Youth Baseball Pitching

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AWvsCBsteeeerike3
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Re: Youth Baseball Pitching

Post by AWvsCBsteeeerike3 »

mikechamp wrote:
January 25 22, 3:11 pm
AWvsCBsteeeerike3 wrote:
January 25 22, 1:43 pm
So, can a guy go out, without throwing for 4 months, and adhere to the mlb pitch smart guidelines safely (eg, throw say 65 max effort pitches with nothing but a warmup after 4 months off)? I don't know. I think common sense would say no and why it's so important to remember everyone is different and needs to be monitored on an individual basis.
I would concur with you. When we resume, I'll be sure to not have them throwing at max effort at our practices because we'll be re-building arm strength. I'll also need to talk to each of them to see how much they'll have already been throwing in their yards with family members/friends.
I texted and he said not to count warm up pitches. But be aware they could have an affect. Kids are not the same, monitor for fatigue.

I put together a throwing program after our conversation and sent it off to the coach for comment. He thinks it'll take 7 weeks to get up to 75 max effort pitches. I was like...sheesh, that's a long time, but who am I to argue. So, that's the plan.

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Re: Youth Baseball Pitching

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@mikechamp

After spending way too much time on this subject, probably one of the most helpful external websites was this one:

https://rocklandpeakperformance.com/bas ... t-science/
The On-Ramp

Purpose: The on ramp helps build throwing tolerance and to build throwing workload. We also use this time to introduce weighted ball corrective drills to help re-pattern any mechanical issues in the delivery during this phase
Duration: 2-6 weeks (a good general rule is 1 week of on ramp for every week off from throwing)
When: Generally, after taking 2 or more weeks off from throwing
Meant for older kids if not adults, mostly, but still had a ton of information.

We also invested in some J Bands to use once we get into the strengthening part but can be used for stretching all the same.

Alright, now I'm ready for games to start.

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Re: Youth Baseball Pitching

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@mikechamp

Had our first tourney over the weekend. Due to weather, saturday games were reduced from 1.5 hours/6 innings to 1 hour/6 innings which all the games hit the 1 hour mark. That saved us probably 2-3 innings of pitching. Which was nice.

Then, Sunday, we ended up in kind of a worst case scenario where we had multiple 4-5 inning games and had to pitch 14 innings.

So, that sucked. But, by getting the kids properly prepped, limiting pitches to 50/day on Sunday and 19 on Saturday, we were able to spread it around over 7 guys. Person that threw the most was 71 (53 Sunday, 18 Saturday).

And, here's the situation of how he got over 50 and why tournaments are the absolute freaking worst for pitchers:

We want all our kids to pitch, but one guy is out with growing pains, one guy wasn't there this weekend, and two kids still need to figure some things out before they're put in a pressure cooker situation. We should have thrown them on Saturday in one of the games, but we only pitched one inning before boat racing the other team such that a 2nd inning wasn't necessary. You live and you learn, I guess.

Regardless, 7 pitchers. Of those, about 3 are real good and 4 are a little less good.

By the end of the championship game, we're basically out of pitches. Last inning. Up 3 12-9 iirc. 2 of the 3 upper tier pitchers had already pitched the game and hit their limit, so they can't come in. One of them had about 15 pitches left. So, even though he'd already pitched in a game that day, we bring him in. There's really no good option. Do you throw a kid that's not at that level and have him walk in 4 runs or get lit up to lose the game? Bring in a little less good pitcher that has also already pitched in a game that day and done poorly? Or go to the one guy that has a chance to get the outs and secure the win?

Parents and desire to win aside, I tend to think the later is the best option. I mean, you have to put kids in reasonable situations where they can succeed.

So we did. He hit his limit with one out to go. Velo was up. No signs of fatigue. Looks good. Strikes the guy out on 3 pitches.

And, I say all that to justify a decision that, really, is the result of tournament baseball more than anything. Inevitably, you're going to play against similarly capable teams. To get deep into tournaments, you're going to have to pitch your better pitchers. And, to win them, you're going to have to keep pitching them. It's a really bad situation. Having more arms would help, certainly, but if you have 11 kids that are all aces, you'll be moved up classes and face other teams that have 11 aces (and likely better hitters to boot). Rinse. Wash. Repeat.

