It’s great to go to the mound, fully rested, and have your entire arsenal ready and able to dice up a lineup. Unfortunately, few of us take the mound under such utopian circumstances, and we pitchers usually toe the bump with less-than-perfect stuff. Less-than-perfect is standard; however some of those days, you just plain suck. But, you just can’t give up when your curve won’t bite, your changeup doesn’t change, and your fastball has the life of a 35-year old playing World of Warcraft in his parent’s basement. So how do you go out and win when you haven’t got much?

Step 1: Figure Out What You Do Have

You need to use all of your pitches to figure out what’s working and what isn’t. This means looking at how the hitters react to your offerings, as well as your ability to throw strikes with them. Maybe your curve is only effective in the dirt; maybe your changeup only works away to lefties, and you can’t throw it for a called strike; maybe you can get your fastball in to a righty but not a lefty. Whatever it is, you need to figure it out so you can plan your attack. You should never throw everything you’ve got early on, but you should be able to have an idea once you get through the lineup.

I’ll use myself as an example. My last time out, I walked a career-high 5 batters, and issued an additional two free passes by hitting batters on a pair of 0-2 counts. Terrible, I know. My curveball was trash, and I was choking my changeup to death. All I was left with was a fastball that I could locate some of the time, mostly to my arm side.  Yet, that fastball was better than most of their hitters, so my plan was going to center around that pitch.

Sometimes your stuff just won't behave

Step 2: Make or Revise Your Plan

What can you do to get hitters out with the stuff you have? If you can’t throw a pitch for a strike, can you still use it as an out pitch when you’re way ahead? Is there a certain location that you can hit more reliably than others? What’s good about your stuff, that you can use to scratch out a quality start?

I realized early on that my curve wasn’t there, and as I was falling behind with my fastball, it was getting shelved. My change, which had been great for me last time out, was proving difficult to throw where I wanted. The one pitch I had that I knew I could get outs with? Well, it was the pitch that I used to get out of a jam in the first: a hard fastball on the inner third.

They just weren’t getting around on it, and thankfully, I didn’t have to get it onto the black (a tall order with crappy control) to get a good result. I could get ahead away, and then pound it in as hard as I could. It became my go-to pitch, and I induced jam-job grounders and flares for the rest of the game. I’m pretty sure they knew that I wasn’t going to throw a curve for a strike, and my changeup was a non-factor. But on my fastball, they were swinging, just without enough speed to get the head of the bat out.

So what was my plan? Throw it hard at their fists, and see what happens. Sure, I continued to miss, walking and hitting batters to create trouble for myself, but I made quality pitches when I had to. I got by, we got a win, and I learned a little more about pitching.

Step 3: Figure It Out

Step 3 actually takes place after you leave the game. In this step, you try to put your finger on why you sucked so hard, and then go back to work to make sure it doesn’t happen the next time out. Sometimes you can pitch your way out of the trouble you make for yourself, but if you’re routinely taking subpar stuff to the mound, then you might actually just be a subpar pitcher. It’s great to learn how to pitch without your best, but use your preparation time to make sure your best does indeed show up. If you can get a win without anything in the tank, then pitching will be easy when you put it all together.