pick than a broken nose.

Finally, I flat out refuse to believe it was Alabama's new PC that got Fouts to switch. I don't know what caused her to change her motion but, I can promise you that Montana Fouts has forgot more about pitching than that guy hired at Alabama.

I appreciate your experience and expertise.

I guess knowing the pitch isn't helping them hit it much. Are there stats showing that pitchers with backswing are worse than pitchers without? As stated earlier, tons of the most successful pitchers have a backswing.

 

[mmeece]

So the coach sees it, and while the pitcher is lunging towards the plate they yell something, and as the ball is in the air the batter hears that and makes an adjustment?

Not quite that time compressed. As soon as the ball comes out of the glove the grip could be picked. Of course, not all pitchers with back swings have huge differences in their grips, so only some of them can be picked reliably. Naturally, some with back swings also combat this by using similar grips for 2 pitches.

 

[Hillhouse]

I appreciate your experience and expertise.

I guess knowing the pitch isn't helping them hit it much. Are there stats showing that pitchers with backswing are worse than pitchers without? As stated earlier, tons of the most successful pitchers have a backswing.

I appreciate your experience and expertise.

I guess knowing the pitch isn't helping them hit it much. Are there stats showing that pitchers with backswing are worse than pitchers without? As stated earlier, tons of the most successful pitchers have a backswing.

Once again, I don't know why this is appearing twice. I'm sorry I'm not the most computer literate person alive.

No, I don't think there's stats that say that. And you're 1000% right, there's been some great pitcher (the best the world has known in the female's game) that do a backswing. No question about it. And if your pitcher wants to do a backswing, go for it.

But I am telling you how the trend is going. So far, I feel like a Biblical prophet because everything I've seen coming into play has done so. I could list them but then I'd have to provide proof of everything and I don't have that. The malware attack on my website made me lose all of the articles I had written long ago, and posts here (and other places long ago) which I have no idea where they are. The trend I speak of is the influence of men's fastpitch into the women's game. Yes, you can say that's always been the case in one form or another. There's a lot of former men's pitcher that give pitching lessons and now some hitting lessons. But if you calculate the number of men's fastpitch players and pitchers that are entering the college game, it is growing every year. Right now the overwhelming majority of private lesson hitting coaches are former baseball guys or girls who are fresh out of college. But more and more the gamesmanship of picking the pitcher is entering the game. The issue with this is, most of the time these people don't know how to teach the art of picking pitches. But I see that trend turning.

When I go somewhere for lessons or I meet a student for the first time, soooooo many of them do the ridiculous twist of their upper body before they come forward with the pitch. I'll ask why they do that and they don't know but they saw it on TV. So I am then forced to explain to them why it's happening, what is going on and why what they are doing isn't helping them. There's an easier way to achieve the goal of not letting the 3rd base coach pick you. It doesn't include twisting your body. But more and more younger pitchers are doing it. And soon the hitters will be looking for that advantage again because they don't realize the advantage they have now with so many backswingers.

 

[Hillhouse]

So the coach sees it, and while the pitcher is lunging towards the plate they yell something, and as the ball is in the air the batter hears that and makes an adjustment?

Sometimes. In cases like this, timing is essential because you have to signal the batter before the pitcher can change or alter the pitch. And there's 2 way of doing this: the obvious way where one yells "Sit" on the changeup. #2 is to conceal your pick by saying something else. Mike White at Texas yells "Do it!!" on every change up. In men's FP "Do it" is kind of the widely known saying of a change up coming.

And it should be said that sometimes the coach says things just to get into the pitcher's head. And that works too.

I can tell you from experience, in the 1993 World tournament I pitched against Mike White. HIs team was the #1 in the world, defending champs, and probably one of the, if not THE most powerful team ever assembled in softball. It's hard to quantify how good this team was from top to bottom. In about the 3rd inning of the game, I was setting up to throw a change and I heard "DO IT" out of their dugout. But it was yelled early enough, by accident? that I was able to stop, step off and call the catcher out. I don't know if they guessed it right or if they saw something I was doing. It could also have been the catcher giving something away. We'll never know. But, I knew they had something, and they knew that I knew. So, it forced me to change some things. Which is not ideal when pitching against a team like that. You want to be as comfortable as possible. We lost 3-1 I think.

The absolute best way to do it is to find something and only your team knows about it so the coach has to say NOTHING. Maybe she wiggles her glove on a the rise but not the drop? Maybe her hands are a different place on the body before starting forward motion. Or maybe you see SOMETHING on one pitch that isn't there on the others, then your team shares that info and they have the pitcher picked with nothing said aloud. Similar to the story I told a few posts ago about the guy who stuck his tongue out on the change. Something that can be seen from the plate is ideal.

