Pitching to the outer half...

coaching youth and freshman pitchers this year i noticed the problem with them pitching inside. They are afraid to hit a batter so they leave the pitch middle in and it gets roped or they peg 2 or 3 guys in a row so they dont want to throw there. I think they should use inside and outside but thats what i saw this year. When i pitch i am the opposite i pound the inside and i like it cuz the hitter cant reach out across the plate and a perfect inside pitch on the hands doesnt get hit much.

Last time I checked pitching was about getting outs and winning games.

If a pitcher can consistently hit his spots on the outside what prevents him from hitting them elsewhere?

Fastball in is a great pitch. Problem is if you miss in the guy lets it hit him, he's on. If you miss a little away he ropes into the gap.
Ideally, yes, pound the fastball in, under the hands; ask any umpire they'll tell you that's where right-hand hitters swing and miss the most.

also, speaking of umps, for some reason they don't call the fastball on the inside corner, but they give 2-3 inches on the outside corner..

I don't have one specific point, I'm just tossing out my 2 cents.

LT...I agree that most all high school pitchers are taught to pitch away. We combat that several ways from the offensive side. The simplest one is to get close to the plate. Now the outside half becomes the middle half just by alignment. This also has the effect of making pitchers not want to come inside for fear of making a mistake too far inside.

Don't most umpires set up on the inside corner? This probably leads to getting a great (and more discerning) look at inside pitches. There isn't a perfect position for umpires where they can get a great look at all locations, and setting up inside may be at the expense of perfect judgement on pitches away.

d8...that is what I did as a hitter 25 years ago when I knew a guy was going to feed me outside all day long.

Here is what happened. Before metal bats pitchers just pitched. They worked in and out up and down. A great pitch to set up was an inside fastball or 2 seamer when the hitter was looking off speed or away. If the hitter was overmatched they were pounded inside period.

When metal bats came along the batters gained a huge advantage. First of all they used to be -5 in hs. Now there was no fear of getting busted inside and it was very easy to turn on the baseball. Plus the fact is you can get beat with metal and still win. That is just a fact.

The new approach was to work away , away , away and away some more. Get the hitters to roll over the pitch and stay away from the long ball. Hitters are stronger and better and the pitchers at a huge disadvantage with metal bats. Very few HS aged hitters can let the baseball get deep and drive it backside. It takes training and discipline to let the baseball get deep.

Another thing that happened is umpires started to concentrate on the outside so much because that is where the vast majority of the pitches is thrown. You will see many pitches inside that are strikes get called balls. You will see many pitches two to three balls off the plate called strikes away.

So what did coaches start to do? They started concentrating on teaching players to go the other way. Let the ball get deep and look away do not look in. You can react to an inside fastball you have to be disciplined and let the outside pitch get to you. Hitters made the adjustment as well. Get up on the plate and turn the outside fastball into a pitch down the middle. The umpires see the kids up on the plate and they shift the zone even further outside.

The fact is you have to be able to work both sides of the plate to be an effective pitcher against quality hitters. You do not have to against weak hitters. The better the players the better you have to pitch.

Now if you go watch a wood bat tourney such as the WWBA you will see pitchers work inside , outside , up and down. Its a total different game than a normal hs game. Metal bats are the reason. Everyone has made adjustments over time. But the fact is go to a college game and count the pitches thrown inside vs the pitches thrown away. You will see what I mean.

They might as well move the plate over 6 inches. Because that is where the game is played and called. Again metal bats changed the way the game is played and coached. And its the reason people live away. Put wood back in the hitters hands and you will see the game go back to a game of real baseball.

This definitely does happen and it is attributable IMHO to poor coaching.

First, many coaches believe that they are too prone to getting burned inside, so they pitch away. And in fairness, it is true that you lose the ability to break a bat by hitting a guy on the fists, when you're playing amateur (metal bat) ball. Also, there was a period when the Leo Mazzone school of thought (expand the outer boundary by degrees) was very much in vogue and some folks haven't let go of that to this day.

Second, many pitchers get scared of hitting batters when they're young and do start moving away a lot.

The flaw in the thinking is exactly what d8 and larry have said. The batter is going to move up and make the outer half his happy zone. And now you're pitching to a plate that's only half as wide as it should be, so you walk a lot of guys, too.

A coach needs to pound into his pitchers' heads the fact that it is essential to success to own both sides of the plate. I would never advocate throwing at batters intentionally, but on the other hand, you cannot let a batter dictate to you (by crowding the plate) that you can't come inside, either. If he gets hit, well, that's his fault, not the pitcher's. To me it's all about attitude, and a successful pitcher usually has a touch of cockiness that he works with. Fear of hitting the batter is antithetical to that, and a good coach needs to stamp that thinking out.

There aren't many players who are willing to get pelted over and over just to reach base. And putting a little fear into a batter's mind is a powerful tool.

