Educating Your Pitching Staff… One Step at a Time.
As a coach, it is our responsibility to help our players get better, achieve their goals, and just become the best overall player and person that they possibly can. But how do you really go about doing that? I personally think one of the best ways to do that is picking out a set of foundational pieces that you want to educate your players on, and building off of that foundation. A player who is well educated and understands why you are having them do what you are asking them to do, and understands the long-term thought process about your coaching will inevitably have greater buy-in to the process that you have put forth for them. This will of course help them become a better player, and honestly enjoy their time playing for you much more. In this blog I am going to dive into the process I have gone through over the last two years to educate our pitching staff at Centralia College, and some of the successes and shortcomings that we have had along that journey. I hope that this can be a model of how you can approach your goal setting for your whole team or pitching staff.
What were my goals for the pitching staff?
When I took over as the pitching coach at Centralia College I wanted to have a specific set of goals to work towards in terms of our player development approach. These were goals that I openly shared with our players, as I wanted the process to be transparent and for them to understand where I was trying to take them as a group. This is something that I believe every coaching staff should sit down and discuss before the season starts. We all want everything to be perfect, and to win every game. However, having a set couple of items that you want to drive home as a coaching staff will help you focus on what you truly find important and do it well, instead of trying to solve every little issue, which I believe leads to greater success on the field in the long run. Below are what my year one and year two goals were:
Year 1 Goals:
- Implement pre-throwing and post-throwing protocols using Driveline plyocare balls and tools.
- Implement a standardized weighted baseball program.
- Create structured bullpens to track our progress both in command and velocity.
- Give the players freedom with long-toss both time and distance-wise.
- Tracking all bullpens, pulldowns, and in-game pitches.
- Being able to quantify all velocity gains throughout the year.
Year 1 Results:
With the season being cut short due to Covid our success and progress had to be based solely around the metrics that we had collected throughout the year. Here is how we improved from the fall of 2019 to the end of fall 2020.
Baseline assessment 9/9/19 our average fastball velocity as a staff was 80.1MPH and our average max velocity was 81.1MPH
End of fall 2020 we had 16 out of 18 pitchers throw 80MPH+ and our 18 member staff max velocity average was 84.2MPH (+3.1)
Now obviously there are different players each year being a Junior Colleg so I want to point out some sophomores who were in the program for this duration of time and their fastball personal record jumps from the 2019 baseline to the end of fall 2020:
Kobe Matsen 84.3 to 88.4
Noah Bryerton 79.9 to 84.7
Ayden Ruminski 78.6 to 85.3
Colby Knutzen 82.0 to 85.3
Year 2 Goals:
- Fine-tuning of plyocare ball programming and individual mechanics when using the plyocare balls.
- Increasing our use of weighted baseballs in our long toss, bullpens sessions and velocity phase.
- Implementation of formal pitch design with real quantifiable data using Rapsodo (Pictured to the left)
- Increased filming in bullpens to help review mechanics and increase exposure in recruiting for the athletes.
- Athlete meetings to review film and data collected.
- Increase our use of medicine ball drills in our programming (see what Medicine ball drills we use here.)
Year 2 Results:
For our year two player results we are able to look back on the 2019 season (last season played as a program) and compare it to this season. This year due to Covid we were allowed to play just our division games, with no pre-season games so I will be using the league play from 2019 compared to the league play of 2021 to keep it an equal comparison.
ERA: (Improved by 1.54)
2019: 6.40
2021: 4.86
Ks: (Improved by 75)
2019: 109
2021: 184
BBs: (Improved by 6)
2019: 101
2021: 95
Batting Avg. Against: (Improved by .45)
2019: .297
2021: .252
Now looking at those statistics is fun and all, and does show progress. But, as you can see as a pitching staff we still need to throw more strikes, as our base on ball numbers have improved, but not as much as our other categories. One thing that I am very proud of is that all of our pitchers are now throwing 80+MPH. When we look back at our end of fall 2020 data we were at 16 of 18 guys being able to do so. Has progress been made as a staff? Yes, but as you can see we still have work to do to make that next step forward.
Reflecting on the two years: What went well? What went poorly?
Throughout these two years with all of the ups and downs of Covid, season cancellation, practice shutdowns, etc. I am most proud of our players for continuing to stay on a consistent throwing program with the Driveline plyocare balls, J-bands, and weighted baseballs. This has allowed us to expand our development in other areas as well, knowing that we are physically prepared in our throwing protocols. I feel that our long toss has improved throughout the two years. In year one we struggled to provide enough time to long toss and in year two we gave the pitchers freedom with no time limits placed on them.
In year two I was very excited to bring Rapsodo into our program, and I feel that it made a large difference in our program. it not only helped us fine-tune our pitches but also provided a source of competition between the players naturally comparing themselves to their fellow pitchers. In year three one of my main goals is to better utilize Rapsodo in between starts during the season, as I feel this is an area that we lacked and could have been more consistent with.
Looking back on our year two goals the area that we did the worst with was athlete meetings. When I entered the year I wanted to have more formal sitdown meetings with our players every couple of weeks to go over where they all were at, and that was not consistent enough. We would have the occasional meeting, usually when something was not going well. This needs to be a structured part of our pitching development process to help our staff understand where each of them is heading in their individual development. Heading into year three this is one of my top priorities, as I believe this will help us make that next step forward as a program.
All of this player development really comes down to one thing, do players get the chance to continue their careers? When players enter our program one of the first things we talk about is how we are a vehicle for them to move on, our goal is to get them to transfer to a four-year school to continue their playing careers and finish their degrees. In the past two seasons, we have now sent pitchers on to BYU, Northern State University, Simpson University (2), Lyon College, Martin Methodist University, Bushnell University along with position players to West Texas A&M University, Jamestown University, Briar Cliff University, Westcliff University, and Salem University.
Any questions about what we do at Centralia College feel free to email me at coachharley25@gmail.com or DM on Twitter @Coach_BenHarley.
