EP103 – What to do When You Can’t Locate a Pitch; Plus, What Type of Cleats are Best?

Dear Baseball Gods

Having trouble locating a pitch? Dan gives helpful tips on how to locate each pitch. Also in this episode, Dan discusses which type of cleats are best and which type of shoes you should wear based on the surface you are playing on.

Links: Mound visit video mentioned in the podcast; Try the Early Work Strength Program for free here.

To submit a question for the Q&A segment, email a voice recording to Dan at [e-mail]. Want to support the show? Buy a copy of Dear Baseball Gods on Kindle or Paperback, or listen on audiobook. Or, pick up Pitching Isn’t Complicated, his advanced-but-understandable pitching manual. Enroll in one of Coach Dan’s online pitching courses or his mental skills course. Use code BASEBALL GODS to save 20% on any course, just for being a listener. Sign up for Dan’s Email list and get a free pitching checklist, and follow up with him on the interwebs: YouTube Channel | Twitter | Danblewett.com

Transcript: EP103 – What to do When You Can’t Locate a Pitch; Plus, What Type of Cleats are Best?

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You’re listening to the Dear Baseball Gods podcast. In this show, I help parents, players and coaches better navigate their baseball careers.

All right. Welcome back to Dear Baseball Gods. I’m Dan Blewett and this is episode 103. And in today’s show, we’re gonna talk about two main topics. Number one. What do you do as a pitcher when you can’t locate a certain pitch or any of your stuff, for that matter. And secondly, I’m gonna talk a little bit about cleats because I think as a parent it’s good to have a perspective on what cleats do now.

There’s different models. That’s really what I’m gonna focus on. There’s metal, there’s TPU, which is like the hard plastic, there’s rubber, and there’s also turf. So obviously cleats are not made of turf, but turf fields are their own animal and there’s more and more of them. And I really battled to get the information out to my parents when we had our Academy and our teams, because every year there’s just look, we got to make sure we’re prepared equipment wise to really compete, especially if it rains, et cetera, et cetera.

So I think a little bit of a discussion about cleats is important. Before we get going. I do want to mention again, my new strength conditioning program for baseball players is now live. You can sign up in the links in the description of this podcast and you get a 14 day free trial. If you want to sign up and test it out, go through all the videos, all that stuff.

It’s an excellent program created by myself and my good friend, a strength coach, Andrew Sacks, who owns his own baseball, softball strength training Academy here in the Baltimore area. And so I’d just highly recommend that you try it. If you need a place for your commercial gym or for school, if you want a high quality workout, but aren’t into sending your kid to a sports performance facility right now, that is a great way to go.

So be sure to check out the links in the description, the show notes of this podcast, and you can try the early work program created by myself and my close strength coach friend for free.

Okay. So let’s get going here. When you can’t locate a pitch. This is obviously a make or break thing for pitchers. And it’s usually a break situation with young pitchers because they sort of lock up. They emplo they mentally get really frustrated and really don’t know what to do when something’s not there.

So this can kind of be like, when you’re, I don’t know if you’ve ever played paint ball out there, whoever’s listening. But paint ball. If you have a decent paintball gun and you have the right barrel with the little flutes cut into it, a paintball flies pretty straight. But if a paintball breaks in your barrel, suddenly your aim just like has essentially no bearing on where the ball goes.

So the little bit of paint in the barrel makes the paint ball air dynamically weird, and it just shoots out, takes a right turn, takes a left turn. The next time dies in the ground. The next time. It becomes very, very difficult and you don’t really know what to do. And aiming almost seems to have no fact, and it becomes a really frustrating situation.

So you can clean out your barrel. That’s kind of how pitching is when you have a rough day, some days you go out there and you just cannot throw your curve ball for strikes, you throw your change up just the same as you always do, but just doesn’t go where you want it to. And it’s really difficult. So.

This problem has to be fixed quickly, and there’s not that many mechanical things you can do in the game. Now, one thing that’s really important for pitchers is to have an idea of how they miss typically. Right? So for me personally, when I was still pitching, I would miss up or up and in, and I would almost never miss down.

