Keeping Pitchers Happy

[PDad]

You're wrong. Pitching the #1 less than half the innings for the regular season isn't riding her. The post season is a whole different animal. Better examples of teams that rode their #1 are FSU, OK, Stanford and TX.

Stanford only had two pitchers to start the season (both freshmen), and one went down early with an injury, so they really only had one true pitcher. Many position players made pitching appearances.

I'm familiar with what happened at Stanford. The first thing that happened was Kelsey Stevens transferred to Oklahoma - that was a huge loss.

There were actually 3 pitchers at the start of the season. The other pitcher was junior Nyree White and she went out after pitching 5 scoreless innings in 4 appearances.

It's hard to believe players that weren't recruited for pitching did as well as they did in major conferences. Sorenson and Wells deserve kudos for the innings they provided Stanford. What Pendley did for Oklahoma was unreal and had to be somewhat embarrassing for the pitchers she outperformed.

[coachjwb]

Let me preface my post by saying that it doesn't necessarily apply to college pitchers. And, by the way, my DD did pitch all the way through college and she had 3 older brothers who played baseball and who I coached as well

Most fastpitch pitchers and their parents aren't going to be happy if they don't get at least 25% of the pitching time whether it be on a travel or school team. Part of the reason is the amount of work that goes into being a successful fastpitch pitcher. I'll probably get some pushback on this, but I would argue that it takes more work for a youth fastpitch pitcher to be relatively successful than a youth baseball pitcher. If you don't believe that, go out to the legal pitching distance and try to throw strikes both overhand and underhand. If you still don't believe it, compare the % of fastpitch pitchers getting lessons vs. baseball pitchers. And. it's easy to say most teams should have 5-6 fastpitch pitchers, but the fact is that there aren't that many pitchers to go around. It's a supply and demand thing.

Unfortunately, that need to throw at least 25% of the innings can cause issues with a coach at whatever level who is trying to win games. There are not often 2 pitchers on a staff and very seldom 3 who are equal in effectiveness. As for the OP, I have seen teams with 3 pitchers both split time evenly between the 3, and I have seen some where one pitched about 50% of the time, and the other two pitched 25% of the time. And the teams where there was a player who considered her primary position as pitcher, and where she was getting less than 25% of the innings, most of them quit and found another team where they could get more time in the circle.