Little League Key: Pitching
Pitching is a pivotal position at all levels of baseball, maybe most of all at the first little league kid-pitch level. At this level, or levels not too far beyond, as a coach you’ll be lucky to have 6 kids who can throw strikes reliably, and every batter will face high likelihood of getting hit by a pitch!
This Little League Key is dedicated to the coaching aspects of pitching at this youth level.
If you have coached in a league where 8- and 9-year-old are expected to pitch from 46 feet, you already know what I’m about to write about. It’s a rare kid who can throw that far accurately, and for the rest of them, it will be carnage!
For those who are about to coach in this kind of league, especially at the recreational level, I think the most important thing to look for, and to foster, is the desire to pitch. Yes you will find that a small handful of kids will show up on day 1 with an inherent ability to throw strikes. Others will have a knack for throwing, and can be trained. But what you as a coach can truly influence is the connection between physical ability and the mental satisfaction that comes from leading the game from the mound.
I recommend giving every kid at this level the chance to pitch, at least in practice. In every practice, at the beginning or somewhere in the middle, I ask the same questions, “who would like to practice pitching who has not pitched in a game,” and “who would like to try pitching in a game”?
Throughout a typical season, with 10-12 players on a team, my goal is to end the season with every kid having had at least one inning’s worth of pitching on the mound in a practice, with something like 75% of the kids having thrown at least an inning in a game.
On the flip side, there will be 1-2 players with natural throwing talent. When these kids like to pitch, it would be unjust to deny them the opportunity. So I tend to give my best pitchers at least 1 inning each game, interleaving the other players to distribute the opportunity to the other players. Occasionally, especially later in the season, I’ll leave these better pitchers in for 2 innings, often then pushing up against the Little League pitch count limits. But generally I try to end a game with pitch counts in the 20’s and 30’s per kid.I’ve found that this overall approach, distributing the pitching opportunities across a pretty wide range of the team, allows the team to approach the end-of-year playoffs with strong pitching depth. Especially when playoff games are played in rapid succession, with not much time in between for the pitchers to recover, I find that my teams are better prepared than others to compete at the pitching mound.
Pitching is also a tremendous opportunity for these young players to experience adversity and success in a healthy manner at a young age. Investing throughout the season in a pitching depth will help you be more successful in those late-year games, including the playoffs, and more importantly it will provide critical growth opportunities to as many of your kids as possible throughout the season.