So if I was good, like I was running normal, my mechanics were still fine. Like standard meatus tends to miss upper misses into a righty. If I was missing down in the zone, something mechanically was very off and I knew that. So if I start throwing fastballs that fade into the dirt, I’m like, okay, I’m definitely leaking up with my front side.

I need to stay back longer. Keep my shoulders up longer. Appeal longer. And that’s going to get me back on track. So pitchers need to have some self-awareness about how they actually miss. And again, there’s like normal misses, which that’s just like a typical day at the ballpark. And you just have to sort of dial in and focus up a little more, whatever, but then there’s like, my mechanics are kind of screwed up misses, which again, for me was missing down in the zone.

Now for your breaking stuff, you know, curve, ball, slider, change up, whatever those pitches are going to be more sensitive than your fastball. Most days you’ll still be able to locate your fastball reasonably well, obviously there’s still some days you won’t. But the days where you’re slightly off, it’ll make your curve ball away off, or your slider a lot more off.

They just are more sensitive to where your hand position is because your spin, the spin is going to change significantly with a little only a tiny mechanical change. And so that’s just something to be aware of. Now, the main thing you can do as a pitcher when you’re not locating, like normal is adjust with your eyes.

So if you’re throwing your curve ball and everything’s going in the dirt, well, where are you looking? Are you looking at the catcher’s Mitt? If so, Let’s lift your eyes up to the catcher’s mask, start your curve ball there mentally and see if that helps rectify the problem. Usually it does. And I’ve had games where I absolutely could not get the fast ball down.

Like everything was just up, up, up, up, up, and I would start to look at my catcher’s shoes and that really does make a good difference because it’s essentially just like vectoring in. The issue, just like if you’re shooting, you know, a bazooka up into the air, a mortar or something you know, like ballistics really carries over a lot here.

You know, when snipers are shooting really long distances, they have to account for wind because wind is going to push the bullets slightly over that long, you know, 500 yards, thousand yards or whatever, it’s going to push the bullets. They have to know have a good idea of wind speed. So they shoot a little bit left.

So the bullet, when it gets pushed a little bit right by the wind. It ends up on target and the same thing is here. If you’re missing down, then lift your eyes up. That’s essentially like a sniper countering for the wind. And now maybe that down miss becomes a little less down it’s in the strike zone. So that really is a viable way to do it.

And one of the only. Really substantial ways to do it in the game. Now for mechanics, like for me as a pitching coach, I would have mound visits and I do have a YouTube video that I’ll link to in the description about mound visits. Mound visits have to be subtle. You can’t go out there as a pitching coach and be like, Hey, do this, do this, do that, do that.

That just doesn’t work. You need to give them one easy thing. That’s very tangible. So it’s like, Hey. Look down your shoulder farther longer. So make sure you can see the top of your bicep in your frame of vision, your field of vision longer as you’re going down the mound. That’s a good way to phrase it so that if they’re flying open where their front sides rotating open too soon, then say, Hey.

See your bicep in frame longer. And if they do that, it’s going to just help to fix that little mechanical thing. But with almost no effort except for where their, what their eyes are taking in. So they’re saying, okay, I need to keep my arm in my field of vision. I can do that. And then it all takes care of itself.

So mechanics coaches have to tread lightly. When I see a coach go out there and he’s like acting out all these different pitching things. It’s like. This is going to get worse. This is not going to help. So remember that as pitchers your job is to make pitches. Your job is not to be out there thinking about your mechanics.

And sometimes you do have to think a little bit about your mechanics, but you really can’t think that much. So obviously, like I said, as a coach, your coach listening, treading lightly is very, very important and think what can they do with their eyes or with their shoulders or with their chest.

Those are three big body parts that kind of help center the body. You know, Hey, point your chest to the third basement a little longer, Hey, keep your shoulders tilted up a little bit longer, you know, Hey, look down your, your arm a little bit longer, whatever it is, those things help a lot more. And they’re subtle and they’re very manageable for a pitcher mentally.

Lastly, sometimes you just don’t have good stuff. Some days that’s a very common, I mean, most days, and this is what pitchers need to come to realize is that. Again, I’ve mentioned this on the podcast in previous episodes. One of my coaches explained this to me and I’ve had actually other people kind of explain the same sentiment because it’s gotten passed around baseball.

