Posted by: tom.guerry (tom.guerry@kp.org) on Thu Feb 13 15:51:25 2003

Sometimes it is more important to know your pitchers strengths and weaknesses first. Most pitchers are more successful pitching from their strengths instead of trying to pitch to each hitters weakness. A hitters weakness is most often not exposed by watching one or two at bats. If you play the same teams more than once charting is very important. Make sure though that you not only chart what pitch and where it is located but also you need to know if this is your pitchers best or worst pitch. I know this does not get the exact answer you wanted but IMHO a lot of time is put into trying to find a weakness instead of focusing on strengths. Money pitches are not only made on a 3-2 counts
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> dave

dave-I might go even further in women's fastpitch.It is usualy not worth it to go away from a pitcher's strength just to pitch to a hitter's weakness.

It seems to me in women's fastpitch,the higher you go the more the pitcher's dominate.The more the hitters are overmatched.The great pitchers don't worry so much about the hitter as you might in baseball.I am not so familiar with men's fastpitch.The great women pitcher's don't play around working around hitters.They just strike them out in as few pitches as possible.

In baseball,we may think of a perfect pitching ining as 3 pitches-3 ground outs.I asked Ernie Parker what he thought a perfect inning was and he thought it was 9 strikes and 3 strike outs.Lisa Fernandez,for example would just as soon have every pitch be a strike.I remember watching one of her international games.5 inning mercy rule,perfect game,total of 65 pitches,56 of them strikes.Almost all strike outs,some foul balls,but no full counts.