Keeping the fastball down early is a no-brainer and is not a new concept. Yes, that should happen, and there's some good ways to help pitchers learn how to do that. "Locating" the fastball is different, however; it's asking pitchers to hit very specific spots, and as a goal it is overly reductive and too narrowly focused. I would argue that success is more about forcing hitters into swing counts as early as possible, using multiple pitch types. You can do that with changeups, cutters, & breaking balls, too.94chem said:kwunsch45 said:Credentials and quality of assistant baseball coaches aren't vetted even remotely as well as offensive or defensive coordinators in football, so you're less likely to know what to expect when you hire one. Plus, you're not giving nearly enough credit to how much a pitching coach can affect outcomes. Unless your head coach is some kind of mad genius who can recruit nothing but highly polished and mentally tough pitchers, I'm not sure there IS a more important role on a college baseball team. God knows I would've killed to have had the opportunity to spend a couple of weeks with this year's pitching staff.a.froman said:
I love how we are comparing this hire to Weiner. Schloss had skins on the wall while Earley has let go of 3 hires already. One was hiring knowing he had great job security while Earley is on his 9th live. Who knows if this will work but I am not sure if I have ever seen an assistant hire ever change the direction of a program. It certainly never did with football.
Great insights. Maybe you could comment on the importance of locating the fastball early in the count?
The other thing, and Tarpon Chaser has some good comments, is the mental side. When I saw those 2015 and 2016 Supers, I was impressed how every pitcher for TCU came out of the pen pounding the zone in every situation. This is where I saw the A&M staff excelling in 2024. Clearly the regular season had been used to develop 8-9 guys that could be trusted. When Badmaev took the hill in game 2, he was ready and did just fine, given the stakes and the opponent.
If MJ had more than 5 guys he could trust in '93, they would have dog-piled. Those weekend series where they almost had 3 CG's, plus a little Parker and Clemons, were impressive from an arm talent standpoint, but hanging Moore out to dry against LSU was the blowback. We have to have more guys ready.
This staff had an average fastball of about 93. The arm talent was there.
"Locating" the fastball also doesn't take into account the guys who have great stuff but don't have pinpoint control. Forcing those guys to "locate" the fastball feels to them like they have to aim their pitches, and that missing an exact location is a failure. Perfect recipe for not only missing location, but also for reduced "stuff", loss of confidence, and lots of deep counts and walks.
Having lots of pitchers "pounding the zone" is a function of CONFIDENCE, not of some mad mechanical or strategic genius coach. Get your guys to believe that their stuff is good enough to get outs without being careful or precise, and you'll get lots of strikes. Far too many pitching coaches do not realize this or understand how to teach it.
I'm *hopeful* Enright has a better grasp of this concept. Not every MLB pitcher understands this (for some, locating pitches was as easy as breathing, so they can't conceive of not being able to do so) but his career path leads me to believe he'll at least have an intuitive sense of it, and I'm cautiously optimistic. And yeah, it does mean a lot to me that he's got MLB time. It's vastly more important to me than his lack of recruiting experience. We can never know for sure until we see the results, but I believe this will be a good hire.