But if you break up your starts into four or your outings and have chunks of four, you’re going to have great stuff one day, and it’s gonna be easy for you to win. You’re going to have terrible stuff another day, and you’re just going to lose that one. The real pitchers are made in the other two starts where your stuff is just, okay, like maybe you don’t have your full velocity that day, or maybe your slider’s kind of crappy, or maybe your change kind of crappy this day.

Those are the days where you still have enough to win. If you really bear down and make adjustments and compete. Those are the important days. And he said the pictures that, you know, kind of roll over when they don’t have their best stuff, they go one and three, or they go two and two. And the pictures like, you know, the Max Scherzer’s and the Madison, Bumgarner’s the guys who compete super well.

Those are the guys who go three and one, they win the day. They’re there. It’s going to be easy to win and they win the days that it’s hard to win and they lose the day where they just get beat and they just don’t have it that day. That’s normal. And that’s a seven 50 picture. That’s a 310, you know, 300 and 100 career.

You know, if you won three out of every four, that’d be incredible. It’s I mean, amazing hall of fame number. So that’s a good way to think about it. So as you try to make adjustments with your eyes and mentally, and some make some subtle mechanical changes, you still have to really compete your face off and say, no, I’m going to get this ball in the zone.

There’s a large mental component to that. And there’s a lot of pictures that go one way where it’s. I don’t, I just don’t have it. I don’t know. I can’t find it. And they just, they mentally go the wrong direction. It’s sort of like fleeing if you’re talking about fight or flight and then the other pictures are like, all right, slide is not here.

Getting compete with fastball. Change up today. Let’s do it right. I’m going to still going to go hard in go champs away. Like that’s the plan. Some days you just don’t have a curve ball. That’s that’s worth a damn, some days you just don’t have a change up. That’s very good. And it’s like, okay. That’s why I have three pitches.

I have two viable pitches today and I can throw a junkie curve ball in the dirt every once in a while. Okay. That’s that pitches roll today. That’s very normal and lots of pitchers, especially even on TV. They’ll look like they’re normal, but if you’re just talking to them afterwards, they’d be like, yeah.

Didn’t really have my slider today, still through a couple of good ones here and there, but in general, it wasn’t that good. It’s kind of why I went to the curve ball more. That’s an extremely normal outing and these pictures mask it very well. Cause they’re still going out there and competing and making the best of what they have, which is something that young pitchers don’t do very well.

They need to be encouraged to compete, compete, compete, even when they don’t have their best stuff.

okay. So let’s talk about cleats. I think this is important because I’ve had to have many, many conversations with parents about it. So number one, you should want to wear metal cleats. As soon as you’re able metal cleats give significantly better traction than. Every version of other cleat. So blasted cleats, rubber cleats, metal cleats, without a doubt, give much better traction whenever your league allows it.

There is not really a significant injury risk. Sure. You know, once in a while, kids get spiked at second base or something, but it’s not a life-threatening thing. It’s kind of a part of the game and it’s extremely rare. I can’t even remember the last time I saw someone get legitimately hurt by metal spikes.

So the idea that these metal spikes are scary and dangerous is. There are no scarier and no more dangerous than a ground ball. I mean, really more kids are going to hit in the groin or in the shin or a bad hop, hit hits them in the face then are going to get spiked in a season. I’ve seen that way more than I’ve seen kids get spiked.

So the fear behind metal cleats is really misguided. Number two thing to know about metal cleats is, is they’re blunt. Yeah. They’re like thin. They’re probably like a 16th of an inch thick, but they’re rounded and they’re polished and they’re smooth. They don’t have sharp edges. Now, anything at a high speed becomes, you know, can become sort of like a knife, but.

Again, these cleats are blunt. They’re rounded. They’re not sharp. Now. Again, someone’s sliding into hard. The clique can kind of dig into you and cut you, but they’re not sharp. That’s something just to understand. And if you go to Dick’s sporting goods you’ll see that. That’s how they are.