Other than not caring about winning, I don't think there's a solution. But, I do think it's important to not care about winning and instead focus on developing kids more than anything. Of course, that's not going to prevent these scenarios from repeating themselves.

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mikechamp
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Re: Youth Baseball Pitching

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Thanks for the update. I was going to revisit this thread, as we start indoor practices this week. We'll have a month to stretch out our pitchers to be able to go 50-60 pitches in an outing.

Another update from me: due to schedule conflicts with the coaches, we're only going to enter 2 tournaments this season (in addition to our league playoffs). That should minimize the "damage" from tournaments somewhat.

Also, in order to make up any perceived "lost games" from not being in 3 or more tournaments, we've scheduled non-league games against teams looking for additional games. I've been able to add 5 more games to our schedule that way. I much prefer that route, since we can mitigate the 3-5 games in 2 days scenarios that tournaments present. No, we won't be playing for a ring, or belt, or hat, or whatever giveaway they tout for tournament winners, but like you said,
"I do think it's important to not care about winning and instead focus on developing kids more than anything".

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Re: Youth Baseball Pitching

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AWvsCBsteeeerike3 wrote:
January 25 22, 10:01 am
His approach is that you protect kids, within reason, by building endurance, using that endurance, and giving the proper rest. So, you bring a kid in on day 1, he throws 25 pitches max effort then 15 pitches 3/4 effort. 3 days (or more) rest. Day 2 is 30 pitches max effort - 17 pitches 3/4 effort. You build the endurance with the 3/4 pitches focusing on mechanics, essentially. Then 40-20. Etc. Get them up to 75 pitches max effort over a couple months. All while maintaining an emphasis on mechanics.
I wanted to revisit this conversation, because we're 2 weeks into our season prep. I adopted this approach, with the following modifications due to our kids being a little older than your son:

40 - 25/15
45 - 30/15
50 - 30/20
55 - 40/15
50 - 35/15 (reduced due to rest days between practices and trying to adhere to MLB Pitch Smart guidelines)
60 - 40/20

But I've got a question for you or your coach/adviser guy. I also try to adhere to something the Cardinals pitching coaches have done, which is severely limit the number of instances where a pitcher throws more than 25 pitches without a break. 30 is about as high as I'll go. So my question is, when you start to get to the upper levels of the table above, do you incorporate a sit-down period during the max effort portion? And if so, for how long?

Because part of my challenge is logistics. Getting 11 pitchers through their pitches in 120 minutes, when I have (at most) 2 mounds to work with. Maybe I'm just fighting a losing battle, though. But I'd be interested in your (and his) thoughts on that dilemma, because I very much agree on the not-pitching-when-fatigued tenet.

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Re: Youth Baseball Pitching

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mikechamp wrote:
March 16 22, 10:38 am
AWvsCBsteeeerike3 wrote:
January 25 22, 10:01 am
His approach is that you protect kids, within reason, by building endurance, using that endurance, and giving the proper rest. So, you bring a kid in on day 1, he throws 25 pitches max effort then 15 pitches 3/4 effort. 3 days (or more) rest. Day 2 is 30 pitches max effort - 17 pitches 3/4 effort. You build the endurance with the 3/4 pitches focusing on mechanics, essentially. Then 40-20. Etc. Get them up to 75 pitches max effort over a couple months. All while maintaining an emphasis on mechanics.
I wanted to revisit this conversation, because we're 2 weeks into our season prep. I adopted this approach, with the following modifications due to our kids being a little older than your son:

40 - 25/15
45 - 30/15
50 - 30/20
55 - 40/15
50 - 35/15 (reduced due to rest days between practices and trying to adhere to MLB Pitch Smart guidelines)
60 - 40/20

But I've got a question for you or your coach/adviser guy. I also try to adhere to something the Cardinals pitching coaches have done, which is severely limit the number of instances where a pitcher throws more than 25 pitches without a break. 30 is about as high as I'll go. So my question is, when you start to get to the upper levels of the table above, do you incorporate a sit-down period during the max effort portion? And if so, for how long?

Because part of my challenge is logistics. Getting 11 pitchers through their pitches in 120 minutes, when I have (at most) 2 mounds to work with. Maybe I'm just fighting a losing battle, though. But I'd be interested in your (and his) thoughts on that dilemma, because I very much agree on the not-pitching-when-fatigued tenet.
See, I'm the same way. Don't let them throw 30 pitches max effort without a rest was my thought.

