Pitching Machines at practice: good or bad idea?

[SiberianQueen]

We use CTS 96' pitcher for practice, it seems they want her to get more work.

ATWT,

You seem very fixated on that CTS 12U 96' pitcher (regarding ALL those numerous blog's about her & CTS, in various discussions)...I think I'll check the "Megan's Law" web-site for your profile! Scary. Oh and yes, I'm new to this site...and no, I'm NOT Stan! Just leave the little girl alone already. Yuk.

[anonlooker]

Agreed.
If your vendetta is against Stan, then let it be about Stan.
The 12yo kid really isn't fair game.

[3'sDad]

We use the pitching machines as another hitting drill during practice anolng with:

Tee Work
Soft Toss/Front Toss
Live pitching

[artomatic]

We use the pitching machines as another hitting drill during practice anolng with:

Tee Work
Soft Toss/Front Toss
Live pitching

^^^that's what we do^^^

we also don't crank up the machine to 70 mph so the players are 2 seconds late. we put it at a speed that they can get some good swings and some good line drives. I also like to give them situations like "runner on third, one out", or "runner on 2nd, 2 outs", so they can learn to read the situation and have an approach when they are batting.
Live pitching: almost need another post for this one...I don't like our pitchers to pitch to our team very often. once in a while if it's a scrimmage situation. but to just throw fastballs that say "hit me", is not the mindset I want my pitchers to practice.
so one of us old coaches throw from a little closer and from behind a screen, and also wiffles to get the arm motion of pitching.

[Mike Lednovich]

If you want to use the University of Arizona program as a model, they never use machines in practice. It's all hard toss from behind a screen or Tee work.

Mike Candrea spoke about how useless machines were during his winter camp last December.

[Chin Music]

As many "hacks" as possible!

[DonnieS]

No replacement for live pitching...

Absolutely. How do you do it? For our pitchers, their job is pitching practice, they are throwing to get outs, of course for the hitters, hit the ball. We do not ever have our pitchers ' put it where they can hit it' , thats for the hitting drills we use the machines for.

Some years back, I got a socal coach drunk and he told me thats exactly what they do. He told me he would have to kill me after telling me that, but he missed.

[artomatic]

We do not ever have our pitchers ' put it where they can hit it' , thats for the hitting drills we use the machines for.

exactly, so pitchers don't throw "batting practice". they do throw "pitching practice". so in a scrimmage type atmosphere, the pitchers/batters are treating it like a game.
and machines throw part of batting practice, along with live, tee, soft toss, bunting, etc.

[ocdad]

Good for mechanics bad for timing.
I believe live pitching is best but not practical all the time.

I completely agree with this. Don't forget pitchers aren't machines they need to warm up, do you put them behind the net so they don't get hurt, but that is not the same as what you would see in the game, because you need to see the arm rotation, if the pitcher is off you just wasted who knows how much time, etc.

You need both.

[3'sDad]

We tried player pitch last year at 12U but the girls really don't like pitching against their team mates...slips happen and batters get hit.....our pitchers didn't really care if they hit the opposing team , but didn't want to hit their team mates...live pitch was done by the coaches (me) with a screen....worked out just fine.