Pitching Workouts: What do you do?

Obvious are the following:
Bullpens (Choose certain situations to work)

Simulated Game (Have 1 or 2 pitchers throwing a bullpen and the rest of your pitchers as hitters) Have the pitchers throw to the hitter like a game. Start from the beginning and then judge every ball hit and let them know the situation before every batter. Pro's use this for rehab work.


4 things you should do that don't ever get covered or covered enough are the following:
Pick System and foot work
PFP's
Pass Balls with a runner coming home.
Coming off the mound for fly balls.

Ahhhh....your SoCal bias is showing!! If we go outside and let batters hit the pitches, we'll spend 15 minutes digging in the snow to find the ball. Or if the snow has melted the kids will all drown in the run-off.....Just kidding. I do appreciate your response, though.

I think when I became head coach 15 years ago, we had a lot of Pitchers who came in just needing to throw pitches to get their arm in shape, so we'd start off just throwing 30 or 40 to a catcher and build up, throwing every 3 or 4 days. Now, so many of our kids have been coming to open gyms and throwing, or working out with their summer teams in off season conditioning, that they come in able to throw at least that many.

To the point that I'm thinking we're more in the realm of working on specific pitches, throwing to batters/live hitters indoors, doing situational pitching, as you discussed. We often have other players stand in as hitters so the pitcher is used to it, and it also gives our hitters a look at live pitching.

We do have an indoor cage, so now I'm toying with putting live hitters/live pitching in the cage to simulate a game. A couple of other questions for you:

I've toyed at having pitchers (not on a regular basis, but once in a while) throw to an acutual target, you know, one with zones, as a way to work on their accuracy. Have any feeling about that one way or the other?

Just because of your last point, what do you teach as far as pitchers fielding pop-ups? I like my pitchers to field only those pop-ups where they basically don't have to move, or ones so shallow that NO ONE can get them but the pitcher.

Thanks for your input.

Coach,

Just to tell what we do as far as hitters/pitchers so that it appears more "gamelike".

We put batters at the plate in the bullpen. Then 2 pitchers are throwing innings to those batters. While one is pitching, the other is charting (pitches/type/result). The batter's purpose is to give them a gamelike look. The batter also benefits. He is to visually go through his routine and follow the pitch all the way into the mitt. After a walk or out, the next batter comes up.
Of course we don't do this with every pen, but usually once a week or two.

On the pop-flys...we are a small school. Our pitchers are almost always our best athletes. They get anything in front of them that they can get to unless they are called off. They will usually try and help the catcher out. The infs will call off the pitcher.

In regards to pop ups we teach our pitchers to be athletes and go get the ball. To many times I see balls that pitchers can easily get to and they just stand and wait for infielders to get it. I have been a head coach for 11 years. Add in the 3 I was an assistant, the 8 I played in college and high school and I have never seen a pitcher get injured going to get a pop fly, which is the reason everybody gives to not having the do it. In regards to your pitchers "throwing to a target" I am not sure what you mean. Are you talking about a bullpen or something other that a catcher? By the way I started laughing at you post because I DID NOT look at where you were from so I would have to agree that snow for you might be a problem, not us FULL Practice starts tomorrow, HA HA.

I've been blessed to have a great pitching coach who took care of everything the pitchers did for our team. We had a 6 week preseason in KY and he had them do a lot of long tossing the first week. The second week got them on the mound for fastballs only from windup and stretch. He had them throw around 30ish every other day but he left a lot of it up to the pitcher. If they didn't feel like they had 30 they shut it down early or if they were feeling good they could go a little extra within reason. Another thing they did was stretch pretty much every muscle in the body that could be stretched.

The third week they were up to about 50 pitches from stretch and windup. Still had the option of going more or less depending on how they felt. Good stretching and long tossing still going on.

Fourth week we would try to have them throw against live hitters if we could get on the field. They would be capped around 60 with the option of more or less. This is when we would hit the change up pretty heavy but still no curves.

Fifth week we usually had a scrimmage against another team and I tried to get it near the end of the week. If that is what happened they would throw a bullpen early in the week - usually about 3 days before the scrimmage and go about 50 - 60 and then end up around 30 in the scrimmage. This is when we would let them start throwing curves.

Sixth week we had another scrimmage and intersquad games all week. This time they would throw two "games" in the week capped at 30 - 40 each outing with the full use of all pitches. If we couldn't get out on the field they would do a couple of bullpens during the week.

First two weeks of the season each pitcher was capped at 80 first week and 90 the second week. Rest of the season they would never go over a 100 pitches. Also the first two weeks we would limit how many curves they threw and relied heavily on fastball and change.

Overall this worked great for us. Out pitchers were strong at the end of season and we never really had any problems.

As for the popups I typically want my IF to take them unless I have a stud athlete on the mound. I've never heard the "get injured" excuse for pitchers not taking popups. What I think is it's better for IF to take the popup because they are approaching the ball at an angle and can judge when / where it's coming down better than a pitcher or catcher. The pitcher and catcher have the worst times on the popup because it's going fairly straight up and down making it difficult to judge.

we longtoss everyday. we throw 2 bullpens a week. i can email you copies of our bullpen scripts if you like. just email me at: coachd_04@yahoo.com