quote:
Originally posted by Mallot's Dad:
My son is a Freshman on JV. We have doubleheaders and play one double header a week (Saturday) with a couple of Tuesdays thrown in for two DH a week. My Son is a starter once a week and usually goes at least 5 innings. After the two week tryout process, the pitching workouts have gone down to zero - no bullpens, long toss, etc. between games. Should I have my Son discuss this situation with the Coaches, or just have my son work out on his own after practice? The Coaches are a very knowledgeable group, so I don't know if we would be second guessing them, or if they are simply hoping kids step up on their own. My worry is that he may not be as sharp for his starts and needs to work on his change up.
This is kinda interesting to me because my by happens to be the pitching coach on our JV team. Because they have so many kids on the team throwing, 10 pitchers for 116.33 innings, from what he tells me, rather than a set schedule, with a 3 game a week schedule, and the inability of all of the assts to make it to the 2 practices, they just allow the boys to throw pens during games and pass on the pens during practices.
The reason’s pretty simple. The VHC and all of the others have decided that no pitcher is going to be allowed to throw unless supervised, and there aren’t any sessions that go beyond 25 pitches after warm-ups. That way no one gets overworked, and if needed can throw in a game, even on a day he’s thrown a pen. Its worked pretty well for the JV, and is being phased in for the V as well.
Turns out that most of the starters, who are the “better” pitchers, are taking lessons away from the team setting at least twice a month, and they’re getting lots of mound time anyway. But the relievers get maybe an inning or two a week and are the ones who need lots more time, and this way they can get the equivalent of 4 or 5 innings a week, spread out so there’s no danger of stiff or sore arms.
As for long toss, I never asked and can’t say what they do other than what I see during pre-game warm-ups. Eventually all of the players “stretch-out” prior to every game by doing some form of long toss. Personally I can’t see any reason for doing any more than that, but if a player wants too, all he needs is a small bucket of balls and a place to throw, so I can’t see how that would ever be an issue.
I don’t know if you’re familiar with MaxPreps, but this year they’ve allowed coached to post Fr & Jv numbers. If you’d like to see how your team compares to how other schools JV teams have done, you can use this method.
GO to MaxPreps.com and use the “Find Your School” function at the top of the page. To see ours, find “pleasant grove, elk grove, ca”.
Then choose “Baseball - JV”.
Once there, on the left side of the page, go to “Stats” and choose “Player” to see everyone’s stats together.
Right now there’s really no way to know if a school is entering JV or Fr stats until you actually get to that school’s page. But its fun to check out the ones who are doing it when you find one.
