Switching pitchers to mess up the other team

[HunterMO]

Like all things, there are a lot of variables. How good and different are the two pitchers. How good is the hitting from the opposing team. So on and so forth. The most common thing I see is either pitcher #1 is super slow or fast and #2 is the complete opposite. Which then takes the opposing team one or two times around the order to get re-situated. I would imagine a more talented team is going to acclimate to the different pitcher more quickly.

My personal opinion is that there is little need to over-think it. Have a general rotation plan and watch/listen to your pitchers during warm ups. If something isn't working in the game, then pivot at that point to change momentum or timing.

 

[Parent83]

is pitcher B somehow significantly different? Like, if she through significant breaking stuff, I would get it. And seeing a pitcher a second, third, fourth time in a game does generally give an advantage, but at 12u? maybe not.


More likely is this is just a tactic to get both pitchers plenty of IP and this is just the way they've chosen to do it, whether or not they believe it's really adding much value in-game. And fwiw, there's no predictive value to a pitcher "killing it" one inning and being good the next.

So if you had a girl with consecutive 12 pitch innings and 6Ks, it’s reasonable to assume that she’s going to fall off in the third inning and therefore should consider switching it up to throw off the other team?

 

[CoachCeetar]

So if you had a girl with consecutive 12 pitch innings and 6Ks, it’s reasonable to assume that she’s going to fall off in the third inning and therefore should consider switching it up to throw off the other team?

her season stat line is more predictive of her third inning than the first two innings are. If she's got 3 games before that with 3 total Ks, I might cash out, unless I knew something to suggest she was different today. Like we're playing a much worse team or something.

 

[bsbs]

When my kid was playing 12B I would hope they went with whatever was working. Those weren't a very consistent pitching year for any of them.

 

[HunterMO]

When my kid was playing 12B I would hope they went with whatever was working. Those weren't a very consistent pitching year for any of them.

12U pitching is tough. New distance. Bigger ball. Body changes. When helping coach DD's 12U team, it was often a "if its not broken, don't fix it" type mentality.

 

[Chilixa]

So if you had a girl with consecutive 12 pitch innings and 6Ks, it’s reasonable to assume that she’s going to fall off in the third inning and therefore should consider switching it up to throw off the other team?

It just depends. If it is a pool play game on Saturday I probably just stick with whatever pitching plan I laid out for the day. If the game has a little more meaning I might adjust my plan and leave the pitcher in and just pull her if things start to go sideways.

We had one pitcher we used to use against very good teams that was a little slower and also had a very good change up. She was generally very effective one time through the line up. Good teams generally adjusted after seeing her one time. Sometimes we would try and let her pitch longer if she was rolling. You just had to have another girl ready to go in because it could go bad quickly.


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[Northball]

...You just had to have another girl ready to go in because it could go bad quickly.


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Emphasis on "ready to go." I've seen too many times starter giving up hits and runs. At 3-4 runs coach starts to panic, "Suzy! go warm up!" Bases are still juiced so when Suzy's ready it's been 7-8 runs.

 

[MidwestFastpitchDad]

As a parent with 2 pitchers I’ve seen just how effective changing out a pitcher can OR cannot be -even if the current pitcher is doing fine.

Also, once a team gets through the lineup and have all seen a pitcher, they’re likely to be more prepared the second time up.

My younger DD is more advanced than all of her teams other pitchers, so often she would start. Then she’d load up the bases with walks (9/10u) and they’d either hit run limit for the inning or bring in the next pitcher. Just as the other team had been seeing my DD, they now have to adjust to lower velocity, windup and timing of the next pitcher and it often resulted in some strikeouts and infield hits for outs.

My older DD hasn’t been pitching long. But a few of the first opportunities she got to pitch (13/14u) was because her team was out of options. They were getting killed and she came in and threw rainbows to advanced hitters and they couldn’t hit her. She got her first few Ks against teams that were hitting our best pitchers like BP.

