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by
Don Marsh
One
of the very first things I tried to teach our son, Zachary,
who’s now a starting pitcher for his high school
team as a sophomore, was that even a Hall-of-Famer isn’t
going to always have his best stuff.
I told him that, on the average, one of every four times
he walks out there he’s going to have to try to survive
on his wits, because for whatever reason, the skills just
won’t be there.
Proof lies in his recent winter baseball experience, which
lasted a total of four games. During the first three outings
he struck out fourteen kids in a total of six innings
of work. He was feeling pretty good about himself, as
he took the mound for the fourth start. Then the wheels
fell off the cart.
 Afterward,
I sat him down in the bleachers and tried to walk through
some individual pitch selections he had made, but mostly
to remind him of the story he’d been told all those
many seasons ago.
He listened. And eventually felt better about his future,
if not his current performance.
What do you do when the fastball’s not moving, the
curveball’s flat and the change-up takes about four
bounces on the way to home plate?
The answer, in a word, is “Simplify”.
Unless there is an injury involved, problems for a pitcher
almost always are a matter of good mechanics temporarily
gone bad.
Keep in mind that, as we’ve said before, there are
four parts to the pitching motion, and even a small breakdown
in any one of them, leads to problems the rest of the
way through.
If, for example, you’re having problems with your
balance following the step-back, the first part of the
motion, then start pitching from the stretch. This gives
you a better chance of reaching your balance point, which
is the second part of the motion.
If you’re having problems with your control, make
sure your plant foot is facing home plate on the landing
and that it’s landing in the same place, every time.
That’s the third part of the pitching motion. Then
make sure your follow-through is “throwing-hand-to-opposite-knee”.
That’s the fourth part.
Most of all, just slow down. Take your time. Don’t
try to throw every pitch perfectly. Just try to throw
one strike at a time, and let your teammates do the rest
of the work for you.
Simplify.
And then go out and get them with your best stuff the
next three times.
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