When you knock a guy off the plate, suddenly he loses track of where the strike zone is. A pitch on the outer edge looks outside to him; he'll take strike 3 there if you have brushed him back first. If you buzz a fastball under his chin, a curve that starts at his ribs and breaks right over the heart of the plate will often freeze him, too. If nothing else, knowing that you could go to the black on either side of the plate helps keep the batter from really teeing off on any given pitch, since he has to cover a larger zone. The result is more fisted pop ups and dribblers, more K's.

The battle between a pitcher and a batter is all about who's in charge of the other guy. If you concede half the plate to the batter, he's in charge and you are back pedaling before you even start.

Great Post Midlo. We are both right. The quality of the guy I have on the hill that day and the quality of the opponent will dictate how we approach it that day. If my guy does not have a dominate fb and the other team can rake we are going to pitch off the plate inside to set up the outside and off speed stuff. If my guy has a dominate fb we are going inside for outs and for set up.

Poor coaching does have alot to do with how some young kids pitch. Fear does have alot to do with it. Fear of hitting batters , fear of getting beat. But a ripped single throught he five hole is no more effective than a ripped single backside.

Young hitters try to pull everything for the most part. Hence most pitchers are taught to pitch away. Its no different than the coach that uses the curveball repeatedly to earn a win regardless of what it teaches his player at these levels of play.

The batter is going to try and take away part of the zone so he can focus on the part the pitcher will attack or at least the part he expects him to attack. If the hitter can not establish what he owns the pitcher will own it all. And when that happens the hitter is toast from the get go. It is a battle and pitchers have to have the will to take it away from the hitters.

Midlo and Coach May are both spot on.

One point missed is that when pitchers move to the 60' mound most, if not all, young pitchers do not have a hard enough FB to be able to effectively throw it inside, particularly with metal bats.

Once they get to 16ish and get into the 80's then the FB can be a weapon inside. My observations are that once a pitcher gets into the upper 80’s you don’t see too many batters crowding the plate. Good pitchers won’t let them be there very long!

You will see some hitters that will not give up the inside they will continue to crowd the plate. These are guys that believe that they can beat your best fb inside and they have no fear of getting hit. They also understand that they are vulnerable to certain pitches in certain counts. A hitter that comes to the box crowding the plate but moves off of it once he is challenged is not a tough guy in the box and not a very good hitter.

Guys that crowd the plate will crowd the plate regardless. There is a reason they are crowding the plate. We are talking higher levels now and quality hitters as well. Pitchers that believe in their stuff and know how to pitch will challenge regardless of where the hitter is standing. Thats the beauty of the game.

Great discussion gentlemen!

Some on this board have heard UVA pitching coach Carl Kuhn talk (and boy, can he talk!) about his pitching philosophy.

I disagree with him on many things, and in fact I only agree with this maxim of his by about half:

"The softer you throw, the more you MUST throw inside."

The idea is that because a batter hits the outside pitch deeper into the plate, he sees that pitch longer, so you have to be a hard thrower to get it by him. But throwing inside makes you appear faster to the hitter's perception.

I agree with this philosophy to the extent it teaches that even the softest throwers must come inside to keep batters honest, and to create deception by changing the batter's perception of the pitch speed (i.e., mess up his timing). Also, the softer you throw, the more you must move the ball around to avoid getting teed off on. If everything is in the same spot, you'd better duck.

I disagree to the extent Kuhn's philosophy suggests a hard thrower should not throw inside just as much, if not more frequently. Why would a harder thrower NOT throw inside? Put fear into the batter's mind, make it even harder for the batter to get the barrel to the ball, and open up the outer half by knocking him off the plate a bit.

I also disagree with how UVA uses the philosophy in games. They do pitch inside, but usually with the purpose of setting up the outside pitch as the "out" pitch. There are outs to be had on BOTH sides of the plate!

The real problem is with those who measure pitching success by K's. The game is played for RUNS, not K's. Inside is where the 1- and 2-pitch outs are found, when the batter gets sawed off and makes poor contact. It may work better with wood, but it works with metal as well. If you wish your pitchers could have innings with fewer than 10 pitches, throw inside!

Wow Midlo we went to the same school on this one. You have to get the hitter thinking middle away. This is pretty easy to do since most hitters if not all are taught to look middle away and react in. Then you will have alot of success working in at these times if properly located. Even an average fastball can be effective in these situations. But a very good fastball is deadly. The problem is hitters are looking away and crowding the plate and they do not fear being pounded inside. Why? Its rare. Very rare. In order to be an effective pitcher against quality hitters you must work both sides of the plate and change eye levels. I call it planting the seed. For instance if I know you are not going to challenge me in my kitchen I am going to crowd the plate and focus on going away or back up the middle. If you then bust me up and in you plant that seed in my mind. Now if you go soft away I am more likely to roll over the outside pitch.