As most of you know, in 2021, I worked with the US Olympic team. At a training camp in Dallas, I was sitting around with Cat Osterman shooting the breeze and talking pitching. She told me a story that I don't think I'm ruining any confidence with now since she's retired from pitching. At the 2008 (I think) Olympics, maybe it was during the warm up tour, they played Canada. Canada's former HC Mark Smith is in every softball hall of fame in the world. He was an absolutely incredible pitcher and hitter. And he had Cat picked. Cat knew he had her picked. And she told me she lost it about the 2nd inning, frustrated by him calling every single pitch, she came off the field almost in tears. Fortunately, Ken Eriksen (also a former FP player himself on the USA team) must've been seeing the same thing, or he figured it out by when Smith would call out his pitch identifier, and they went to the bullpen and made a change.

Now, should Smith have kept that in his pocket until the Olympics?? Maybe. Or did he get into Cat's head that he's watching and will probably figure something else out too when they play again?? Maybe. But it sure rattled Osterman.

 

[uncdrew]

Once again, I don't know why this is appearing twice. I'm sorry I'm not the most computer literate person alive.

No, I don't think there's stats that say that. And you're 1000% right, there's been some great pitcher (the best the world has known in the female's game) that do a backswing. No question about it. And if your pitcher wants to do a backswing, go for it.

But I am telling you how the trend is going. So far, I feel like a Biblical prophet because everything I've seen coming into play has done so. I could list them but then I'd have to provide proof of everything and I don't have that. The malware attack on my website made me lose all of the articles I had written long ago, and posts here (and other places long ago) which I have no idea where they are. The trend I speak of is the influence of men's fastpitch into the women's game. Yes, you can say that's always been the case in one form or another. There's a lot of former men's pitcher that give pitching lessons and now some hitting lessons. But if you calculate the number of men's fastpitch players and pitchers that are entering the college game, it is growing every year. Right now the overwhelming majority of private lesson hitting coaches are former baseball guys or girls who are fresh out of college. But more and more the gamesmanship of picking the pitcher is entering the game. The issue with this is, most of the time these people don't know how to teach the art of picking pitches. But I see that trend turning.

When I go somewhere for lessons or I meet a student for the first time, soooooo many of them do the ridiculous twist of their upper body before they come forward with the pitch. I'll ask why they do that and they don't know but they saw it on TV. So I am then forced to explain to them why it's happening, what is going on and why what they are doing isn't helping them. There's an easier way to achieve the goal of not letting the 3rd base coach pick you. It doesn't include twisting your body. But more and more younger pitchers are doing it. And soon the hitters will be looking for that advantage again because they don't realize the advantage they have now with so many backswingers.

Thanks for sharing your insight.

I've seen the twist and don't really understand it either. I thought it was a stretch or a tic or a mental cue. I dunno what I thought other than "that seems strange". But if it's to hide a pitch or tell from the 3B coach, that's odd.

I'm still in young girl softball, first year 14U. Even at the top levels, there isn't pitch picking. I'll pay more attention to "Sit!" or "Do it!" going forward. Thanks for the education.

 

[Hillhouse]

Thanks for sharing your insight.

I've seen the twist and don't really understand it either. I thought it was a stretch or a tic or a mental cue. I dunno.

No, it's the pitcher "thinking" they're hiding their grip from the coach. Then 99% of them go on and do other things that negate the entire purpose of hiding the grip. What good is hiding it from the coach if you're just going to expose it to the hitter?

It goes to show you, even at the D1 college level you have people in jobs that are just over their heads. The first coach that old a kid to do that stupid twist without concealing the ball elsewhere should lose their job.

 

[Lance Steckler]

i for one appreciate all the pitching insight shared on these page from Mr. Hillhouse. i used to watch your Youtube videos and help my DD with her pitching. "bill's #1 " still comes up when she and I talk. it made her rise ball work.

I wish more people would understand and implement some of your teachings, but oh well. I know from my limited experience in playing Modified fastpitch back in Erie, PA.... I was much more worried about rise ball, change up and drop, than i ever was with curve or inside fast ball.

 

[Hillhouse]

i for one appreciate all the pitching insight shared on these page from Mr. Hillhouse. i used to watch your Youtube videos and help my DD with her pitching. "bill's #1 " still comes up when she and I talk. it made her rise ball work.

I wish more people would understand and implement some of your teachings, but oh well. I know from my limited experience in playing Modified fastpitch back in Erie, PA.... I was much more worried about rise ball, change up and drop, than i ever was with curve or inside fast ball.

Kind words Lance, thanks. Although I can probably count on my fingers the amount of times I threw a curveball in my life. lol. And until started doing pitching lessons, I had never heard of a "fastball" in softball before. It was a completely foreign term to me. Considering I started doing lessons at age 30, give or take, and now I'm 50, that's a long time to have been pitching without ever hearing that term. But, I get your point and I agree.

When I was an mid-range teenager (15, 16) I'd pitch in these lower level men's tournaments where I'd see pitchers that I thought were great. I'd think Wow, look at that!! And I had no idea there was 2 or 3 levels above what I was seeing. I used to wonder why John Doe wasn't pitching for the National team or some powerhouse team. But, John Doe didn't have a lot of movement that went up and down, the 2 essentials needed to achieve max success in the game. I'm amazed at what I didn't know that I didn't know back then.