4 Drills for Pitch Tracking and Pitch Selection

with Cindy Bristow
4 Drills for Pitch Tracking and Pitch Selection
D
o your hitters hit good in practice
only to struggle in games? The
reason lies in how you’re practicing
since most of us only teach our hitters how
to practice swinging a bat instead of hitting a
ball. Learn 4 great drills to help turn your
practice swingers into game hitters.
There’s a big difference between swinging
and hitting - namely making contact with the
ball. Most practice drills involve helping our
hitters improve their swings instead of how to
improve their pitch tracking and pitch selection. Learn 4 exciting ways to practice Pitch
Selection & Tracking so you can improve your hitters!
Think of the swing as a player simply swinging a bat, no pitch, just
the swing. While that’s a good start, it’s only that, a start. For a player to
actually “hit” a ball they must see the ball coming at them, determine if
it’s a pitch they should swing at, and then swing their bat so it makes
contact with the ball - on an area about the size of a postage stamp! Not
so easy when I say it like that.
In a typical softball practice, teams will practice
swinging about 90-95% of the time and only practice pitch tracking and selection about 5-10%. While
it’s certainly important for players to have nice
swings, we don’t get style points in softball so “nice
swings” don’t count the way they might in sports
like diving, or gymnastics that give out points for
form. In softball, we only get points for runs no matter how nice or how ugly the swing looked. That’s
not to say that the swing doesn’t matter - of course
it does, but let’s not forget that we’ve got to teach
our players how to make that swing meet a ball, or
else it’s going to be a VERY long season!
Before we look at some ways to practice pitch
tracking & selection let’s first talk about what these
are: Tracking is seeing a ball as it travels toward
you. Pitch Selection is making the right decision on
balls you track. For instance, your batter might be
able to see that the ball is over her head, but she
swings at it anyway. That would be a case of good
tracking but poor pitch selection. You don’t have to
swing at strikes, you just have to swing at pitches
that you can hit well (for some hitters that might
mean pitches that are a little out of the strike zone).
When our players are tracking pitches the two main things they must
figure out - and as quickly as possible are: Where is the ball going? In or
Out • High or Low; How Fast is it going there? Fast • Slow.
There are lots of reasons why we usually end up only practicing
swinging instead of actually hitting, but we’ll address those in another
article. For now, let’s look at a few quick drills to help our players practice seeing the ball better (tracking) and making better decisions about
which balls to hit (pitch selection):
Ball or Strike Catching:
•Pitcher is at the regular pitching distance and the batter has her fielding
glove on instead of using her bat.
•There is a small cone on the ground placed way between the pitcher
and the catcher.
•The hitter stands behind homeplate, just like a catcher does, with her
fielding glove on and a mask if necessary.
•The pitcher pitches the ball and the catcher yells out, Ball or Strike, as
the ball passes over the cone - and then she catches it. NOTE - it might
take a few pitches without saying anything for the hitter to get used to
catching the ball.
Do in sets of 10 and then switch with another hitter. Note: This is much
harder than it seems since the hitter has to see the ball and make a
Page 86 • www.softballmag.com•www.batwars.com
decision - out loud. So expect some mistakes - things like late
decisions, wrong decisions or no decisions. These are all normal mistakes and part of the learning curve.
Ball or Strike Hitting:
•Same setup as Ball or Strike Catching but with the hitter now
using her bat instead of her glove and she has her helmet on.
•The batter will now stand in the batter’s box but WILL NOT
SWING! Instead, she will get into her batting stance and say
Ball or Strike as the pitch passes over the cone - working on
her tracking & decision making skills.
•Do in sets of 10 and then switch with another hitter.
Note - this drill will also involve some decision mistakes on the
part of the hitter so expect them and be patient with them ask the hitter what she saw to make her decision so she is
learning how to improve her information, timing and decisions
Pitch Watching:
•The hitter will have her helmet on, NO bat, and will stand in
during pitching practice.
•The pitcher will work on whatever type of pitch she would be
practicing if the hitter were not there.
•This drill is particularly helpful to the hitters if the pitchers are
practicing lots of repetitions of the same pitch. For instance, if
Pitcher 1 is pitching lots of drops, Pitcher 2 lots of riseballs
and Pitcher 3 lots of change ups.
•1 hitter for each pitcher will give your hitters lots
of great practice learning to identify patterns in
pitches to see how drops move differently than
riseballs, and how both are different than changeups.
•This is also a great drill to help your pitchers get
more comfortable with having hitters in the batters
box.
•Have each hitter watch 10 pitches and then
switch to another pitcher. Be sure to stand in
against each pitcher as every pitcher’s pitches
move differently, particularly if they are right or left
handed.
Disk Tossing:
•This drill is done off of front toss instead of a live
pitcher. •Front toss is where either a player or a
coach stands about 10-15 feet in front of the hitter
(like an actual pitcher would) and tosses balls
underhand to the batter. The tosser can either use
the actual windmill pitching motion or else bring
their arm back and then forward to pitch the ball.
Pitches should start gentle and then get faster as
the hitter proves they can be successful at the
toss speed.
•The batter has a Hitting Disk in her hands instead of a bat.
(http://www.softballexcellence.com/Detail.bok?no=206)
•The pitcher will toss either a regular softball, a tennis ball or a
Zip Ball™
(http://www.softballexcellence.com/Detail.bok?no=270) , and
the hitter will swing the Hitting Disk (http://www.softballexcellence.com/Detail.bok?no=206) and try and actually hit the ball
with the disk.
•This is a great drill to help the hitter direct her swing forward
while also working on her tracking and pitch selection skills.
For more great ways to improve your player’s hitting check
out the following Hitting Products from Softball Excellence
www.softballexcellence.com: Hitting eDrills:www.softballexcellence.com/Categories.bok?category=eLearning%3AeDrills;
Hitting Disks: www.softballexcellence.com/Detail.bok?no=206;
Tee Stackers: www.softballexcellence.com/Detail.bok?no=212;
Hitting eSkill LEVEL 1:
www.softballexcellence.com/Detail.bok?no=186; ePractices:
www.softballexcellence.com/Categories.bok?category=eLearni
ng%3AePractices; Zip Ball™:
www.softballexcellence.com/Detail.bok?no=270.