The Most Misunderstood Facts About Strikes

When Coach Sarah or I hold introductory clinics for youth softball leagues I’ll ask the group, “How do you know you did a good job? What do you need to do to earn that label?”

Mainly they’ll say they need to throw a lot of strikes, or that they struck people out. The clever ones say that they need to try their best. The ones who have been paying attention at the clinic will say, “I did all the fundamentals right.”

While all of these are correct in a sense, they are off base in a couple of ways.

First, a young person who can’t throw strikes is evaluating her performance on something she is probably going to fail at. She is trying to control something she can’t control. Embarrassingly enough, I didn’t have command of my fastball until college. Ask any other Practice Pro coach, they will usually say that not until high school did they feel confident with their control - and that’s even pitching since they were 9 years old.

Experienced players who do have good command can set themselves up for failure too. They don’t specify an exact strike percentage, and base it on a State Champion’s accuracy abilities. They don’t practice enough perform at that level and are setting themselves up poorly.

Second, it’s hard to measure if I “tried my best” or if I “did my fundamentals right”. Did you analyze the video of each pitch afterword? Which of the five hundred movements of your body are you evaluating? Do your parents know what correct vs. incorrect looks like? Also, as a kid I was always unsure if I tried my best, it was hard to understand exactly what that meant.

Perhaps there’s a better way to track performance of all ages that are appropriate for each age. We try to do this in pitching school by diving these into two categories - mental measurements and performance measurements. The younger a player is, the less outcome statistics you want to take. Outcome stats include strikes, balls, runs scored off of you, etc.

Players within their first two years of playing should keep track mostly of their mental measurements. This includes their pre-pitch routine and if they reacted to bad pitches in a positive or neutral way. Any good sports phycologist would tell you: making a face, pouting, or grunting after a bad pitch reinforces bad pitches.

Once command starts to improve after a couple of years, she should track her mental game based how resilient she is. Can she recover after bad pitches or errors from her own team? Can she shut teams down once her team has a substantial lead, or does she let them creep back?

In tandem with these mental toughness skills, she can track the basic stats like strike percentage, walks and hits. Your pitcher will probably start to see a gradual correlations between good mental performances and good statistical performances. I’ve attached the forms we give players for free below. I developed these through learning what coaches do at annual NFCA (National Fastpitch Coaches Association) conferences I attend yearly, so I won’t take credit. I would have your daughter fill these out before and after every game as part of her routine. There’s nothing more fun than seeing your pitcher grow and recognizing her improvements. These sheets make it easy to do so. Good luck!

Mental Toughness Evaluation for Youth - HERE
Mental Toughness Evaluation - HERE
Game Evaluation Sheet - HERE