What's up, I'm Coach Dan Blewett, I'm a former pro pitcher.
in today's video, let's talk about should you change your pitching plan
with each individual hitter or should you always stick to a sort of universal plan
that you've created for yourself?
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Dan, check out the links in the description below
where you'll find my two pitching books seem to be a third.
My online courses, other videos that are related to this video here today.
So we're going to talk about,
you know, I got a YouTube comment about this,
talking about a universal pitching plan
that a pitcher should never deviate it from,
that he should have his plan and stick to it, no matter the hitter that they hit.
It doesn't matter.
And that's nonsense.
So we're gonna talk about why I think that comment was nonsense and why
I think it's important to have a plan but also adjust during the game.
OK, so what does first what does a pitching plan look like?
A pitching plan looks like an inventory of what you're good at as a pitcher.
So you're are you good at commanding the outer half more so than the inner
half? Do you have a really good fastball or a really weak fastball?
Do you have a curveball you can throw for strikes a lot?
Or is your curveball pretty good,
but you can't throw four strikes that frequently?
What what's your arsenal? How many hitters do you walk?
Do you get a head in the count really well?
Well, how do you tend to get outs?
That's the biggest thing. So for me, I'll give you an example.
I was a pretty hard thrower, at least back in the day.
It's hard to be a hard thrower today.
I had a pretty good spin.
Rates on my fastball seemed like it rise so I could get a lot of fly
ball outs and strikeouts.
But I had a really tough time getting groundball outs
when I pitched down the zone, I got hurt when I pitched up in the zone.
I was very, very successful.
When I pitched the way I was, I got hurt a lot more.
And when I pitched in, I was very, very successful.
I couldn't throw my curveball for a strike that well.
I could throw my chain of first strike
reasonably well, but I didn't need it as much.
And so all those things folded into an attack plan for me,
which was be aggressive really early in the count,
a little bit up, kind of like in the bell in the middle of a play,
because I was good at getting ahead in the count.
Then when I get a strike, we're going to go in on guys.
We're going to start going up
and then we can beat them with a curveball down of their righty,
beat him with a fastball up, beat him with a change up, down.
If they're a lefty or beaten with a cutter
and if they're a lefty, that was sort of my plan.
Now, even though that was my plan and my fastball was my best pitch,
I would still adjust.
And I watched all my teammates and pro ball adjust
based on different hitters and their tendencies.
Sometimes you have guys that are really good at ambushing
a first pitch fastball, which I would often throw.
So sometimes you have to ask yourself, OK, this is my strength.
This is also his strength.
Is it OK to go ahead and just go strength to strength?
And a lot of times it is. But sometimes it's not.
So sometimes that's kind of likely for me to get hurt.
If this guy has got really good, bad speed and really
is aggressive, trying to take you deep almost on the first pitch.
So you have to ask yourself sometimes, OK,
should I deviate from my typical first pitch fastball plan
and maybe throw a change up
or a cutter or a curveball, something that I can get over,
but is maybe going to throw him off a little bit and then I can kind of
go about business as usual.
So now the number one thing here is or the first thing is understanding
hitter tendencies.
You'll get hitters who are very ambush on the first pitch.
You'll get hitters who are very quiet, impatient on the first pitch.
So if you know, a hitter always takes the first pitch or takes the first pitch,
maybe three out of four at bats, that's going to be important for you.
You're not going to need to throw
a slider first pitch that you might normally throw to that guy
or you're not going to need to go in the corners very often to him
because he's going to give you three strikes all the time.
So to say, OK, I'm always throwing, you know, sliders
when the guys are pretty tough early in the count.
That would be a bad universal when you know, a guy
takes a lot more than he, then he swings.
You know, sometimes hitters are very obviously bad breaking ball hitters.
And so for me, my breaking ball was really, really sharp.
But it was a weakness throwing it for called strikes.
So for a guy that has that weakness of breaking balls, well,
it probably doesn't make sense for me to throw him
breaking balls early because I'm unlikely to throw in four strikes.
But my breaking ball is pretty good.
So if I can get ahead of him
now, we can start to bounce some, which I'm pretty good at.
And I can get him to wave at them and strike out probably
pretty easily that way.
So I might throw more breaking balls to a guy who's not good at them,
which should seem like an obvious thing to do. Right.
That's not it doesn't take a lot of a lot of calculation.
So you're also going to adjust based on their stance.
So say you love going in on hitters.
I also really like pitching inside of hitters.
I was good at it. It was effective for me.
If a guy stands really far off the plate
and maybe he's really geared up, approach wise to hit that inside pitch.
So if he is pretty far off the plate
and now the inner third is effectively like the inner half to him.
Well, I need to rethink about whether it's really good for me to pitch
or to the inside part of the plate.
I could pitch off the plate, but I'm not going to get strikes.
And if I pitch on the way, the play where I need called strikes,
he's probably going to hurt me.
So that's a situation where I might say, OK, this guy is really far
out of the play, so I'm just going to take what he gives me and go away.
