what's up baseball players parents coaches i'm coach Dan Blewett in today's video let's
talk about should you track bullpens for pitchers
all right so if you're new here i'm coach Dan be sure to check out the links in the description
below for my two pitching books my online courses links to other videos etc etc so today let's talk
about should you track bullpen so here's the thing the analytics world is getting huge there's apps
for this there's software for that there's you know we can track everything now but the question
is should you track a lot of this stuff and at the amateur especially the youth level the answer in a
lot of cases is no just because you can track something just because some dad in some other
state with a softboard background made a cool app that could like do a thing that he had to do with
paint and paper doesn't mean you should actually use it just because some other coach is using
a thing doesn't mean you should actually do that thing so let's go over tracking bullpen so i know
charting stuff is big in lots of other places you know as a starting pitcher in pro ball i had to
sit there with a with the game chart and and chart my other pictures from the stands i did that one
day a week here's the here's my first thing i'm going to go through six points about this and why
i don't think you should be tracking bullpens in most cases especially for young pitchers
number one you have to ask yourself are you really going to use all this data
the answer in most cases is no how often are your players going to sit down and sift through
10 bullpens worth of data and say oh yeah i threw 62 strikes on that thursday and then
you know in june i threw 65 strikes and oh my change are you actually going to use the
data really ask yourself that question in most cases the answer is going to be no i
owned a baseball academy for a bunch of years and we had lots and lots of bullpens churning through
and in most cases the couple times that we did do some charting and did do some radar stuff it the
data didn't end up being that relevant and players weren't coming in to sit down and do it and i
wasn't really concerned about whether they threw 58 strikes last week and 61 percent strikes this
week with young players there's a lot of ups and downs so a lot of times these trends are not super
important number two let's go to percentages so what are the things you're going to track
right percentages of strikes uh percentages of hitting your spot maybe tracking percentages
for different pitches but here's the thing are those questions are those percentages going to
be relevant especially given a certain bullpen length most bullpens are 25 to 45 pitches long
you don't really throw bullpens much longer than that unless you're a starter and you're getting
right you know getting close to the season you're trying to get your pitch count up but during the
season and most times in the off season bullpens are 25 to 45 pitches long in most cases if you're
throwing more than that you're pretty much doing it wrong so for 25 to 45 pitches let's say it's 30
is the average if you're if you're charting strike percentage for example on a 30 pitch bullpen
one pitch is 3.3 percent so if you have a kid that throws 70 strikes today like good job johnny threw
21 strikes out of 30 pitches the next time he throws only 20 strikes now he's at 67 the next
time he throws you know 15 strikes that's not a lot of strikes it's a pretty small sample size so
you're asking yourself okay he throws three less strikes today that's ten percent fewer strikes
is that really meaningful is that real with that trend over time is that really important in most
cases that answer is going to be no you know if you're charting starting pitchers for example and
they throw 100 pitches over 20 starts in a summer that's a lot of pitches that's 2000 pitches that's
a much bigger sample size to say okay he throws 67 strikes in year a next year he throws 62 strikes
something changed right that makes a little more sense but when we're doing 30 pitches at a time
i'm not sure that's going to make a whole lot of difference especially in the off season
right you have five eight 10 12 bullpens getting rid of the season 2 30 pitches each
are you going to get useful data out of that especially when you break up into
10 curveballs 10 fastballs 10 changeups you know now every fastball he throws at a 10 is 10
i don't think that's gonna be very useful data so that's something to consider number three i
was very against string lines in college i used to argue with my head coach about it he wanted to
have string lines in the bullpen i said why do we have string lines when i'm trying to hit the mitt
and he says well you know we want to make sure it's in the string lines i'm like i don't care
if it's in the string lines i'm trying to hit the mitt and the mitt's in the string lines so
why does it matter if i miss the mitt and it's still within the string lines i'm mad because i
missed the mid and that's my target if that's your target that's your target right like who
cares if you miss your target but keep it in the string lines now i get that if you're always in
the string lines from like the top of the knee below the knee then oh you're doing a good job but
you're not doing a good job if you're missing your spot and that should be the standard that you're
held to so the thing my one of my core issues with tracking bullpens is i was trying to teach
my pitchers that the mitt is the goal not the strike zone the strike zone is not the goal so we
don't really care if you threw 70 strikes in your bullpen because bullpens are supposed to be harder
than games bullpens are supposed to be teaching you to be focused to be locked into the mitt
to accept that as your target and how narrowly are you missing we don't care if you missed over
