Why Tracking Pitch Types Will Help You Improve Your Pitching Staff
Spencer Wright· · Leave a Comment
The Pitch Type tracking capability has been in our app for a long time, but we’ve never actually written about it. I wanted to change that.
Tracking Pitch Types isn’t the right choice for every scorekeeper or team. In particular, very young teams should probably be more focused on development than pitch tracking. And there are certainly impediments (differentiating between pitches can be difficult and it requires more focus during game action) to doing it correctly. But once pitchers start throwing at least two pitches consistently, tracking pitch types can definitely help coaches develop their pitchers.
Let’s start with the basics. Pitch Type tracking can be turned on from the Settings page within the Game Menu. Once you’ve recorded the action, you can view the results by going to the Pitch Type Breakdown tab under pitching stats. You can find this information for both individual games and for the entire season. We’ll give you the number of times a pitch was thrown, how many times it was thrown for a strike (a ball put in play counts as a strike for this number), and then what percentage of the time a pitch is thrown for a strike.
There are three big ways in which tracking Pitch Type will allow you to improve player performance.
Find Out What Pitches Need To Be Worked On
As we’ve said before, throwing strikes is extremely important. Tracking pitch types will allow you to see how often each pitch in a hurler’s repertoire is hitting the target. If a pitcher’s off-speed offerings are being consistently thrown for balls more often than strikes, then that’s a good indication that there is room for improvement. What improvements need to be made are up to you.
Have Your Pitchers Throw Their Best Pitches More Often
It can also be used to improve a pitcher’s performance while you’re working on their other pitches. Having your players throw the pitches they are most likely to locate in the zone will improve their performance dramatically, building confidence and leading to better team results.
Understand Poor Performances And Make Corrections
Did your ace just lose their control in their last outing? With pitch tracking, you can go back and identify exactly where the issue was. Was everything off? Then maybe it was just a rough outing. But did they just struggle to locate their fastball, a pitch that is usually very effective for them? If so, that’s a great clue that there may be an underlying issue that can be corrected.
