Did you spend the entire off-season improving your stuff and still are struggling this Spring? Often times when people think training they think gaining velo chasing trackman numbers and developing nasty off-speed and they’re right, doing both will make you a much better pitcher. But when Spring rolls around and you have no idea what to do with your now plus stuff, it will be tough translating it to in game success when you’ve never thought about your goal for each pitch. That was the definition of my playing career until my last 2 years. I spent so much time trying to improve my stuff that once I got in a game I locked up and went into each at bat just hoping I could out stuff the batter. It worked until it didn’t, just led to incredibly inconsistent results. One day I would punch out the world and the next day I would walk the world. Every bullpen was focused on how hard can I throw my fastball and how nasty can I make my breaking ball, nothing wrong with that at all depending on where you are in training. When it came to the Spring, I had no idea where my stuff played best and where I felt most comfortable throwing my pitches too. It wasn’t until my head coach asked me that question that it all clicked. I decided I only wanted to throw my fastball arm side or elevate it late in the count, and then throw my breaking ball off my armside fastball when I wanted a strike or started it middle middle if I wanted a chase. This turned my career around. Think about your bullpens, you have 25 to 30 pitches and if you are trying to execute each pitch to 6 different spots you are limiting the effectiveness of your bullpen. (There’s a time for variability in bullpens where you are actually doing that but that’s a whole other post, this is for in season bullpens). Now you’re on the mound only worrying about executing pitches to 6 different areas that you’ve had hundreds of reps in, versus executing pitches to 20 different spots that you have likely only practiced a handful of times in each spot. The less you think on the mound the better. The goal is to dominate hitters not try to
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