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@PitchingFan posted:

I'm gonna call this.  It seems that the ones who have went to and stayed at D1 schools have good experiences and like most situations, the ones that are not the front line pitchers have had bad experiences.  I find the same with hitting coaches and head coaches.  When your son has a good experience, you seem to think the coaches are good and when you get "shafted" you think the coaches are idiots.  Is that a fair statement?

not quite..
congrats to you for having a son on a very successful ranked D1 with draft interest.
but..however this could lead to an extremely clouded view..
IMO.. development improvement needs to be addressed..
and players not treated like commodities.
hey what do I know?  only have spoken to about 200 parents/kids and it seems the same ,across the board ,all over the country. ...


Last edited by fishnsail

I have also had a son who lost 5 miles an hour in college, and lost MLB interest and the love of the game as a player because of a pitching coach, who was eventually fired, and not in the game anymore.  He pitched either starter or major closer every weekend   So I have seen both sides but just know most who think the coach is bad don’t get to play.

@PitchingFan posted:

I have also had a son who lost 5 miles an hour in college, and lost MLB interest and the love of the game as a player because of a pitching coach, who was eventually fired, and not in the game anymore.  He pitched either starter or major closer every weekend   So I have seen both sides but just know most who think the coach is bad don’t get to play.

I can appreciate that as you know that side of the coin. and it isn't fun.. I am sorry for your other son's experience. and wish he could have a do over..

best wishes for him and your current son.

But as far as the PC's-  I am speaking in overall terms.

not about Daddy or Mommy ball..

not whether "my kid or that kid " plays or not... that wouldn't affect my viewpoint

Many/most PC's , from what I have heard and seen from many.. do not delve into the mechanical nature of a pitchers delivery.
which maybe should be the #1 or #2  job description??
don't care if kid is the first overall pic or last guy on the totem pole or someone's retread..  don't care if he pitches 80 innings or 1 inning..  or wins the CWS or is on some low D1 hellfire somewhere..

A PC should be a problem solver and know when to step in and try to fix..but equally know when to not touch..
and if you do not have the ability to help and improve a pitcher (mechanically , intellectually and emotionally)
then you should not be a PC...


Last edited by fishnsail

I get that but that is also not all they have to do.  As TPM, said somewhere up here they have to scout 2-3 teams a week with 11-15 batters and make scouting reports for their players which takes a lot of time.  They also have to prepare a pitching plan for 4-5 games a week for starters and bullpen.  There is only so much time in a day.

We talk about turnover and new players coming in.  A PC has to figure out who can pitch and who just throws.  Try to fix a few things in a pitcher but that is about all they can do.  The average D1 team now has 20-25 pitchers.  Now we know that only about 10-12 of those are going to be used.  So do you invest your time in the 10-12 that are going to help you win or the 10-12 that are not going to help you win this year and may not be here next year.  It is tough.  You only have 20 hours a week that you can work with players.  The math does not work out.  I know it may not be fair but coaches have to make choices and everyone of them and us would do the same.  Invest in the ones that are going to help you win.  You also understand that most PC's do not have qualified volunteer coaches who can help them work with pitchers so it is hands on.

I think as in about anything, you can’t apply your experience to be the standard.  When we are done, I could share some examples of lots of everyday starters who would not describe their experience as good.  

When you say they don’t have time to rebuild a guy…I wish they wouldn’t. Recruit guys you like. We’ve had multiple guys turned into side arm guys.  When things went south, the parents said they were basically told to figure it out.Hard to do when you’ve never thrown that way before and now your arm hurts). My son spent his entire first semester doing only weighted balls to change his arm path. Never even threw a pitch in fall until the last week. That was never mentioned during recruiting and did not make him better. He showed up at campus pretty dang good. Tweaking I think is fine, if you then evaluate the tweaks.  We have  quite a few guys that showed up on campus very good (by a pretty big consensus) who have regressed. And we have a pitching coach who is by many accounts “one of the best in the nation”.  We never even considered asking if they planned to change his delivery. Hindsight.

Bottom line, there are good coaches, mediocre coaches and bad coaches.  A good coach can mean different things to different people. Maybe a coach that adds a tweak that makes a big difference, maybe instilling confidence, maybe leaving a kid alone, maybe it’s building a positive culture. I guess you have to know what you need from a coach.