Talked to the coach and he said getting that many pitches without a rest was the reason we go through this program but their mechanics have to hold up. They have to be monitored for fatigue. So, you watch a guy throw 25/15, no fatigue. You watch him throw 30/15, no fatigue. You watch him throw 35/15, no fatigue, 40/15 and he gets fatigued. Okay, send him back down to 35/15 and repeat that step again until he gets to 40/15 without fatigue. Out of probably 60 throwing sessions between our kids, we've stopped 5 of them short. One kid got stopped twice in a row and went to see a doctor. Doc said he had growing pains more/less that were very common in athletes. Said no throwing for a month (football, baseball, etc). Gave him some exercises to do. He just started back up (step 1) and is doing well. The other 3, we saw kids shaking their hands = immediate stop and 1 week rest. Most of these were early and we haven't seen any issues since.

At first, I was like, [expletive], this program is getting everyone hurt. But after thinking about it, I think we're just more in tune to the kids. Instead of letting them warm up and pitch wily nily, we can focus on them during practice and make sure they're good. Who knows how much hand shaking and bad mechanics and fatigue and what not we missed last year.

The program has also worked very well in terms of their production. Lots of strikes. As a team, we're over 50% strikes thrown in real games which is leaps and bounds above the teams we're playing at this point.

Back to your question about max pitches without a rest. In practice, I don't think you're seeing the same intensity that you see in a game. So, there's that. As noted, that many pitches is precisely the purpose of the program. And, adding the rest between innings only helps.

Regardless, we still don't let kids throw more than 30 pitches in an inning.

1. They're not doing well if it takes 30 pitches in the first place.
2. There's almost certainly a mechanical breakdown if it takes that many at this level, even if we can't perceive it.
3. Those pitches are going to be high intensity, higher than what they practice at with 'max effort'.

The logistics problem is real.

One thing you could do, if you have the setup, would be to let pitchers throw to hitters as they're throwing their pitches. This works well in a cage. Not so much inside without a cage though. But, at least doing it that way, you're getting the throwing program done and kids are getting to face live pitching, which is undoubtedly a benefit. Add in a live catcher as well and you get a lot of work in, especially considering at the younger ages the main parts of the game remain pitching, hitting, and catching.

Luckily we have 4 mounds and 4 cages. We have to modify the length from 46' to about 43' to fit a mound, hitter, and catcher all in one cage, but whatever. Even with that many cages, we still struggle to get all the kids their pitches in 1.5 hours when kids are at the 50+ pitch mark. It goes much faster with coach catchers and speeds up as kids get their rhythm.

One thing we thought about was shifting the onus to the parents of the kids to have them get their throws in. Though this runs into the issue of not being able to monitor mechanics, not being able to monitor for fatigue, not having access necessarily to mounds, everyone throwing on different days, etc. Ideally, some of the kids will be working with personal coaches and can throw with them and at that point just have to be worked around.

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Re: Youth Baseball Pitching

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We're about 10 weeks in give/take some. All the kids are up to at around 50 pitches plus cool downs. Some have gone up to 60 or so on their own plus cool downs. We've also added a 'strength' program which consists of lunges, squats, pushups, and jband exercises.

Seems to be going well, had a tournament over the weekend, and one kid threw 61 pitches, most everyone else was in the 30-50 range over two days. Ended up going 5-0 and beat one team that consisted of, from players to coaches to parents, just a vile pile of human excrement. So, that was good. They had kids grabbing baserunners jerseys, running into runners trying to get obstruction calls even when there wasn't a play to be made, etc. Really disappointing.

Perhaps the most disappointing thing, however, was watching how some teams use their pitchers.

Case #1: A team that had absolutely no shot of winning any games threw a pitcher against us that threw 70 pitches on Sunday (2 innings). Then came back and threw 50 against us the next day (1.2 innings). That's just child abuse. And, these kids looked like they hadn't practiced at all before the tournament began. No freaking way he was conditioned to do that, no one even could be.