So again, don’t be afraid of metal cleats. They are not dangerous. That’s just like an unrealistic thing. It’s unfounded fear. I think it just gets perpetuated every very. Once in a while when someone gets spiked, but again, more kids will get hit in the face with a bad hop off a ground ball. Then we’ll get spiked in a given season.

Secondly, especially for pitchers metal cleats are absolutely the way to go on, on a dirt mound. They just bite in so much better, especially when you have all these crappy youth fields with a loose dirt, or that are just hard as a rock, especially when it’s hard as a rock. The plastic leaves do not bite in very well.

Cause he’s have a significantly bigger surface area there probably a quarter inch wide by, you know, an inch long. So was just significantly more surface area. So there’s obviously less pounds per square inch when that foot touches down the 16th inch width of the metal allows it to have just much more, again, PSI when it.

Does touch the ground and bite into that. So again, especially for a pitcher, if it’s a dirt field, you absolutely want to wear metal cleats. If you’re old enough to allow that, I think it’s like, what 12, 13, something like that. Check your local, your local rules. Now the next best thing, and what’s often.

Pretty appropriate for fielders is TPU these hard plastic, and you’ll know them. When, when you see them, they’re typically not black, typically a gray or white, or they’re like white with black tips or black with white tips or with whatever. But they’re very hard plastic and they don’t feel like rubber.

So those are great. A lot of infielders wear them because at in the infield, you’re going to have plenty of traction, no matter the field conditions with plastic cleat. So they’re totally fine. I still, again, metal cleats are going to give you the best traction no matter what, but the reason more. Older guys start to wear these TPU plastic cleats is because they’re just so much more comfortable.

The whole cleat doesn’t have to be the bottom of the cleat. Doesn’t have to be as, as rigid to support the plastic, just molded into it. Whereas with the metal, it has to kind of have like a plate to really keep the metal, which are thin. They have to have more kind of anchoring in there. So having worn metal cleats my whole life, they’re just much more stiff and uncomfortable than the plastic cleats.

Plus plastic cleats walking around on concrete are just a million times better. I’ve told many people that my, my personal hell would be being forced to like walk or jog up like a slow spiral ramp, just over and over for eternity. That’s been smooth on smoothly polished concrete. So I think like it’s smooth, polished concrete, like parking garage, this walking up that ramp there’s so slippery with metal cleats is just like a nightmare that we have to walk and try to tear your ACL.

But so TPU cleats offer a lot of comfort. They’re completely fine for outfielders. They bite into the grass. Just fine. Again, not as good attraction, but definitely enough traction to do the job. Now, rubber cleats, which are used for little kids absolutely should be abandoned as soon as possible. Rubber cleats are fine.

If you’re eight, whatever. But as soon as your kid is getting kind of serious go to plastic, go to the TPU. They’re not really any less safe. I’m sure they’ll hurt a little more if you, or slide into someone with plastic and the rubber. Cause they don’t give as much, they’re little more bite to them, but they have so much better traction because Robert does have some give to it.

So when it hits the dirt, I mean, especially these hard fields that don’t have, you know, much irrigation where it’s. Pretty hard, hard dirt prepacked. That rubber is going to, it’s going to deformed when it hits the ground slightly before it starts to like dig and push back against the dirt, the plastic much less.

So it’s a very hard plastic. And then obviously the metal cleats, not at all. So if you just think about the clashing of the two materials, rubber is. Softer than the hard packed dirt, you know, that it’s gonna run on. So you should drop rubber cleats as soon as possible. Obviously rubber fields, they feel like rubber and they’re all black.

So you’ll know when you see those again, that’s really only going to apply for really young kids. So those are the three main types. So I think you can’t go wrong with metal. You can’t go wrong with TPU, unless you’re a pitcher. I still highly recommend you use metal. If you’re pitching on dirt as a pitcher.

And then lastly, turf fields are more and more prevalent. And this is where it gets really iffy. You have to know which type of turf. So if it’s the carpet like turf where it’s just a thin basically just like unpainted turf. Well, actually the patio doesn’t matter, but if it’s a thin turf that doesn’t have the rubber infill.

