|
While at ABCA 2017 in Anaheim, I had a few thoughts and discussions pop up about plate approach that I want to organize here.
For anyone unsure of what this topic means, what it is is what do you tell hitters to look for as they walk up to the plate? Should they always sit on fastball and adjust to offspeed? Should they look locationally, say "middle-in"? There are different views on this and some of the ones I mention above are common thoughts. Steve Springer mentions in his talks that he believes that batters should be hunting pitches based on what they see the pitcher throwing. The batter might be a fastball hitter, but if he watches the pitcher and sees that the pitcher is throwing consistent offspeed, the batter should begin to sit on the offspeed pitches that he's seeing thrown. Another approach that I discussed at length with another person was the thought that the player should understand his or her own strengths. The player should learn through practice both what TYPE of pitcher he or she is good at hitting (e.g. fastball, curveball, etc.) AND what LOCATION the hitter is best at hitting (e.g., outside, inside, middle, etc.). I definitely liked the idea of this approach about knowing as a hitter what your strengths are, particularly knowing what pitch locations you hit the best. However, I did not like being dependent on a particular TYPE of pitch in your approach. So, for me, I think I would take a hybrid approach - definitely know what type of pitch you're best at hitting, know what pitch location you're best at hitting, and also know what type of pitches the pitcher is throwing. At the HS level, my assumption is that pitchers will be throwing mostly fastballs so I think it's safe to assume that we can sit fastball the majority of the time. But, we need to make sure of this by watching the pitcher. I also assume that most HS hitters will also be best at hitting fastballs, but it's worth knowing whether hitting fastballs is your strength or not and if not, what pitch is your strength. Based on information that you learn from watching the pitcher, I would then develop your approach. If he's pitching fastballs, sit on the fastball that's in YOUR ZONE and take anything else until you get to two strikes. Once you get to two strikes, you've got to go into battle mode and make contact on strikes, no matter what the location or type of pitch. Interested in your thoughts! Tom
0 Comments
 Trip from Tokyo to Kyoto. Time quoted above is the train travel time (2hr8m)  Mt Fuji and the Bullet Train. Not my photo. This is part 3 of my journal of adventures in Japan. You can read the other posts about this trip by visiting my Japan blog page. Riding the Shinkansen After my stop at T's Tan Tan, which I wrote about here, I was off to catch the train to Kyoto. The train trip between Japan and Kyoto covers about 320 miles and will take you past Mt. Fuji. If you're headed towards Kyoto you'll want to be on the right side of the train in order to see the famous mountain. By the time I realized where Mt. Fuji was on the route, I never ended up seeing it.  Inside the Shinkansen. Again, not my photo. The bullet train ride was extremely comfortable. In most trains that I took, it was rare that I had someone sitting next to me. As I remember, all of the trains I rode had rows of two seats split by a center aisle. Trains had restrooms and also other common areas to hang out while riding the train. One question a few people have asked me was whether you could feel the speed of the train while riding it and the answer, for me, was no. I never felt the train's movement. Aboard the Shinkansen, you can buy various snacks or drinks from an attendant who makes her way through the train cars. It was never really apparent to me what the full menu was or prices, so I never bought anything while on the train.  Hostel Bed in Kyoto Arriving in Kyoto Once I arrived in Kyoto, I made my way over to the hostel I had reserved for the next two nights. The hostel ended up being very clean and had an interesting bed setup. Each room was setup like your standard hostel - dormitory style with multiple bunk beds setup throughout the room. The difference, though, was that every bed was privately enclosed with a cloth covering so it was almost like you had your own little personal capsule. Pretty neat! After taking a look at what there was to do in Kyoto, I left the hostel and made my way through one of the local markets, which had excellent knick-knacks for sale. This was actually one of the best markets that I saw in Japan. Most of the other ones I went to had relatively cheap goods for sale but this one had high quality souvenirs and other items. After I made it through the market, I arrived at the train station to have one of my first encounters with a Japanese subway system.  Nishiki Market in Kyoto The Japanese Subway It took a while to get used to and sometimes you would run into stations that did not have the station names in English. The great thing about Japanese subway, however, is that the system itself stays very consistent between cities. I rode the subway in Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto and other cities and the setup was always the same - same signs, same method of collecting tickets, same ticket kiosks, etc. The ticket kiosks themselves were a bit intimidating but once you figured out how the system worked, they were easy to use. The main thing that you would have to do is figure out what station you were going to. Underneath each station's name is the cost (in yen) of getting to that station. Once you know the cost of the station you're going to, then all you'd have to do is put that