How did you not know this before your son went there?  Did you not research the PC's past and what his previous players had to say about him?  We contacted the successful ones and the ones who left a program.  Looked at the ones who were recruited and never played to find out why.  Some of it was not legit and most of that was not hard to figure out.

  For those of you that don’t know, @baseballhs and her son have been thru the wringer. She has been incredibly respectful toward her son’s school in the comments she has made publicly. Not sure I could have dealt with as many issues (caused by coaches) and maintained my composure the way she has. Hats off to her!
  IMO one of the biggest problems regarding college PCs are the unrealistic expectations of players (and parents) when they enter the program. @PitchingFan described the real world very accurately in his last post. It’s a numbers problem. Only so many hours in a day/week. Only half the pitching staff is contributing. So the hours that are available are spent on those that contribute. People that expect pitchers that aren’t contributing to get attention from coaches for “development” during a season in which they aren’t helping to win games are unrealistic - even delusional. It’s not gonna happen. If you find yourself in that position (as half the college pitchers always are) you have 2 choices. Either leave and go to a place where you are good enough to play. Or work hard to get good enough to play where you are. In the latter case you will need to take charge of your own development. Figure out what you need and find out where to get it. Which is probably the advice to apply to the issue of development across the board.

@PitchingFan posted:

How did you not know this before your son went there?  Did you not research the PC's past and what his previous players had to say about him?  We contacted the successful ones and the ones who left a program.  Looked at the ones who were recruited and never played to find out why.  Some of it was not legit and most of that was not hard to figure out.

There is no way to predict when a PC will decide that he needs a LH and a RH sidearm guy out of the bullpen at any cost. And there is no way to predict that it will be your kid that a PC decides to experiment with. Personally, I think it’s terrible (with an occasional exception) to change a kids arm angle if he is healthy.  And it seems to be happening at an alarming rate……when it should be a last resort type of thing.

I agree it’s up to the fact that in our recruiting process, we found that coaches would convert pitchers to side arm, and others never convert. I find that very few try to convert left, handed pitchers to side arm, but there are those who will say to a player, you will never compete here, unless you become a SideArm/submarine pitcher, or some other kind of specially pitcher.  Normally, those are soft, throwing right handed pitchers.  But very rarely does that not show up in the scouting report for the pitching coach.  And yes, I had a scouting report on about 20 pitching coaches.

Last edited by PitchingFan
@PitchingFan posted:

How did you not know this before your son went there?  Did you not research the PC's past and what his previous players had to say about him?  We contacted the successful ones and the ones who left a program.  Looked at the ones who were recruited and never played to find out why.  Some of it was not legit and most of that was not hard to figure out.

I think our year was the second time he had changed guys to sidearmers. He changed 2 our freshman year because the guy that was changed the year before did well. Even right now he is widely considered and referred to as one of the best in the country.  He was always complimentary of son, never mentioned any changes. I think with all the returning 5th year established guys we had in 2020, plus the 11 pitchers in our incoming class, they became experiments. We had literally never heard anything negative.  I think the COVID year, portal, grad transfer thing may have changed the way he handled pitchers/players. It is starting to catch up ….

btw, one rhp and one lhp were both converted. Both sat 92-94. Both did very well that first year. Both have had injury issues since.  One has regressed and rarely pitches now.

Last edited by baseballhs

How do pitching coaches not have time? I really hate the argument that there isn't enough time to do anything with these kids. That's all they have is time. That's not to say that they don't have lives and they don't do any actual work but when your title is Pitching Coach and you don't have another job to go to - how do you not have time?

20 pitchers on a roster. 30 minutes with each of them once a week comes out to 10 hours. I have a hard time believing a Pitching Coach does not have 10 hours a week to work with his pitchers individually considering most people work 40+ hour weeks as the standard.

That's like a vet saying they don't have any time to look at sick animals.

To me it's a lazy excuse. The idea that the pitching coach doesn't have time to work with pitchers is a really weird and sad sentence.

Last edited by PABaseball

There’s a lot of parental emotion in the baseball journey and I can vouch personally it’s not always based on objectivity.

