Recognizing Pitches

Great question and you will probably get various answers to this.

What I tell my hitters is

1. see the hand and not just the ball coming at you
2. on the way focus only on the ball and try to pick up spin, location etc...
3. when pitcher is in windup / set to try and watch the arm and during the process narrow to the hand to find release point - helps locate the ball if the pitcher has a tendency to change arm slots

One drill you can do is when your pitchers are working in the preseason get hitters up there (with helmets and instructions to bail if it's toward them).

Hitters have to verbally say what type of pitch it is, inside or outside and if ball or strike.

That is what works for us and there are thousands of other things you can do that work just as well. Try different things and see what works.

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3. when pitcher is in windup / set to try and watch the arm and during the process narrow

curve balls tend to look like eggs
sliders have the red dot

Experience...spend time in the bullpen standing in and seeing as many different pitches as you can. With enough reps you will begin to recognize different spins, arm slots, release points, and arm speeds. Get reps, its the only way you will get a feel for recognizing different pitches.

deemax

Great points


Basically. baseball is a game os REPS

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Originally posted by deemax:
Experience...spend time in the bullpen standing in and seeing as many different pitches as you can. With enough reps you will begin to recognize different spins, arm slots, release points, and arm speeds. Get reps, its the only way you will get a feel for recognizing different pitches.

I've thought a lot about this particular issue, and I came up with something a while back but I've never been able to try it out. So, I'll see what the HSBBW thinks....has anyone ever tried using baseballs with different color seams in order to get hitters to focus on the seams? For example, get baseballs with red, blue, and green seams and randomly throw the balls, having the hitters only hit balls with blue seams. I'm not even sure balls with different colored seams are available, but let's assume for now. It seems to me that this would work, but that's only in theory. What do you guys think?

Emanski

Just one problem--there are no colored seams in baseball games

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For example, get baseballs with red, blue, and green seams and randomly throw the balls, having the hitters only hit balls with blue seams. I'm not even sure balls with different colored seams are available, but let's assume for now. It seems to me that this would work, but that's only in theory. What do you guys think?

We did this one summer, but not for breaking ball recognition. We just did it to see if the hitter could tell you what color the dot was on the ball they hit...Just another focus drill to spice BP up a bit.

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Originally posted by deemax:

quote:

For example, get baseballs with red, blue, and green seams and randomly throw the balls, having the hitters only hit balls with blue seams. I'm not even sure balls with different colored seams are available, but let's assume for now. It seems to me that this would work, but that's only in theory. What do you guys think?

We did this one summer, but not for breaking ball recognition. We just did it to see if the hitter could tell you what color the dot was on the ball they hit...Just another focus drill to spice BP up a bit.

Did it work? I would think this would be a drill that would transfer to the playing field. Also, where did you get the baseballs with different colored seams?

quote:

Originally posted by deemax:
Experience...spend time in the bullpen standing in and seeing as many different pitches as you can. With enough reps you will begin to recognize different spins, arm slots, release points, and arm speeds. Get reps, its the only way you will get a feel for recognizing different pitches.

This is what ended up helping me the most. I spent time after practice with our pitching coach, and I had him mix in change ups and curveballs with two and four seam fastballs. Even though I seem to be doing much better with those two off speed pitches, learning to recognize and hit a good slider is a whole different ballgame.

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Also, where did you get the baseballs with different colored seams?

We colored dots on the ball with markers...the different colored seams was a typo.

I agree with DeeMax on the pen sessions. We would have our hitters track pitches and call them out. Instead of the pitcher signaling the catcher with the pitch, we'd have the catcher signal. Batter would then recognize and call out. It did seem to help.

We dipped balls half way in a die. Also had 2 colors . The one was a no swing color to teach them to track the ball.

When coaching younger kids I put dots on them too. I had 3 colors and two of the 3 were ones to swing on. The 3rd color was a "take" ball.