The problem is alot of kids have no idea how to pitch inside and are not taught how to pitch inside. Some of the best pitches thrown are balls that are meant to be balls. And they are balls by design setting up outs. You must plant the seed in the hitters head that you are not conceding anything to the hitter and you will come in on him. You will hit guys once in awhile. You will put some guys on their backside once in awhile. If your not your giving the hitters something they should have to earn.

Come on guys you know how important it is to win that 12 year old All Star game. This kid has a killer curve so let him throw is 75 times in 6 innings. You got to win at that level - not teach the game.

In all honesty if a pitcher goes a whole game without backing a batter off the plate then he is not doing his job. I have never been a huge Leo Mazzone fan and think most of his success is due to the fact he got to coach three future hall of famers. They could have dropped kicked the ball up to the plate and still had an ERA under 4.00.

Mix speeds and locations and you will get a large number of hitters out.

Another guy who talks a lot and makes very little sense on pitching is Orel Hershiser. (Just because you can do it instinctively, doesn't mean you can verbalize effectively.) But one thing he said while covering a Little League World Series game bears repeating to young kids:

"The fastball inside is a different pitch from the fastball outside."

In other words, stop teaching kids they need curves as a second pitch. Just use both sides of the plate!

In the same vein as fastball in and fastball away as two seperate pitches (and this will be somewhat off the original topic of this thread), what about adding and subtracting off the fastball? When my brother was in college, he played a mid-week game against UVA, and he said one of their guys (now a senior) threw tons of fastballs but added and subtracted from the fastball like no pitcher he'd ever seen. He didn't strike out a lot of guys, but hard contact was rare, and that's really the name of the game. Thoughts?

Great discussion Cach May and Midlo, two guys who contribute so much.
Coach May mentioned that there is so much pitching these days to the outer half. This is a fact and I did read a bit about that. NCAA did do an early 90's study and I read a coaches statements about there being 70 percent of "out" pitches at the college level were outside. Therefore in this coach's program, he was teaching hitters to look away and react in, which is quite common in the aluminum bat era. We always taught pitchers who were advancing, jr & sr high school, that they must learn to gain the inner half in order to control the outer half. Its especially important for a pitcher to challenge the better hitters to see what they have. Bust'em in, back them off, then work away. Its true that younger pitchers can be itimidated by not wanting to hit batters, but sooner or later, if they're going to have any success, they must learn to pitch the four corners, change speeds, and have a fastball that can set up other pitches.

A college pitcher that is afraid to throw inside in my opinion doesn't exist. Any pitcher who doesn'y use all of the plate isn't a great pitcher and had better have a great FB. Evetually the hitters are going to eat his FB no matter where he throws it.
Many UMPS will give more latitude on the outter half thsn the inner half. A complete pitcher will keep you guessing and is unpredictable. They use all dimensions of the plate including the depth. Once you establih what the UMP will call you have to use those latitudes.

I know the OP said 13-18, but what I've seen at the younger ages, 11u-12u, is that the umps are more forgiving on the outside than they are on the inside.

Our 11u team played ball in 4 different Southeast states in 2008 and at almost all those tournaments, there were umps that were very generous to our pitchers on the outside corner. So, we told our pitchers to stay "out there". When pitching outside, and I mean 3 to 6 inches outside, one of 3 things happened. Ump called Ball; Or, ump called strike; Or ball was hit to 2nd baseman area for easy out.

It worked, so we pitched outside a lot. Right or wrong, it got outs. Other teams used that method too. One team we played was better at applying it than us. They actually knew how to nail our hitters on the hands when we moved too close to the plate, as we setup for the outside pitch.

So, at the young ages, where umps call generous strike zones, pitching outside can be very effective.

I have coached almost every level at one time or another starting as young as 5 and going all the way up to College. Most of my experience has been at the HS varsity level. What I see is many kids around here are not taught how to pitch or hit. They might do some drills, but that is it. Coaches don't really sit down and develop a game plan on how to pitch or hit. You need a philosophy with both, but you need to be flexible so it can adjust to your players and the players you are playing against. So much of the philosophy whether hitting or pitching depends on the situation, who you have pitching/hitting and who you are competing against. Coaches have to be FLEXIBLE and ADAPTABLE to each and every situation. I know I have rambled, here is an example, my overall normal pitching philosophy would be throw in when you are ahead and away when your behind, but sometimes I wouldn't use that philosophy depending on my pitcher or their hitter. I have to teach my kids to recognize how to be a coach out there themselves, that is one of the greatest challenges.
HS kids these days don't pay attention to the small indicators, like if you are hitting and you need the middle infielders both move to their left you should know the pitch is probably away and more than likely a fastball. They aren't taught that stuff. Or as a pitcher if the hitter is way late on your fastball you don't throw a breaking ball. We need better coaches.

Patrick