Why Successful Baseball Pitching Is More Than Balls And Strikes

Today, I want to address ball-to-strike-ratios for baseball pitchers... an impetus many pitchers and coaches use to evaluate pitching performance.

"Thinking Outside Of The Box By Re-Thinking The Ball-To-Strike-Ratio"

Every year, pitching coaches and baseball instructors across the country will sit down with their pitching athletes and talk about pitching goals and objectives for the upcoming season. Invariably, ball-to-strike-ratio comes up somewhere in the discussion.

Most pitchers and coaches agree that a good strike-to-ball ratio is 70%-30%. And most pitchers and coaches take that to mean they should throw seven strikes for every 10 pitches thrown.

However, I encourage you to not look at a 70%-30% ball-to-strike-ratio in a literal sense.

While it’s true good pitchers throw more strikes than balls, (usually in the neighborhood of 67%-33%), good pitchers make good pitches -- many of which are balls, but do MORE for a pitcher in terms of getting hitters out than a called strike.

Therefore, when coaches work with their pitching staff during the pre-season to develop pitching goals and objectives, I encourage you to NOT focus entirely on seven out of 10 pitches for strikes.

Instead, focus on throwing seven out of 10 quality pitches. The emphasis here on QUALITY!

Yours in baseball,

Steven Ellis
The Complete Pitcher™
www.thecompletepitcher.com
www.thecompletepitcher.blogs.com