There is definitely a purposeful way to utilize changing pitchers but if you don’t have very many of them, you gotta be mindful. And pulling a pitcher that’s keeping you in the game is bad-maybe as bad as waiting too long to pull a pitcher that’s losing the game.


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[CoachJD]

I have been a parent in two teams now (I’ve volunteered to assist with this second team) where I have had the coaches and a couple of parents that swear by the idea of changing pitchers just to “mess up” the other batters. I don’t get it. Unless you’re changing mid-at bat, it can’t seem to matter much from trip through the lineup 1 with pitcher A and trip through the lineup 2 with pitcher B or am I completely missing something here? I have seen coaches pull pitchers, that are killing it, solely based on this idea. For reference I’m talking about 12U B level ball. My question is, am I missing something or are the coaches that believe in this wrong/overestimating what this does to batters?

You are 100% missing something.

What you're missing is that hitters perform better against pitchers the more often they see those pitchers. There is a good reason that MLB teams often don't let their starting pitchers face hitters a third, and especially not a fourth, time through the order. The data shows that hitters simply perform much better against pitchers the third time through the order. This also partially explains why some teams opt to use an "opener" in games. Not only do they get to have a top reliever face a team's best hitters, but it also means the starter can avoid facing them that third time and still go a bit deeper into the game.

If I have some time, I actually am curious to check out how players do against my own pitchers each time through the order. But I can tell you, anecdotally, that I have many times said to my AC how I am worried about the third time through the order. With good hitters, the second time can be scary, too. I've actually been toying with having my #2/3 pitchers start a lot more games next year with the plan being that they go through the order once before I go to my #1.

There are, of course, always exceptions. And the disparity in talent at 12u could mean that the #1 pitcher could face a team 100 times and nobody on that team is touching her. Or maybe the difference in talent between pitchers is so large that it's worth it to have a slightly less effective #1 instead of the #2 pitcher. There are variables to consider.

But generally speaking, yeah, it makes sense to not let hitters see a specific pitcher too often.

Also, what you see as "killing it" might actually be a pitcher who has been graced with a little bit of luck from the BABIP gods.

 

[Northball]

You are 100% missing something.

What you're missing is that hitters perform better against pitchers the more often they see those pitchers. There is a good reason that MLB teams often don't let their starting pitchers face hitters a third, and especially not a fourth, time through the order. The data shows that hitters simply perform much better against pitchers the third time through the order. This also partially explains why some teams opt to use an "opener" in games. Not only do they get to have a top reliever face a team's best hitters, but it also means the starter can avoid facing them that third time and still go a bit deeper into the game.

If I have some time, I actually am curious to check out how players do against my own pitchers each time through the order. But I can tell you, anecdotally, that I have many times said to my AC how I am worried about the third time through the order. With good hitters, the second time can be scary, too. I've actually been toying with having my #2/3 pitchers start a lot more games next year with the plan being that they go through the order once before I go to my #1.

There are, of course, always exceptions. And the disparity in talent at 12u could mean that the #1 pitcher could face a team 100 times and nobody on that team is touching her. Or maybe the difference in talent between pitchers is so large that it's worth it to have a slightly less effective #1 instead of the #2 pitcher. There are variables to consider.

But generally speaking, yeah, it makes sense to not let hitters see a specific pitcher too often.

Also, what you see as "killing it" might actually be a pitcher who has been graced with a little bit of luck from the BABIP gods.

I think I'll go back and re-watch some CWS games through the lens of how they use their staffs. Might be a little more analogous than MLB to a youth team; smaller staff, fewer innings in a game. MLB gets pretty calculated and specialized with middle relievers, set-up men, closers, pitching to one batter, lefty v. righty matchups, etc.
My perception is during regular season, college teams throw their stud like a dam holding back the offensive water. If no cracks appear in the dam that you can't fix you simply stay with it. When a troublesome crack does appear, put in a new dam before too much water can get downstream. I do think NCAA playoffs are trending more toward MLB where a new dam sometimes appears before any cracks emerge.