amount of yen into the machine and purchase your ticket. Japanese subway stations in all of the cities I visited were numbered such that if you couldn't find the station you wanted on the station map, you could always look up its station number on the internet (wikipedia usually worked for me) and then figure out where it was located on the map. This helped in situations where the subway station map did not contain any English and was in Japanese. In those situations, relying on the station numbering system became key. Another strategy for buying subway tickets is to simply buy the cheapest possible ticket. Then, when you arrive at your destination, you can simply visit a fare adjustment machine and pay any additional required fare (see photo of the fare adjustment screen below). Whenever you leave subway, you have to pass your ticket through the exit gate to ensure that your ticket covered the cost of your travel. If it doesn't, the gate will not let you pass and you'll have to visit the fare adjustment machine to pay more into your ticket. A quick note here about entering and existing any JR line is that to enter, you simply need to flash the train attendant your JR pass. You do the same while exiting - no need to buy a ticket for the JR or go through the regular turnstiles - just always be ready to flash your ticket to the attendant and you're good to go. See the gallery below for some photos from the subways & trains in Japan. Walk up to the Bamboo Forest First on my list while in Kyoto was the bamboo forest. After riding the subway up in the direction of the forest, I exited and took a beautiful walk up around the edge of Kyoto. It was here that I was first struck by the pure beauty of Japan. Japan itself has many mountains and these were on display as I walked. Another tradition that I became accustomed to was the practice of Japanese tourists renting and wearing traditional kimonos while sightseeing. This was on display more in Kyoto than any other place I visited during my trip. After walking along a river and up the side of one of Kyoto's border mountains, I finally arrived at the bamboo forest. Unfortunately, by the time I arrived it was starting to get dark out, so I don't think that I was able to have the full visual experience that's possible during the day time but the forest itself was still very beautiful. After walking through the forest, I continued on and ended up visiting a temple that I had read about before traveling to Japan. As we're at the resolution-setting part of the year, I am sharing two related posts that I found recently that I liked. The first one is this blog post by James Clear in which he explains two separate concepts - goals and systems. For coaches, he explains that a goal is to win a championship while a system is what the team does every day to pursue that goal. He further argues that our focus should be our systems, or our daily habits, rather than our goals. If you want to run a half-marathon, focus on running every day, every other day or whatever the frequency is rather than the marathon itself. I read this and paired it with the passage below that I recently read in "The Practicing Mind" in which the author wrote that setting goals should be like swimming across a lake with a large tree on the other side. Your goals is the tree. However, to swim to it, you don't stay focused on the tree - you focus on the process of swimming. You do have to look up every once in a while to see if you're still on target for the goal or how much farther you have to go, but if you focused on the tree the whole time, your swimming would suffer and you wouldn't make it. Your goal should be like your rudder - providing direction. Your focus should be on your actions. The other beauty of these two things is that if you focus on your daily habits and figure out ways to make those habits happen, I'm going to bet that you'll find that you'll not only achieve your goal, but you'll vastly over-achieve it. Returning to the running example, if you make your focus running every day, you will will continually improve at running to a point where you may find when the half marathon rolls around, you're able to run well beyond the half marathon distance. Clear also makes a great reference to book writing, saying that if you set your goal to write a book, you might become intimidated by the prospect of writing the book. If you rather set you sight on a very achievable goal of writing every day, you will probably well exceed your goal. Another aspect of this that I have read about is spending time understanding your why. Why are you setting that goal? I think the question is going to come up one way or another. If it's to run a race, at some point during your training, you'll hit a point at which you're bummed out, tired and not wanting to proceed. You'll be asking yourself why you're doing it. I read recently that someone who has a strong why can overcome any how. So, after writing this, some general thoughts. Start first with your goals, identify them. Then identify a why? What greater purpose are they connecting with? Maybe it's to improve your health. Maybe it's to write a book, which may be connected with a greater vision of helping others. Maybe it's winning a championship, but why do you want to win the championship? Next, identify regular, achievable behaviors that you can do that will help you get to your goal. Focus your energy on those. If the going gets tough, come back to your why. Interested in your thoughts. Tom  |
AuthorI love to write about baseball, travel and other life situations. Archives
October 2021
Categories
All
|
RSS Feed
Proudly powered by Weebly