The season is winding down, which means I’m now spending a lot of my spare time reflecting on how I’ve done, how I could have done better, and how I intend on improving for next season. I’ve thrown more good pitches than bad, but success doesn’t inspire the need to change; rather, looking back at some of the pitches yielding hard hits, runs and losses has been a way for me to grow as a pitcher. The most drastic the outcome, the more indelibly the pitch has been scarred into my mind.

Understand, before we get underway, what type of pitcher I am. I throw a very high percentage of fastballs (85%+) and my second best pitch is my changeup, followed by my curveball. My best pitch is an inside fastball, and I live and die by it. When I get the ball in, I almost never get burned; when I don’t, well, results vary.

First Day

The second pitch of my pro career was an 0-1 fastball that I put right down the middle, and it came back to me…in a hurry. That pitch found my thigh at 100+ off the barrel of the first hitter. I’d been hit with line drives before, and I got hit on the forearm 5 days ago, but it was a rude greeting into my comeback season.

The first batter of that first game was memorable, and so was the last. I made it 5 2/3, yield 2 earned runs in that first start. The 2 runs came in the sixth, driven in by a 2-out double off the bat of a the cleanup hitter. I had him 3-2, and I had been working the outside corner. He was leaning over the plate, and I saw it, but I threw the pitch anyway, not wanting to walk him. The correct pitch was an inside fastball, yet the pitch I threw one low and away on the black. Ordinarily, low and away works, except when he they know it’s coming. I threw the pitch anyway, he extended his arms, and pulled it into the gap for a double.

The Lesson? Don’t give in and throw the pitch the batter is looking for. The location is irrelevant; if he is sitting on it, he will hit it. And if in doubt, go in. Hitters love to extend their arms, and few can hit an inner third fastball fair with any authority.

My Favorite Team

As I write this, I am preparing to face Southern Illinois, the best team in the league, for the 4th time. They have a good a left-handed hitter, who, again, likes to extend his arms. I can’t forget the quality pitch I made to him, a fastball on the outer third at the mid-thigh, on a 1-2 count that he hit off the top of the fence. He didn’t pull it like the righthander in my previous example; he just sent it the opposite way about 339.9 feet. The Lesson? Hitters with long swings who like to go away, should not be allowed to go away. Again, hard in wins.

"One more outside fastball, and it's going straight to the moon!"

Day and Night

I faced the same team on back-to-back outings around the all-star break. The first start last 3 innings, yielding 3 earned runs on 11 (hard) hits. I got shelled. What happened, every ball I threw yielded no swing, and every strike I threw was right down the middle. I threw almost no quality strikes, and so hitters zoned up and cherrypicked the good ones.

The next time out, I had a little more zip on my fastball, and located my pitches. Every ball they still took, as they were a team with a good collective eye, but every strike was my strike – a pitcher’s pitch that I wanted them to hit. I was never in the middle, and moved in and out (mostly in) on the thirds or the black. Even 2-0, they were hitting a pitchers pitch. I lasted 8 innings, scattering 4 hits. The Lesson? This was the day that I really learned that quality strikes were the difference between a good outing and a bad one. If you’re always throwing strikes on one third or the black of the plate, you’ll have consistent success.

More Sitting

My most recent mistake cost me the game – a single in the 7th inning to plate one run and put another onto third base with 1 out. I had the previous hitter 0-2, then fell to 3-2 after nit-picking a bit instead of going right after him. 5 foul balls later, I walked the guy on the 11th pitch of the at-bat. That wasn’t the problem – the problem was that I threw 11 fastballs to that guy, then got 1-0 to the following hitter. The 0-0 and 1-0 pitches should have been changeups, because I could see the guy gearing up and cheating on my fastball as hard as he had ever cheated. Why? I had thrown about 90 fastballs by this point, including 11 to the previous hitter. He smoked the pitch in the 5-6 hole, which plated the aforementioned run. Even a garbage off-speed pitch, ball or strike, would have done the trick. Not to mention that this hitter was the 8-hole, who I had struck out in a previous at bat on fastballs. The fastball was mostly all I needed on this night, as I completed my outing throwing only 6 off-speed pitches out of 104…I had good pop. But, this instance called for at least one more.

Thoughts

Obviously I have thrown a lot more ineffective pitches this season, and those were just a few examples. A lot of it has to do with seeing a hitter make adjustments at the plate, and not adjusting yourself as a pitcher. If you know a guy likes to go away, don’t throw into his strength. If you can see a hitter is sitting on a pitch, throw something else. You should always throw to your strengths and get beaten on your best pitch, but sometimes your best pitch changes over the course of a game. My best pitch is an inside fastball, but to a hitter who loves to pull his hands and yank balls down the line, I have to read that and adjust, which might mean exploiting his weakness rather than throwing to my strength.