across the plate into the strike zone we care did you hit the mitt or we're very close to it
so if that's your goal you could chart how many times you hit the mid but that's going to be
a pretty low percentage it's going to be like 25 percent if that and then the other question
is are we teaching the wrong thing is is 70 bullpen strikes and bullpens a good thing is
you know 60 curveballs for strikes and bullpens good i mean again it really comes down to the
mitt and if you're trying to train pitchers to be better pitchers the thing they need to be trained
on is the mitt not the strike zone so you don't throw balls to the strike zone you throw walls to
the mitt so again this is what are we reinforcing the right thing by just tracking percentages and
you go back and look oh you threw you know 58 strikes a couple months later through 64
strikes good job but were they quality strikes were you just missing over the middle of the plate
more are you just throwing it down the middle more is that really relevant information that's another
good question all right my next big thing about tracking bullpens is you're going to be attacking
problem locations more than you otherwise would so in a bullpen your job is not just to see how many
strikes you can throw that's not the goal of a bullpen the global will plan is to hit the
mitt to move the mid around and to work on hitting different spots that you'd pitch to in the game so
you know if you watch my other videos and i can link below you know in a game you might pitch to
the middle to either half to either a third or to either corner you might elevate and bounce
the ball those are the main sort of core spots you throw to in a bullpen you don't really go
to the halves you only really pitch down the middle if it's like the first pitch of the day
or like you're throwing curveballs or change-ups down the middle um but you don't really throw fast
balls down the middle or aim there in a bullpen um you really hold yourself to a much higher standard
in a bullpen so you're always pitching to maybe the thirds of the plate or the black of the plate
in a bullpen um you basically are just taking everything down a notch or up a notch whatever
way you want to call it like in difficulty saying that this is the standard we're trying to build i
want to be able to throw my change up on the outer third i want to be able to throw my curveball
below the kneecap on the corner of the plate those are the pitches you're trying to make in a game
that are hard to make so we're going to practice them in a bullpen so now if i'm doing that
my strike percentage is naturally going to be a lot lower in a bullpen if i'm doing really hard
stuff in a bullpen you know what's the standard for is it 70 strikes doing making pitches that
i'm not good at making no it's gonna be like i probably execute 40 of the time in a bullpen uh
because i'm again throwing to the thirds and the black a lot more than i would and holding myself
to a high standard and you know trying to hit the mid so this again goes back to the core thing is
are we trying just to track strikes or are we trying to get better at making quality pitches
in the bullpen and i don't think it's the former i think it's the latter so number five and this goes
back to the previous one the better you get it stuff the more you need to challenge yourself so
essentially your strike percentage should never rise over time it should either stay flat or it
should decrease over time because you're going to increase difficulty over time so if you ask a kid
to hit the mitt on the outer half you know early and he starts getting pretty good at hitting on
the other half what are you going to do in his bullpens in subsequent weeks you're going to push
that mitt to the outer third and now he gets pretty good hitting out a third what's gonna
happen next you're gonna push him to the outer corner and now guess what he's got very little
margin for error and so he's missing off the plate more and his strike percentage actually goes down
in his subsequent weeks because we're asking him to do a more challenging task so then if you're
try if you're charting strike percentages what does that tell you your kid got worse
over the year over the you know weeks and months he now throws 50 50 strikes versus 65 percent
in the earlier weeks no he's just now you know challenging himself more and giving himself less
margin for error which is going to be better for him in games because now we can make those pitches
in a game and there's going to be a lot more times where it's easy to catch up in the count
so again if this is the trend in bullpens which it should be that you're continuing to
get better and do the hard things then tracking those baseline strike percentages stuff like
that are not going to be that relevant i don't think over time and it's going to
almost become confusing as to whether kids are making progress where if you just say hey
we're gonna we're not tracking anything we're just gonna focus on hitting the mitt
just hit the mitt hit the mid hit the mid if you hit the mid great next pitch hit it again you miss
it okay next pitch try to hit it now and that's how pitching is pitching is one pitch at a time
and it's always that reset it doesn't matter what just happened it's right now let's hit the
mitt and then we'll go from there and that's the mindset you're really really trying to breed you
don't want to breed this mindset of i hope my 30 pitches today are good collectively i hope i throw
70 strikes today that's not really the mindset that you want your mindset is i want to make
one excellent quality pitch i want to execute my pitch right now this one time that's the mindset
you that you have as a pitcher and then if you do that over and over then you pitched a really good
