A week from now, the Hillsdale College Baseball Team will be on a bus, riding back from a weekend of four games in Louisville, Kentucky in our season's opening weekend. We have had five good weeks of practice, with another five practices left, to prepare not just for next weekend, but for the entire season.
One of the major goals for next weekend is to return with four wins. Among some of the other goals, or sub-goals, will be to do what it takes to win those games. An easy explanation for stating the goals of the pitching staff is simply to execute pitches. We need to execute pitches during every at bat, in every inning, in each of the four games, in order to give the team a good chance to win games. Ultimately, each game's starting pitcher has the job of giving his teammates a chance to win each game.
How do we do that? Well, as with pretty much every pitching staff in the country, we will need to be able to throw quality fastballs inside.......and outside. We also need to throw quality fastballs at the bottom and top of the strike zone. The goal on each pitch is to get the hitter to swing and make an out. Though each pitcher is unique, in addition to throwing quality fastballs at many edges of the strike zone, each guy will need to be able to execute their off-speed pitches. Curve balls, sliders, cutters, changeups, and other varieties of off-speed pitches also need to be thrown for the purpose of getting hitters to swing and make outs.
When pitchers can get batters to swing, especially early in the count, it becomes a game of nine versus one, in the sense that the pitcher is letting the hitters get themselves out by hitting the baseball to the defensive players, who will execute the plays they have practiced and envisioned for weeks. It is a simple formula that is sometimes easier to complete than at other times, but a formula that requires confidence, intelligence, and emotional control as well as physical execution.
This will be my first season with all of these guys, but since September they have all made great efforts to be on the same page, to get stronger and more athletic, to buy in to what the coaching staff is trying to do, and to be the best teammates they can possibly be. They have built their pitch counts up to 80-100 pitches and have improved the overall health of their arms in the process.
On the pitching staff, we have one guy returning from injury and will throw his first inning off the mound this week, and we have another who had an unfortunate injury when he was kicked in the hand by a horse while volunteering to help a local elderly woman with some chores. He had surgery on a broken finger and will have pins removed from his hand after our spring break trip. The rest of the pitchers who had some arm tenderness in the fall or in January are now feeling great, so we are ready for next weekend's 28 innings and feel confident in the quality and depth of the staff.
As happens every year at this time, I can't wait to get on the field and watch these guys give 100%, 100% of the time. It will be a privilege for me to witness them compete and win games, and it's going to happen a lot!!
One of the major goals for next weekend is to return with four wins. Among some of the other goals, or sub-goals, will be to do what it takes to win those games. An easy explanation for stating the goals of the pitching staff is simply to execute pitches. We need to execute pitches during every at bat, in every inning, in each of the four games, in order to give the team a good chance to win games. Ultimately, each game's starting pitcher has the job of giving his teammates a chance to win each game.
How do we do that? Well, as with pretty much every pitching staff in the country, we will need to be able to throw quality fastballs inside.......and outside. We also need to throw quality fastballs at the bottom and top of the strike zone. The goal on each pitch is to get the hitter to swing and make an out. Though each pitcher is unique, in addition to throwing quality fastballs at many edges of the strike zone, each guy will need to be able to execute their off-speed pitches. Curve balls, sliders, cutters, changeups, and other varieties of off-speed pitches also need to be thrown for the purpose of getting hitters to swing and make outs.
When pitchers can get batters to swing, especially early in the count, it becomes a game of nine versus one, in the sense that the pitcher is letting the hitters get themselves out by hitting the baseball to the defensive players, who will execute the plays they have practiced and envisioned for weeks. It is a simple formula that is sometimes easier to complete than at other times, but a formula that requires confidence, intelligence, and emotional control as well as physical execution.
This will be my first season with all of these guys, but since September they have all made great efforts to be on the same page, to get stronger and more athletic, to buy in to what the coaching staff is trying to do, and to be the best teammates they can possibly be. They have built their pitch counts up to 80-100 pitches and have improved the overall health of their arms in the process.
On the pitching staff, we have one guy returning from injury and will throw his first inning off the mound this week, and we have another who had an unfortunate injury when he was kicked in the hand by a horse while volunteering to help a local elderly woman with some chores. He had surgery on a broken finger and will have pins removed from his hand after our spring break trip. The rest of the pitchers who had some arm tenderness in the fall or in January are now feeling great, so we are ready for next weekend's 28 innings and feel confident in the quality and depth of the staff.
As happens every year at this time, I can't wait to get on the field and watch these guys give 100%, 100% of the time. It will be a privilege for me to witness them compete and win games, and it's going to happen a lot!!
