Posted by: () on Thu Feb 13 16:17:49 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-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.
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> 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.
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> 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.

After traveling to two Pan Am games with both the Canadian (I was on the Mens Team) and American mens and womens teams it becomes appartent very quickly that the mens teams, especially the hitters, studied the opposition alot more then in the women program. The mens program is all about picking a pitcher for tip offs of what pitch is coming. This back a few years ago was non existant in the womens team. The pitcher may still beat you with his best pitch but if you know what is coming it is more like batting practice where you have the same pitch every time.

IMHO most not all hitters in the womens game lack the knowledge, instruction, and training to take the hitting to the next level. The mens game due to equipment changes and the above mentioned factor have transformed their game from a 1-0 11 inning game to 5-4 multi hit games.

dave