Case #2: A kid threw 2 innings on saturday (idk pitches, but suffice to say it was likely in the 30s). He then comes back and throws 2 innings on Sunday in their game before they played us (idk pitches, but again likely in the 30s). He then comes back and starts against us, throws 3 innings for about 70 pitches. While these guys were at least a legit team that practices regularly, that's just too many pitches. I could see him shaking his hand and kind of rotating his arm to get his shoulder loose while on the freaking mound.

Just terrible. These kids are 9. They're going to be unable to throw by the time they're in high school. USSSA rules are 3 innings max on Saturday if the kid is going to pitch Sunday. 8 innings max in a tournament. They really, really need to revise their reqs.

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Re: Youth Baseball Pitching

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I think I'm going to write a letter to USSSA.

Looking at our stats this year, we're 10-0 (/humblebrag). We've thrown 712 pitches over 36 innings and given up 39 runs. We average 19.x pitches per inning. And, that's been consistent over the past two tournaments. 19.2 and 19.7, respectively.

That avg pitches per inning is only going to increase as teams get worse. For instance, in those 36 innings, we've seen 942 pitches. Good for an average of 26 pitches per inning. And, in at least 4 of our games, we haven't played the bottom half of the inning, so 942 really needs to be divided by 32 which is 29 pitchers per inning.

Regardless, point is, according to the rules and using those numbers, a kid is allowed to throw 87 pitches Saturday then 145 pitches Sunday.

USSSA needs to either completely remove their rules so coaches can not justify their decisions saying they're just following the rules.

Or they need to have more realistic rules. USSA is kind of like the lawless league, hotter bats, jewlery allowed, etc. But, that stuff is pretty harmless. Allowing kids to throw infinite pitches is just stupid.

They don't need to follow MLB Pitch Smart guidelines. But, they really need to have something like it. The 3/8 rule is just absurd.

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Re: Youth Baseball Pitching

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And does anyone wonder why there are widespread umpire shortages? Dealing with "morans" like some of the coaches you describe... ugh.

Love the info/data sharing. I'll reciprocate.

We've only played 2 games (2-0) so far. (Had a doubleheader get washed out this past weekend.) In those 2 games, we played 6 and 3.5 innings. (We've pitched 10 innings and hit in 9.) In the 6 inning game, we had 1 pitcher per inning. (1st game of the season, and we wanted to see what we had in some of our lesser pitchers.) 1 kid struggled and threw 30 pitches in an inning, but everyone else was between 13 and 26. In the 3.5 inning game, we had our ace go 3 innings (52 pitches) and a reliever pitch 1 inning (18 pitches). Almost identical to your team, we've thrown 19.6 p/IP (196/10 IP) and given up 10 runs in 10 innings pitched.

Our offense has seen 25.6 (230/9 IP). In the 6 inning game, the opponent let one kid throw 84 pitches! He was pulled in the 3rd after giving up 5 hits and 9 walks. Their other 2 pitchers were responsibly used. In the short game, that was a league game and there, they have a pitch count limit of 70 or 5 IP. The opponent pulled their starter after 3+ (mid-inning, because he wasn't doing well) and he had thrown 61 pitches already. Their reliever needed 32 pitches to finish that inning. Overall, we've scored 30 runs in 9 innings at bat, which is going to lead to more pitches seen.

Our 1st (of 3) tournaments will occur in 3 weeks. We'll see what kind of behavior we witness there. I'm not expecting exemplary behavior.

How many total games do you have on your schedule? I know tournaments represent a variable, but give me the minimum amount for those.

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Re: Youth Baseball Pitching

Post by AWvsCBsteeeerike3 »

We have 7 more tournaments scheduled through the end June and will take a break before resuming in September (probably 3 or 4). Minimum # of games for the tournaments is 3, so that would be 21 total. Max # is 5 (sometimes 6), so say we could possibly play 35 games.

We got bumped up to the next class which around here means we will more often than not be playing up an age group since the open tournaments aren't readily available/don't usually have many teams. The odds of playing 5 games in a weekend is pretty small. We have 2 games on saturday, then teams are seated and put in a single elimination bracket.

Regardless, doing the quick math, even if we have 35 games left this season and then 20 in the fall, that works out to approximately 275 innings left to pitch. Spread out over just 7 pitchers (which it would fall onto more than that), it works out to 40 IP.

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