Even though ordinarily they might not be bad for me
or that might be bad for me, but now, because of his his stance
and his approach, that's probably going to be a pretty safe zone for me today.
The other thing is sometimes
what the umpire gives you and now you don't want to
go, I really don't advocate for changing what you do based on the umpire.
But sometimes that could be necessary, too.
So if an umpire really refuses to call an inside pitch a strike,
which sometimes happens, sometimes you have to be OK,
maybe I'm going to go for the inner half and get a couple,
steal a couple of ones and, you know, in like some counts
and then try to get the umpire to come around.
Or maybe I need to abandon a little bit
or only go inside when I have a couple of strikes
and the hitters going to be forced to swing the hitter swing can help you a lot.
And so if the umpire is not going to call
inside pitch, which sometimes does happen, or maybe they're not giving you anything
away, you can say, OK, I need to rely a little more on swings today.
Then called strike location.
So I need to adjust where I set up accordingly.
You're also going to adjust based on the hitter's strengths.
So if you have a hitter that can really, really hurt you
and you don't want to miss on the inner part of the plate because he might take
you deep, then you might need to adjust your plan that day.
Maybe you throw a couple more offspeed pitches early in the count,
or maybe you do other things to try to slow his bad down early.
So then by the time you do go into him, he's kind of slowed down
and it's a little more likely that you're going to Jammal.
There's lots of times where a hitter has a really weird stance,
a really obvious approach, or just he's really dangerous.
And you need to adjust a little bit according to him.
Now, you don't want to go start throwing him your weaknesses,
like throwing a breaking ball
that you can't reliably throw for a called strike or whatever.
But you do want to say try to find the balance of risk
and reward matching your strength with his weakness.
And lastly, sometimes you do need to adjust to the ballpark.
And this is going to be less relevant in amateur baseball, more relevant
in high school baseball, a little less so in college and pro ball.
But I'll give you an example.
So one day, towards the end of my one of my seasons,
I was pitching at a ballpark where it was really short to write.
It was like two eighty five to write three forty two, the power alley,
which is really, really dangerous because hitters consistently fly out
more so to right, center , left, center than they do down the lines.
And so three forty two a power alley is like I mean,
they hit a hit a ball almost medium and it's going to go out to right center.
So I was pitching this left. You had 20 home runs on the year.
And I decided that I wanted to go in with him and throw my cutter,
which I you know, that was a pitch that if I had executed well, I could jam him.
And I was like, OK, yeah, I'm going to go.
I went away early and then I decided to go in with a cutter a little bit later.
Well, I threw a cutter that didn't cut and he had basically a line
drive home run to right center that would not have been a home run.
Elsewise, otherwise.
So in that situation late in the game and the detail that I left out
of this explanation is that in left field, it's really, really deep.
It's like three forty to the line.
It's like three like three ninety to the power alley.
And the ball just does not carry. Well, this is a well-known fact.
We'd play this ballpark many, many times, this team in our league.
And so basically righties never hit home runs the left center.
And so a lefty was certainly
I don't think I'd ever seen a lefty go opposite field, home run.
So this is a dangerous hitter who could go easily poolside
for a home run, even a cheapy, and would have had to absolutely destroy
like his hardest hit ball to the opposite of,
you know, the whole season to hit
a home run or even hit over the off year head to left field.
So you can ask yourself, I'm sure you could figure that out yourself.
Is that what's the risk and reward of going cutter in when you could miss
and give up a bomb versus just going fastball away
or now he's got to absolutely tattoo it to get it over
my outfielder's head or certainly to put it out like he did over there.
So in that situation, you probably say, you know what,
I could throw this cutter and if I executed great, I'd probably get him.
I probably break his bat.
But the downside risk is really big, whereas if I go away,
probably the biggest thing I risk is a double line
drive down the line or a single over my shortstop's head.
And the upside is that he's probably going to fly out or ground out.
So the likelihood that he could take me deep opposite field was almost zero.
The likelihood he could take me deep with a mistake inside
or even a good pitch inside because of how shallow was
he didn't have to hit a perfect was very, very high.
So sometimes like that and you'll see fields like this in high school
where you have a weird field that it's adjacent to a soccer field to right
fields like tiny left field as of, you know, so far away, whatever.
There's really strange fields in high school baseball
because they have the field and wherever.
When you're in those situations,
you should ask yourself sometimes, where do I want to get beat?
Should I take my chances
or should I make him beat me to the big part of the field sometimes?
That is a major consideration in your pitch calling, because,
again, there's risk. Every pitch is a risk and reward.
And when you have dangerous hitters, a lot of power,
you have to start to sometimes think about the fences
is as part of your strategy and your overall plan.
So hopefully this video helps.
It's really important
just to have an idea and have conviction behind every pitch you throw and invent.
Worry of your strengths and your weaknesses
and also an idea of what's happening around you,
the strengths and weaknesses of hitters, the game situations, the ballpark,
all these different things, they can factor into your plan
and whether you're going to change it or stick with it on the fly. All right.
So thanks for watching.
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