game when you look back on it but you don't want to have that mindset of i want to throw 65 strikes
today i want to throw 10 great curveballs today your job is always one good pitch let's execute
it right now my last thing with bullpens is the you know the bread and butter sort of analytics
velocity spin rate do you really need to be tracking those especially for amateur players and
my answer is no number one velocity is not super important in bullpens bullpens are to get you
prepared to pitch well in a game if you want to track velocity and spin rate do it in a game why
because they're going to be throwing full speed and they're going to be throwing with full spin
which that's also mean to note here if you're throwing 80 effort in the bullpen your spin rate
does not matter one bit because it's not going to be game spin so if you throw a 3000 rpm curveball
in a game which is outstanding like major league standards outstanding now you're throwing in the
bullpen you're throwing 80 what is your spin rate going to be 2700 2600 2500 who even cares because
it's not game speed so what what are we comparing it to your spin is very tied to your effort level
so when you're not you know going full bore and whipping it the ball is not going to spin nearly
as nearly as fast so tracking spin rate and sub maximal bullpens doesn't make sense and in my book
unless you're getting ready to go right into the season you're not going to be throwing full speed
in the bullpen and even if you're trying to throw full speed your full speed is slower than game
speed so then it's like okay well i throw 2100 rpm you know this pitch in a bullpen before the season
well and i'm throwing 83 miles per hour but then as soon as i go into a game on march 1st
i'm throwing 86 was that spin relevant at all so now when we go back and look at the winners work
does it did it matter what a spin rate of a 83 mile per hour uh slider was probably not
the other thing is with youth players spin rate absolutely does not matter it's not a it's not
a useful tracking tool or you can say oh i want to go up over time okay why don't you just play
catch with that kid or watch from behind the catcher and see how sharply it breaks
the spin rate metrics like who are you comparing them to i think this is a trend that's getting
out of control it's not really relevant until these kids are of legitimate recruiting age
because what are you gonna do okay a little johnny's slider has a spin rate of 1200 he's 13.
what do you do with that number hey let's try to make it better okay we'll just that's this goal
every time you touch a ball and throw a slider isn't it i mean we i've heard this old saying that
if it can be tracked you should track it or if you if you're not tracking it then you're
just guessing as you're whether you're getting better that's not true kid i mean pitchers were
getting better for hundreds of years playing baseball by playing catch with each other by
getting feedback you throw with me i say hey that slider was that slider was pretty good
or hey that one you kind of got on the side of it you know this one was better than that one
that kind of feedback is still feedback it's still valuable and when kids are younger they
just need feedback about this curveball was sharper than that curveball that chained up
was better than that changeup that's when you slowed your arm down that one was kind of soft
and roll-y this one was pretty sharp that one was better than this one and they just tried
to repeat that feel and do it the way they did it well again and then you keep doing that and they
get better over time the fact that you say hey that one was 1200 rpms oh that one was 1100 rpms
right go down there and look and watch play catch with them be behind the catcher
visualize it tell them hey that one had more break this way more break that way you can use some of
these tools to help visualize it i know rhapsody gives cool readouts of what it looks like but
i still think behind the catcher and giving actual real world feedback about this one did this versus
that is still much more useful for amateur players than just giving them some number that's really
not comparable to anything else that's probably not that relevant at a young age so i wouldn't
really worry about tracking velocity in bullpens and i wouldn't worry about tracking uh spin rate
and bullpens i think those are just useless until you're much much older and um and then you're
really at that tinkering phase when you're older if you're tinkering if you're a college you know
junior and your slider kind of sucks and your and your sliders 1800 rpms and you're trying to get it
higher okay that's a good point where we're trying to look we're fighting for a little percentage
point um your every little percentage point better is going to make you a little better on the mound
when you're younger like most your sliders suck so you just need to get better at throwing sliders
you just need to throw more sliders you don't really need to track every one of you know 500
crappy sliders that you're going to throw as a 13 year old because they're all going to suck
so like why do we really need to track that anyway so do you agree do you not agree um leave
a comment below obviously analytics is a um it's a fun new tool there can be some there's some really
great uses for it there's also some times where it's overused i mean there's got to be expected
right any new technology can be detrimental it can be super helpful and i think about finding the
balance is what everyone wants to do but again you don't want to be tracking stuff that isn't useful
and at most of the amateur levels and youth levels a lot of this stuff is not going to be that useful
all right thanks again for watching i'm coach dan blue and i'll see you here in the next video