Advice on Pitching Machines

Yep !!

Many years ago !! FP99


Guru

 

Best post on this subject. Never did understand those who said they were bad. Anytime you are getting swings at a ball coming at you it is a good thing. Key is not to make it the only thing they see. Same could be said with live pitching. If that was all they saw you would see their mechanics deteriorate badly. It takes a combination of several different things to develop and keep a players swing in tack

 

I did read a story about a team who used an overhand pitching machine extensively during the winter and during a rainy spring. The results were not what they had hoped for; took them half the season to recover.

This is just one story in a longer article that appears here:

http://www.girls-softball.com/2008/08/dad-dont-throw-batting-practice.html

 

.....excellent point about using different hitting gigs.
No doubt a pitching machine is awesome, and then theres the star ball dropper, and the Derek Jeter hitting stick that mounts to a stand, and how about the whirlie bird thing that has three arms that extend out about 18 inches, or the gig that Charlie made that works by sliding a ball down a cord or line to a batter with a bat that has the midlle of the barrel cut out.
Hitting tees, soft toss, hitting sticks, thunder sticks....you know, the bat that is only about an inch or two in circumference.

I agree with Central D that the use of many things out weighs the use of only one or another by virtue of the possible negatives developed in a swing by using just one type of simulated pitch device.

Fishman