And so rubber infill is like these really long turf blades are like six inches long and they’re filled with those black rubber pellets. Obviously, you know, the difference between that and the carpet turf, the carpet turf is just the stuff you laid out on a portable pitching mound in most cases. Or in a strength conditioning facility where they don’t have quite as much money because the infield turf is really expensive.

That’s like the carpet turf. And you can just, you can tell so on the carpet, like turf, you need to wear actual turf shoes, which have no cleats on them because those are going to be the best traction. If you wear cleats, they don’t bite in because these have less surface area. Now you’re playing on the infield turf.

That’s with the black pellets in it. You absolutely want to wear cleats. You absolutely should. That’s the TPU ones are the best choice. Then the rubber ones are the next best choice. Then turf shoes are the worst choice. Now you can get away with the turf shoes a little bit, but again, this field is covered in little granules of rubber.

So turf shoes, quote unquote in the college and pro baseball world are just essentially baseball, styled sneakers. That’s what they are. They call them turf shoes because back in the day, like. 30 years ago when they only had the carpet turf, that was the right shoe for turf. So they became turf shoes back then, but turf has evolved.

And so now with this rubber infill turf being pretty much the only turf that you’d play on an actual field. Now you want to wear cleats that actually dig into the rubber pellets and dig under the surface a little bit, just like on regular field. So that’s the important thing to know. And how here’s the problem?

Is that on many of these turf fields, not all they have a carpet like mound instead of the infield turf. It just depends. So sometimes you have to have turf shoes to pitch on the carpet mound, and then you have to put on, I mean, I suggest that you put on. Actual cleats to then run the bases if you hit or whatever.

So if you’re a position player and you’re playing on a turf field, definitely wear the TPU plastic cleats. If you’re a pitcher and you’re going to pitch on a turf mound, that is the carpet like turf. You want to wear a turf shoes that will give you the best traction. If it’s a built into the field. infill turf with the rubber pellets mound, which they do have those two.

Then you absolutely need to wear cleats as a pitcher. Cause I I’ve watched so many pitchers slide just slightly down. These mountains are wearing turf shoes. You put a lot of force in the ground as a pitcher. So when you have these turf shoes and you’re on this infill mound going downhill, you slide. A little bit, no matter what, it doesn’t matter who you are, you slide.

And so then you’re transferring less force into the baseball and your mechanics are suffering a little bit because when your foot plants, it should be firm, but it has a little bit of give because of the surface and that’s not a good thing. And the last thing to note is when these turf fields get wet at all, even just like a quick rain shower, They become incredibly slippery.

You’re very likely to hurt yourself if you just wear turf shoes on a turf field. So you absolutely need to have cleats in case there’s any moisture at all. If it rains, you’re going to slide and slide and slide. You’ll have very little traction. It will be a nightmare. I’ve seen so many kids just hit the ball, slip around their face on out of the batter’s box, just over and over.

Cause they can’t help it. You just have so little traction when these turf fields with little pellets of rubber and now it’s soaking wet. And you’re just slipping and sliding and regular turf shoes. So as a parent, if you’re on the travel ball circuit, your kid needs metal cleats dirt. He needs blastic cleats for turf or for playing the field and he needs potentially turf shoes.

If he’s a pitcher in case there is a carpet turf mound. Again, at the 90 foot diamonds, there’ll be very few of these that are carpet surf, but the younger kids, they put that like little, they just put that little they roll the portable mound out there. Those are typically just covered in carpet turf.

So again, you want to pitch in regular turf shoes. If you’re on the carpet turf mound, and you want to put you in cleats, plastic cleats, if you’re on the infill turf mound. And again, this is a lot it’s a lot to take in and that’s why I want to. Do this on the show because it’s not well known.

And as a parent, you’ve never been out there probably on these turf fields. Even if you were a player back in the day, you probably haven’t been on the field like that pitching right since then. And you just don’t really know, but I can tell you from experience, that’s what you absolutely want to do.

So cleats make a big difference. Your traction is important, not only for your best performance, but for injury risk, you can absolutely slip and tear your ACL. On a turf field with tennis shoes on or with turf shoes on. And especially if it rains, it’s very dangerous. So just be aware, that’s it for today’s episode of dear baseball gods, I’d greatly appreciate it.

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