Game Prepping for Opponent Arms WITHOUT In-Game Ball-Tracking

This short blog post goes for all levels of baseball or softball that don’t have in-game ball tracking devices, which is the majority of programs. The reality of building out a game plan is that a lot of data that is tracked by a ball tracking device is tough to make actionable for hitters, anyway. Release height, spin rate, spin axis, efficiency, and other forms of data are great data points, but they require a lot of time and energy to decipher what the data actually looks like to a hitter and how the hitter can use it in their approach to actually make them better in competition. And sometimes the data can actually be deceiving. As coaches we also can have a tough time being able to visualize and replicate the above data in practice. There is a far simpler way.

If you don’t know a pitcher’s release height, spin rate, axis, efficiency, on and on, IT’S OK because you CAN track how hitters miss. How hitters are impacted negatively, paints the picture of how they are seeing pitches. The two questions you need to answer are:

1.    Did the hitter miss over or under?

2.   Was the hitter early or late?

 Use the Hitting Approach App to scout an opposing arm via video or live. Make sure to use the advanced tracking tools so you can input (body) timing and vertical barrel accuracy of the hitter. Vertical barrel accuracy is simply assigning a value to missing over or under the ball. We do it for you on each pitch when you choose the batted or foul ball type. The only time you need to decide is on swings and misses. Did the hitter miss over (positive value), miss under (negative value) or simply swing through it because they were not on time (zero value). When deciding on whether a hitter was on time or not, consider that body timing is different than barrel timing. As hitting coaches, we know that a hitter can be early or late and still catch a barrel. Play close attention to if their body was on time. (We are also subtly tracking the adjustability of the hitter). We assigned negative values for late body timing and positive values for early body timing.

After tracking the game, jump on the Hitting Approach Cloud, click on the game you just tracked and download the pitch data (at the bottom). You can quickly run an average on vertical accuracy and timing for fastballs, change-ups, and breaking balls. Now it’s time to apply the data to practice and game-day approaches.

Approach:

When planning approaches, hitters typically don’t want spin/release or even velo data most of the time, anyway. It can be deceiving and confusing. Ask a big leaguer if they want to know velo, spin, and axis of a fastball or if a fastball is sneaky fast and rides. they’re likley going to choose “sneaky fast and rides” over the data because “sneaky fast and rides” is their language. They’ve seen it before. They know what it feels like to get beat guy a guy that felt faster than the radar gun said he was, and whose fastball seemed to disappear up in the zone. By putting it in their language and they can build an approach that is simple like, “be early, miss over.”

Practice Planning:

Using vertical accuracy and timing makes game planning EASY during practice. Drills, BP, machine work should correlate to where a pitcher is missing barrels via timing and vertical accuracy. Three-wheel machines with foam balls are a fantastic option for creating outlier pitches—those that really ride, sink, cut, break, etc. Plus, they can be used in open gym spaces, optimizing your practice efficiency since most of the country isn’t outside during the winter months. Tee drills can be as simple as high and low tee. Toss drills can be a simple as mixing in the location we want hitters to take. For example: if we are facing a sinker baller that gets hit hard up in the zone, mix pitch height so the hitter has to take pitches down. Timing can be challenged with multiple machines, or varying flip and BP speeds. Coaches can also vary the distance in which machines, BP, and flips are taking place.

Game planning can be simple if you gather the right miss data. You don’t need expensive radar tracking systems to prepare for an opponent. If you’d like more information on how we can help you develop your hitters or pitchers, please email stat@hittingapproach.com