How would travel ball change "If pitchers were put on a pitch count"?

[radness]

'Please dont work on developing skills (like pitching) on your own' is exactly what coaches do with actions not words.
The current system discourages coaches from being able to develop pitching.

Can you explain how the current system discourages coaches from developing pitchers?

being that i do teach softball,
I Know no matter how much instruction i offer, my time & effort teaching...
Not much would matter unless
'The individual student applys themself'

How does the system affect that?

Agree with @pattars comment!
If i may gleen from it there is some difference now in what folks do with there own time.
My example, never had lessons.
At a young age on my own i made up drills and trained myself.
Rode my bike or got a ride to go catch for pitchers at there lessons.
Actually developed an entire mechanics workout and as it turns out have been teaching it for over 30 years.
Because of effort i grew my skills.
Not because of money.

 

[Westwind]

Can you explain how the current system discourages coaches from developing pitchers?

He could but doesn’t have to since I already did.

 

[radness]

He could but doesn’t have to since I already did.

Can you explain how does the system affect an individual's responsibility to their own actions?

 

[_MIA_]

Can you explain how does the system affect an individual's responsibility to their own actions?

There will be some kids who practice on their own (or with a parent) regardless of whether they get to see any action in games or not..but I would gather that number is probably pretty low. You mentioned your own experience..but I have to ask were you actually seeing significant playing time at the position(s) you were practicing for when this happened?

 

[Westwind]

That is certainly part of it, and maybe a large part of it. Another part that baseball/softball are skill sports that require lots of reps to get good and those reps require more than a single person for the most part. In today's society most kids don't go out and play ball with their friends so how do you get those reps? In most cases this requires a parent to be involved (paying for lessons, going to the cage/field to work, etc) and if a parent is having a hard time putting food on the table, working on their kid's ball skills is probably pretty low on their list of priorities.

I think that’s a lot of it.

DD was a volunteer assistant coach on a ms softball team from an underprivileged school. The players were athletic and had competitive personalities. The parents were supportive.

But when we played those ms’s with the tb team dads coaching, we got beat by less athletic players with less competitive attitudes. The players were more polished and had more experience. No doubt they had lots of lessons under their belts. I doubt any of our kids had many lessons.

It made me think “I wish I could run a little tb team with these less fortunate players”. How do you do that though? How do you finance it? How do you get parents who are just trying to get by to get their kids to two practices a week and two days of games on the weekends?

Thats where diversity falls on its face.

 

[_MIA_]

It made me think “I wish I could run a little tb team with these less fortunate players”. How do you do that though? How do you finance it? How do you get parents who are just trying to get by to get their kids to two practices a week and two days of games on the weekends?

There would have to be outside money from somewhere..like they do with the Baseball Academies in the Dominican. No real incentive for that to happen though.

 

[Westwind]

Can you explain how does the system affect an individual's responsibility to their own actions?

Already did.

Ill try it again.

It sounds like this:

”Coach, I just wanted you to know I have been working on pitching just in case your daughter or Coach Jones or Coach Smiths daughters get injured or if it’s a really hot weekend and you want to save their Friday innings for Sunday.”

Coach: (Takes a deep breath before responding) “Your avg is down to .403. I really need you to work on hitting. You missed a backhand last weekend and I’d like you to work on your outfield play. Are you only going to hitting lessons two nights per week? We are having extra team hitting on Thursday since we travel and play on Friday. Are you going to the infield training on Mondays after our practice? And make sure you keep studying for ACT test, it’s really important. And what time do you get out of school? We have extra field time but your mom has to get you there RIGHT after school. Can she leave work early? And don’t forget to eat and sleep like a champion.”

Player: “Thanks Coach.”

Coach: “What was your question again?”

Player: “I’m good Coach. Thanks.”

Coach: “Glad I could help. Keep grinding.”