There’s not a lot of control in how anyone’s son will connect with a coaching staff or what opportunity he will have. How your son navigates those coaching relationships, his work ethic, supplementing what he believes he needs on his own and a fair bit of luck will all factor into his successes and failures.

Very few  pitching (and hitting) coaches are actually qualified to make major mechanical changes and I think for most leaving a players core mechanics alone and only making a few tweaks here and there is the way to go.

Of course there is some stuff you can Improve, especially balance, footwork, Stability and so on but with stuff like changing arm slot I wouldn't want 99% of coaches to ever touch that.

There are some guys I would trust with that like for example driveline but with many coaches mechanical changes are simply guesswork based on what they think is right without really understanding the biomechanical reasoning and down stream effects that a change could have.

I'm not saying a PC should never work on mechanics but very few are qualified to make changes to the core of the mechanics and those coaches are better off focusing on stuff like pitch mix, scouting, game planning and so on and only make mechanical adjustments if something got really out of whack.

Completely rebuilding a pitching staff from the ground up could be a recipe for disaster if you are not having big resscources like a biomechanics lab and very qualified coaches.

Last edited by Dominik85
@TPM posted:

The NCAA allowing a 4th paid coach will open up the opportunity for more coaches to spend time with players.

Will be interesting to see how many ML scouts will be lured away from their current position to become college scouts.

I am going to correct myself on my post.

It's not all the things that coaches have to do but how much time that the NCAA regulates coaches can spend on each player in fall instructs and team practice. In season for pitchers its the bullpen.  Players can work on skills together.

Coaches have relationships with different summer programs and request that certain players get instruction on things they need to work on. So summer seems to be when players need to use that time to become successful.

This led me to think because that might be the problem.  What constitutes a good coach?  Watched the Mississippi State pitching coach get fired this week and wondered ultimately why?  Was he the sacrificial lamb?  Was it stats?  Was it wins and losses?

What determines for you if a coach is successful?  Pitching coach?  wins and losses, team era, guys getting drafted, guys staying?  Hitting coach?  wins and losses, batting average, guys getting drafted, guys leaving or staying?  Head coach?

I'm sure our definitions of successful coaches, pitching, hitting or head coach are different.  How we decide what makes one successful, what factors we use, what is success and failure.  I realized this recently when we had a discussion of successful teams or top teams.  To me the top 20-30 teams in college baseball are the top teams but that was different for many others.  Some it was top 100 teams were top teams.  Your thoughts?  Because that may be the problem with answering what is a good pitching coach.

I don’t think you have to be in a top program, to be a good/great coach. The best coach we ever had, only had a small stent at a smaller private D1. Prior to that, he just did private lessons with high school kids, and worked with a club. Almost every kid he worked with funneled into top P5 D1 programs. Was more knowledgeable about the tech and how to actually use it than anyone I’ve spoken to. He also knew that it shouldn’t drive development, it should assess it. He cold make small tweaks that made huge differences, while utilizing a kid’s natural motion. Would identify issues almost immediately. His communication style was very straightforward, which I think may be why he ran into less success at the college level. Would still want to work with him more than any other coaches we have been exposed to.

Last edited by baseballhs

Not argumentative, but I'm assuming you are defining him as a successful coach by the fact that he got players to P5 schools or is it the relationship that you had with him.  I'm really trying to figure out how people define success and this has played right into my premise.

This actually comes into play into my sermon series as to what defines a successful parent, child, or family.  I'm trying to figure out if success is a fact (stats) or a feeling.

It’s a mix of knowledge and making meaningful changes, that made kids that work with him, better pitchers.  To me a coach is different than a manager.

I also think outstanding coaches build relationships with their players. Build confidence.  Bring out the best and utilize strengths.

I have no idea how he was with bullpen management, which factors into an overall good coach at the college level.  So I guess to me, it would be a mixture of those 3 elements. If all you do is manage the talent that is there, to me you are a good manager, not necessarily a good coach. I think college kids need more than a manager to build a good culture. They are still kids.

Probably a bit of a unicorn to have it all but I know there are a few.

Last edited by baseballhs

@PitchingFan

Firing the pitching coach was a warning sent out to the staff and players. The sacrificial lamb so to speak.

I think Lemonis gets let go and Southern Miss staff gets the nod, or they may just hire their PC.

