Using pitching machines

We use pitching machines as a tool early in the season to get repetitions in and to work on the swing. However, we are not using them now other than to bunt. I do want to say that we use pitching machines for outfield practice and to throw popups to the catcher for repetition work.

"There comes a time when you have to stop dreaming of the man you want to be and start being the man you have become." Bruce Springsteen

Live pitching is always best but I do not know many HS programs with enough coaches to throw live BP to every player every day. We use machines as one station in our BP just so the players can work something while getting good pitches. We usually use it to work on hitting the pitch on the outside half of the plate as it is easy to set up for good pitches. As opposed to having players throw to each other and having them get 1 pitch in 10 on the outside half.

I'm no coach, but I've always thought they were primarily good for repetition, early season prep, and for off season work. I took my son ('07) to a new indoor cage last week and he got some good work in. They also had a "Pro Batter" cage. (If you've never seen one, it's like a movie screen with a pitcher going through the delivery and a ball shoots out of a hole in the screen at the release point). Fairly realistic, better than the Iron Mikes. They cranked it up to 92 mph or so and he was hitting it extremely well.

Last night, he hit the ball better than he ever has and went 3 for 5. One was a drive to the centerfield wall (360) for a fly out, one to left went 329 (330), and one he ripped off of the pitchers foot that kicked into the outfield in the air. He's 5'9" tall, 160 lbs, and turned 15 two weeks ago.

The benefit in a machine is that it can consistantly throw the speed and location needed for BP. Live pitching, in HS anyway, can tend to be slow, erratic, and not time efficient. Past HS it shouldn't be an issue, but getting decent BP pitching in HS usually is not as good as one would want.

"A day without baseball is like a day without sunshine...and that's the only acceptable excuse."

Hitting is about timing and pitching is about disrupting timing. Pitching machines do nothing to assist or develop timing.

Stick with live BP. If you do not have enough arms, shorten the distance.

Agree totally with redbird on this. Pitching machines throw the same speed to the same location. There are also issues with loading and triggering against a pitching machine. T work, soft toss and live arm hitting thats all we do. We have two pitching machines and the only time we use them is to shoot bombs to the outfielders during posistion play.

Thanks for all the input !

I'm about 400 years old and I throw everynight. I throw from 40 feet and as some of the kids say, "I have the best 40 foot slider in the world." LOL! Besides, being able to locate a machine's pitch, I don't see any other benefit in season. You can't see spin, and can't work situational hitting. JMHO!

"There comes a time when you have to stop dreaming of the man you want to be and start being the man you have become." Bruce Springsteen

Our coach splits the team into 4 stations,

Tee
Soft toss
BAtting Cage with Pitching machine
Live pitching

This way during a typical batting practice a kids will get 100-200 cuts instead of the 20-25 you might get with strictly live pitching.

The Machine just adds one more dimension to the batting practices.

Play every game as if it were your last

Our kids get about 50 live arm cage cuts per day. About 10 minutes worth of cuts on the T and about 10 minutes worth of cuts soft toss. Then they rotate to the field for bp and get 7 to 10 cuts against live arm from the hill. Cage live arm is around 30-40 feet and we have four Varsity coachs who rotate throwing every other day. Live bp on the field by our players depending on pitching rotation.

I would not even guess at the amount of swings we get per day. We have 3 cages and 2 half cages and then some hitting socks to hit into. We do a lot of Hriniak drills where the ball is coming straight at the hitter as in a game. We rotate our pitching staff onto the game mound and they throw to a hitter or two to wrap up their work. Therefore, they stagger the beginning of their workouts so that when one is wrapping up his pen work, he can then run to the varsity mound and be there to finish his work. So our hitters see some from them. After the pitchers get their work in, I then rotate the kids off of me. We get a few swings in each day to say the least.

"There comes a time when you have to stop dreaming of the man you want to be and start being the man you have become." Bruce Springsteen

Coach May,

You have a PM.

Redbird you have a pm

quote:

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Originally posted by Coach May:
Our kids get about 50 live arm cage cuts per day. About 10 minutes worth of cuts on the T and about 10 minutes worth of cuts soft toss. Then they rotate to the field for bp and get 7 to 10 cuts against live arm from the hill. Cage live arm is around 30-40 feet and we have four Varsity coachs who rotate throwing every other day. Live bp on the field by our players depending on pitching rotation.

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High School? Must be nice

Our team has 1 varsity coach, we have 1 cage that we just built last year.

For Games the Freshman coach comes up to help out.

Play every game as if it were your last