Three Principles of Pitching
B y : Joey Romence
Three Principals of Pitching
This concept was introduced last year by a great friend and mentor: Jeff Opalewski, and it is something that I truly believe can help every pitcher going forward. The three key principles are Knowing your stuff, Trusting your stuff, and Protecting your stuff. A good activity for any pitcher who is starting to figure these things out, would be to write them down at the beginning of an off-season and understand the true meaning behind each one. Following an off-season of pitch design, mechanical overhaul, etc. it would be good to revisit the three principles to understand if any changes have been made to any of the principals.
Principal 1: Know Your Stuff:
What does it mean to know your stuff?
On the surface level we may think it is about naming each pitch that we throw, but let's dive deeper into that. When you mention that you throw a 4 seam fastball: where can we throw that pitch and have the most command?
What counts can you throw each pitch in? What type of movement do each of your pitches have? The reason that this particular principle is so important is because of the fact we are going to be attacking hitters with this arsenal. So, this has to be an honest question that each pitcher needs to answer with themselves.
If we are unable to consistently land pitches in the zone, we are unable to use that in the game plan.
When we start to look at a trackman report after an initial bullpen, one of the things that we will work off of is what does our fastball do when it leaves our hand? Fastball shaping is one of the hardest things to do when in a pitch design session. There are two types of fastballs:
Soft Contact Induced
Swinging Strike
When looking at these fastball profiles, the contact induced fastball will be a profile that shows a little cut or sink. The swinging strike (whiff) will be a profile with high vertical break on the fastball, or will also be a cutter.
As you can see in the image above, the green plot represents the fastballs. The more vertical break on your fastball, the more likely you will generate whiffs. As the green plot starts to trickle down into the the red, that is where you will start to see the weak contact.
As soon as we figure out what the consistent fastball shape looks like, we can now start to develop the arsenal, as we are looking to build it around our fastball shape. The reason that we build the arsenal around our fastball is because while a certain pitch that someone may want to add may look good in a vacuum, it may not necessarily perform well with their current arsenal.
It is important for a pitcher to master his arsenal. Mastering one pitch to one location at a time may be the best way to go about this. Continuing to master that one pitch to multiple locations, followed by multiple pitches to many different locations will just continue to help grow the pitch plan and allow you to attack hitters in different ways.
Principal 2: Trust Your Stuff
What does it mean to trust your stuff? You may hear coaches all the time tell guys, “Just trust it!!”. There are many things that can go into trusting your stuff. The first thing for a pitcher to understand is: control what you can control. As soon as the baseball leaves your hand, you are out of control of what the outcome will be. There is really only one thing that we are consistently in control of when we are on the mound and that is our mindset. Because of the fact that we have put in the work to master each of our pitches to multiple locations, means we need to have the utmost confidence and trust that we are going to execute the pitch that is called.
The next thing that we have to make sure that we do is stay within ourselves and stay within the plan of attack. Whatever our plan against the opposing hitters is, it's unique to you. So we have to understand, we can not try to do more than what is asked. Even though it is completely normal to try and do more, we have to learn to stay within ourselves and stay within the plan of attack.
Principal 3: Protect Your Stuff
The final principal of the three is protecting your stuff. After completing the first two principals, how can we continue to protect our stuff in other ways? Some of the other ways we will look to protect our stuff is by mastering our delivery, building deception through our delivery, protecting the run game, fielding our position, etc.
Controlling the run game is a very important aspect of the game and it is unique to the individual. Some of the most effective ways to control the run game include: varying times to the plate, pickoff moves, how many times you may step off the rubber.
PFP’s is another very important aspect to the game and protecting your stuff. When working on this in practice, it's very important to understand that these reps need to be done at game speed. As you continue to progress in your career, the runners will continue to get faster and faster. So training at game speed will ultimately prepare you for this.
Conclusion:
As a pitcher, understanding and completing these three principles is important and can help build confidence going forward. Understanding who you are as a baseball player and pitcher, will only help you as your career continues to grow. Here is the difference between “knowing your stuff” vs. “protecting your stuff”:
Knowing your Stuff
Knowing what pitches you can consistently throw for strikes
What pitch do we have the most command with?
Understanding what the baseball does on each pitch when it leaves your hand (including metrically)
Knowing what your fastball is intended to do.
Generate whiffs
Generate weak contact on the ground
Protecting your Stuff
Controlling the run game
PFP’s
Deception with our delivery
At PRP, every single bullpen that a pitcher throws will be on a trackman unit along with a edgertronic camera behind the pitcher to capture the moment when the baseball is released from the hand. The trackman unit will allow us to understand what the baseball does from the moment it leaves the hand to when it crosses home plate.
Written by: Joey Romence
References
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Break-distance-of-VBGMM-pitch-type-of-Pitcher-A_fig2_34095917