I would not, FWIW, since there is no visible contact below the elbow. But I also think the best way to tell is with your ears, not your eyes. You can hear something between a “psst” and a “thwack,” followed an instant later by the sound of the ball hitting the glove. (You don’t want too much...
No, but I did have a very close up view of this same pitcher win the state title the year before. She threw no hitters in both championship games, as I recall. (Maybe someone else can come on and talk about their loss this year.) Totally extraordinary. But that’s also HS softball: I am not sure...
That visual is a really good one. Another approach I always liked was: “let’s look at a video from this date exactly one year ago.” You can’t miss the changes that occur over 12 months (usually a lot less) especially at age 12/13.
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You are right that the Rapsodo charts really do not correlate the spin rate, speed, spin efficiency, or movement in a meaningful way. What is useful (I think) is really only the absolute movement numbers. If you have someone with a rise consistently above +6 VB (or a drop that is consistently...
100% efficient just means that there is 0% gyrospin. So a ball that spins straight down, straight up, straight sideways, or anything between (11-5, 10-4, etc.) all will be 100% efficient. In other words, imagine a coordinate plane where the x-axis runs from 1st base to 3rd, the y-axis runs from...
This is the right answer (in my opinion). What we’ve seen on TV this year is what anyone with a Rapsodo has known for the last five years. Dropballs are generally effective at lower spin rates but need very true spin (spin efficiency > 95% to be really good), whereas riseballs are effective...
You answered your own question. You know best; the athlete doesn’t. You’re accountable; the athlete isn’t. You can predict the future (that changeup you wanted in the state title game wouldn’t have been hung and hit out or bounced, leading to a next pitch fastball that gets hit out); the athlete...
Agree with this.
DD called all her own games for two years in HS after the coach became exasperated by her shaking off and the delay created by having to signal in a new pitch to the catcher (who did not want any part of a disagreement between coach and pitcher). Now in college, it is back to...
That’s definitely true. But I don’t think that justifies that much work at the younger levels either, even if you are splitting those pitches up between multiple games on one day. Maybe if these are must-win games in a qualifier or at nationals, but it should be the exception, just as it should...
Elish also made this change more than halfway through college, and I am sure there are a number of others that don’t come to mind this very moment.
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Earlier in the thread I think I mentioned that one way to think about pitch counts is similar to how endurance athletes think about training volume. So like a runner determining the length of a “long run” based on overall weekly mileage (6 miles is “long” if you run 20 miles per week but very...
I’d also be curious where and what level you coach. I’ve met a fair number of pitchers over the last decade myself and I am struggling to think of any who never had an overuse injury. Not one.
Now, do they all require surgery? Of course not. But have they had to shut it down for more than two...
I had always thought of “tunneling” as an analytical quality—something that you might work on through pitch design or pitch sequencing (with a Rapsodo scatter plot, for example)—as opposed to the act of literally trying to throw the ball down a tunnel. So improvements in tunneling would come...