As I have said before there are a lot of really good coaches out there but lack the tools that the larger programs have at their disposal to make them more competitive.

JMO

@PitchingFan I think a successful parent is one who provides the love, guidance and support for each child to become the best version of themselves. Are they happy, are they contributing member of society, do they walk humbly, are they compassionate? Anything else is gravy.

I think good coaches help players reach their full potential. But just like with parenting, there are outside factors. Does the coach's style resonate with the player? Is the player willing to put in the hard work? Injuries. Starting talent level of the pitcher vs. Ceiling (i.e. did the kid show up over pitched or already peaked). Coaching is a brutal business at almost every level for one reason or another.

@PTWood posted:

@PitchingFan I think a successful parent is one who provides the love, guidance and support for each child to become the best version of themselves. Are they happy, are they contributing member of society, do they walk humbly, are they compassionate? Anything else is gravy.

I think good coaches help players reach their full potential. But just like with parenting, there are outside factors. Does the coach's style resonate with the player? Is the player willing to put in the hard work? Injuries. Starting talent level of the pitcher vs. Ceiling (i.e. did the kid show up over pitched or already peaked). Coaching is a brutal business at almost every level for one reason or another.

A+++

Part of the question is that success in the moment is not the same as success in hindsight or over the long term.  Isn't it often said that no-one likes his coach while playing, but afterward you realize what was taught?   A college coach whose players graduate but don't win many games - is he a success or not?  At what point can you determine it?  5 years later?  10?

BTW as a pitching or hitting coach you are always a bit on the mercy of luck too.

There are definitely good and bad coaches but there are cases where a PC is going to be scapegoated even if he did a good job.

1 or 2 injuries and a couple guys slumping and even a well respected coach can fall out of favor quickly.

It is a tough job and so much can go wrong in pitching, one guy from baseball prospectus famously said there is no such thing as a pitching prospect, meaning everyone can get hurt or be bad suddenly.

@Dominik85 posted:

BTW as a pitching or hitting coach you are always a bit on the mercy of luck too.

There are definitely good and bad coaches but there are cases where a PC is going to be scapegoated even if he did a good job.

1 or 2 injuries and a couple guys slumping and even a well respected coach can fall out of favor quickly.

It is a tough job and so much can go wrong in pitching, one guy from baseball prospectus famously said there is no such thing as a pitching prospect, meaning everyone can get hurt or be bad suddenly.

This is so true. Look at what happened at MSU.

As an assistant coach you are at the mercy of others who make decisions as to who will be on the roster. Then it's your job to turn them into pitchers who will help that team.

The only thing I question is why are there so many injuries with pitchers this year?  It's the pitching coaches and trainers job to keep them healthy.

When considering a program, players should certainly consider that information.

I've wondered the same over the past 3 years.  I think it is the push to increase velocity.  My son is a unicorn to be pitching in SEC at the speeds he throws.  But all the scouts are pushing him to show the 94 he threw in the fall.  "We have to see it to draft you." I think that mentality is causing guys to do whatever it takes to get the velo up.  I heard one say the other day that if one of our guys in particular can show the 100 consistently he will make a huge jump.  Like 99 is not good enough.  And if they tell the kid that you know he will do whatever to get there.  I do not think it is overuse like it used to be.  Most do not throw over 100 pitches in a game.

There have been lots of discussions on why injuries happen so often.

Pitching development has been great at stuff like increasing velo and pitch design but injury reduction so far wasn't successful, it even seems to get worse.

A lot of stuff gets blamed for this: youth pitcher overuse, weighted balls, throwing hard and now even pitch design gets targeted because some guys think certain pitches like the sweeper are more likely to hurt the arm.

So far there isn't any real evidence for any of those theories, a lot has been tried and so far nothing really helped.

Even the smartest teams in mlb with the best player development have a ton of injuries, so I guess there isn't a solution yet.

I think it is just the human body and nobody can completely figure it out.  We can have theories but only one knows.  I have kept my eye on Skenes at LSU and how his body responds this year.  He increased his number of pitches greatly on the season.  He added at least 7 mph consistently and he throws more pitches per game.  I hope it works for him because he seems to be a good guy.  Son likes him and they talk.  But I've just been intriqued to see how his body deals with the changes which are all to big extremes in the baseball world.

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