 

[radness]

There will be some kids who practice on their own (or with a parent) regardless of whether they get to see any action in games or not..but I would gather that number is probably pretty low. You mentioned your own experience..but I have to ask were you actually seeing significant playing time at the position(s) you were practicing for when this happened?

I think that’s a lot of it.

DD was a volunteer assistant coach on a ms softball team from an underprivileged school. The players were athletic and had competitive personalities. The parents were supportive.

But when we played those ms’s with the tb team dads coaching, we got beat by less athletic players with less competitive attitudes. The players were more polished and had more experience. No doubt they had lots of lessons under their belts. I doubt any of our kids had many lessons.

It made me think “I wish I could run a little tb team with these less fortunate players”. How do you do that though? How do you finance it? How do you get parents who are just trying to get by to get their kids to two practices a week and two days of games on the weekends?

Thats where diversity falls on its face.

I also do team defensive skills building. Technical work. My pricing 35$ per player gets the team 4 sessions of 1 hour of training.
That $35 one time fee =8.50 per workout.
*At there practice field!
4-pacs that teams luved and kept me on there schedule. Positive intensity is awesome!
That said
I have offered to work with teams for free. In the past every time offered a team be happy to come out for free and work with your team and do some training They were super happy to have a guest come out and spend time on a special workout and some training. But I will say with certainty, about 10'ish years ago some coaches stopped accepting the offer.
(With the phrase i train my own defense)
And that's fine they don't have to. But still it's noticeable.

The good thing is staying in the loop with softball and knowing that I have standards and so I tend to keep in contact with other coaches who have standards ...
these coaches call me for student catchers and guest players when they need them. And call to let me know if they're having tryouts. That is the benefit of having standards.
In turn, I'm able to offer these coaches a very low price opportunity to have me come out and work with their teams.
Basically cover my expense.
Currently I have two teams I'm working with and they pay me $40 per team training.
(that's what I asked just for gas money and a good meal)
* get to have great experience training softball with players who are enthusiastic about learning and growing!
*in an environment that has standards.
That's what it takes enthusiasm to put effort in to grow as softball players.

 

[_MIA_]

I also do team defensive skills building. Technical work.

I have offered to work with teams for free. In the past every time offered a team be happy to come out for free and work with your team and do some training They were super happy to have a guest come out and spend timr on a special workout and some training. But I will say with certainty, about 10'ish years ago some coaches stopped accepting the offer. And that's fine they don't have to. But still it's noticeable.

Unless you are offering to

a) work with every kid on that team for free, 2 or 3 times a week (at least)
and
b) fund these teams for tournament/travel/etc

it won't (significantly ) address the diversity issue talked about in what you quoted which, btw, is only sort of only tangentially related to the OT..

That said it is admirable of you so kudos for that.

 

[Traps71]

”Coach, I just wanted you to know I have been working on pitching just in case your daughter or Coach Jones or Coach Smiths daughters get injured or if it’s a really hot weekend and you want to save their Friday innings for Sunday.”

I will say that this dynamic was really tough to battle through early in my older DD's travel softball "career" (10U/early 12U). Coach's kids, who were not better (or worse), than my DD at the time, generally got the vast majority of the innings. She would get some garbage time innings here and there. Was frustrating. Thankfully, we were also playing LL and she was getting a lot of pitching reps there at various levels of play over time (AA, AAA, Majors). Those "rec league" innings and her hard work (particularly practicing the right things mechanically) saw her continuing to make improvements and she began bypassing other pitchers on the travel team, eventually becoming a strong 2 and then, in a reshuffle, the 1 by 14U. She's now part of a three person staff (with one true ace) on a 16U team. When she started 10U, she was probably 5th or 6th on the pitching depth chart. Without LL and without a ton of work put in off of the fields, she probably would have never ended up a pitcher and might have quit softball altogether.

ETA: The three coaches daughters no longer pitch. They saw fewer and fewer innings by 1st year 14s and then were not pitching at all by 2nd year 14s.