The Only Rule Is..There Are No Rules

Embrace change. Get excited about it. Always look for better ways to do things. That is the spirit with which we approach pitching. The best is yet to come. We have yet to discover all of the truths.
Henry Ford was quoted as saying, “If I would have asked people what they wanted they would have said faster horses”.  There is some debate as to whether he actually said that, but it is a beautiful illustration.
Softball has evolved dramatically in the last 25 years. If you had asked coaches what they wanted back in the days of the aluminum bat, they would have said “bigger, stronger kids who can hit home runs”. In those days it took a lot of power to put the ball over the fence. A couple of things changed this desire for a team filled with big, strong players. Coaches recognized the way speed could affect the outcome of the game. Bunting and slapping allowed smaller players to be serious threats. Then, the introduction of the composite bat meant that anyone in the lineup could hit home runs.
The advances in strength training have been huge. Now we can assess the athlete, identifying muscles which have become dormant, determining imbalances, and making sure they are not tight where they need to be flexible. Ten years ago the emphasis was STRENGTH. Today it is far more skewed toward efficiency, explosiveness, and maximizing the gifts of a particular individual.
Today’s emphasis on tightening the strike zone in college games is leaking down into other levels, so pitchers face a tougher task. If they continue to do things in the way things have always been done, they will be in trouble. A tight strike zone means you have to be creative. Obviously changing speeds is very important, but there are other ways to attack.
One of the kids I enjoy is from Maryland, a high school junior named Emma Bevard. She is tall and strong, so everyone expects her to be a power pitcher. Emma, instead, loves to make the ball dance in ways you might not have seen before. A college coach might be wise to watch this kid.
Emma throws as sweet riseball, a nasty drop, and great changeup. That is not what makes her special. Recently at a camp we were working I called all of the pitchers together to give them a lesson in versatility. Emma had no idea what we were going to do, but I suggested she throw the riseball and there were some gasps when they saw it jump. Then I surprised her by suggesting a screwball, which was not her strength, and she hesitated. I told her to use the riseball spin with a split-seam grip so the ball would tail. Kick slightly off to the side like a screwball, but throw the rise spin. The ball came in low and hard in the middle of the plate, but at the last second it cut inward and rose just above the bat handle. Now we had everyone’s attention.
As the pitchers tried to imagine how they would handle that pitch as a hitter, I asked Emma to do something else. Now, use the same exact form, but throw the changeup off the screwball body position. She was confused, but tried and the ball floated right over the inside corner. So, a batter facing her screwball would have to try to get the bat head through quicker, but suddenly she can bring the changeup in exactly the same way and the batter would be way out front.
The point is this. The “same old, same old” gives every advantage to the batter. We have been doing tremendous research in order to give the ball the appearance of doing one thing when it doing exactly the opposite, or combining the best attributes of two different pitches in new ways. As I always taught our daughters, the goal of any strikeout pitcher is to “throw a pitch that looks like it will be in the zone, but leaves the zone, or one that looks like will be outside the zone, but moves into it.”
The science of sport has left many people behind. They can’t search for answers, because they don’t even know the questions to ask. If you are only searching for more arm speed for your pitcher, you are asking the wrong question. If you try to make her stronger without having a fully qualified professional assess her completely, you are definitely asking the wrong question. If you don’t know what we mean by fully qualified professional, the game has passed you by.
There are huge differences in the angles, strengths, and efficiencies of the male and female body. You must not confuse them or you will struggle to achieve the outcome you desire. The things we thought we knew ten years ago have all been called into question.
The moral of the story: Today we have answers to questions that we did not even ask yesterday. As an organization, we constantly study the latest research, trying to determine the right questions to ask. Faster horses were once thought to be the answer until someone passed them in an automobile, looking upward at a jet occupied by someone hurrying to a business meeting, only to arrive and discover that the customer had already chose a competitor’s product after having a virtual meeting on the internet.
***Note: If you are a former college pitcher who would like to impact the lives of kids, contact us about our Certified Instructor program. Let us connect you with other people like you and see why they chose to join our exclusive group.