Baseball Pitching Tips: Learn How To Use The Three Second Rule
I hope that pitchers, coaches and baseball parents who want to help their son realize that a pitcher can have the best “stuff” in the world but if he isn’t able to stay cool when the heat is on, any chance for success will disappear. If needed, a baseball pitcher should work on that part of his game also. There are some excellent approaches you should take when things are not going your way.
To constantly improve, baseball pitchers quite often work on their control and improving the quality and consistency of their pitches. Let me be very bold and tell you that one of the better baseball pitching tips is that if you are not able to maintain your composure on the mound, you had better start working on that also.
You work on your control, you work on the fastball, you work on breaking balls, hopefully you spend some time on fielding practice and you better work on your composure just as seriously. Don’t think for a second it’s not just as important as getting your throwing in. Just like the pitches you may throw, having good composure is a very important part of a baseball pitcher’s arsenal of weapons. You can have “great stuff” but if you lose your composure, isn’t the benefit of having “great stuff” severely diminished?
Never let a bad pitch get the better of you! I admit, this is easier said than done. What can be helpful is to allow yourself three seconds to be upset and then totally let it go. Have this understanding with yourself ahead of time and stick to it. Three seconds, that’s it. Many very important baseball pitching tips are from the neck up!
My son has a friend, who pitched in high school two years ago. He really impressed a college scout. He gave up a tremendous home run over the left field fence and the scout who came to watch him, told him after the game that the bomb is a part of the game and is no big deal at all. What the baseball scout was impressed with was that after the bomb, he calmly struck out the next batter on three pitches and maintained his composure! Think about it. College scouts have a tendency to be extremely sharp baseball people. They look for composure in a baseball player and realize the importance of it. Hopefully you will realize it also and work on it if you have to.
Please don’t ever let a bad pitch get the better of you. You are not going to strike out every batter on three pitches. You are not going to pitch a shutout every time out. You are not going to pitch a no hitter every time out. The only certainties in life are death and taxes. Well, the only certainties when pitching are that you are going to make some mistakes and sometimes things just aren’t going to go your way.
Allow yourself three seconds to be upset, stop sulking and get back to work. If someone hit a bomb off you ten seconds ago, it’s the same as if it was hit twenty years ago. It is in the history books. The same with an error by one of your teammates. The same with a bloop hit. If you truly want to excel at baseball pitching, your only thought should be on making your next pitch a quality pitch. You cannot rewrite the history books so always remember that the only pitch that matters is the next one you throw. Baseball pitching tips require clever use of the mind and not just the body. Please “let it go” and get back to work!
