In my opinion, all the way through college, the riseball is the toughest pitch to hit. By far.

You can recognize any of the other pitches and change the plane of your swing as necessary to get a hold of them by keeping it the same level and refocusing in or out, taking the swing down a bit for the drop, or having time to reset for the change. It's so much more difficult to take your swing and raise the plane of it quick enough to get a hold of a riseball. I just think it's easier to get away with adjusting to hit the other pitches because the rise ball requires you to get your hands and elbows up to the ball. That's hard to do in a quarter of a second

My daughter is 11 and plays on a 12 and under team, she was looking at your posts with me and noticed how you referred to adjust your swing with certain pitches. Will she learn this with time or is there something we can do to help her with the timing on different pitches?

Thank You

Definitely the rise ball.  Looks like a awesome fast ball but as soon as you swing it looks like it just goes straight up..... (sort of like a ball that falls straight to the ground off a table but the other way.)

Trish18 wrote:

This is something she will learn with time. It might be something she is already doing in certain situations, but isn't necessarily aware of it. Just as you change your timing (which changes the angle) of your swing for an inside, middle or outside pitch... the same is done to get down to a drop or up for the rise.

 

There isn't a substitute for live pitching in a game to learn from, especially for the breaking pitches. Live batting practice and tee work are the next best thing, in my opinion. Good luck!

Thank you for answering my question Trish .

Its funny that you talked about how hitting a real pitch is different than hitting a machine pitch. My daughter has been playing Lil League for 6 years and ASA for 2 years.

This year our Lil League decided to group 8 yr olds thru 11 yr olds. This in turn had a mother get scared at practice when she saw the 11 yr old's pitch so our L.L decided to use a pitching machine for games. They also are voting on whether or not to steal??? How will the the catcher throw past a machine to get an out at second??? My guess is as good as yours? So I thought that this would do absouletly nothing for my lil girl but set her back game and skill wise.... But her father and I let her make the desicion she came to her own conclusion not to play LL her reasoning was that in not so many words that playing against a machine is not the same as using one for batting practice. The board on our LL said that the girls (10 and 11 yr olds) should be fine with the machine because they use it for batting practice ( I believe that they may be a lil shaky on ASA girls as a whole playing LL that is just my opinion??? I also believe they care more for the baseball teams but again that is just my opinion.

She wants to remain on her ASA team however. So we will keep her playing ASA 12 U for now.

I wonder if L.L across America group their girls like this 8-11? Does anyone know if this is common practice? And does anyone have an opinion on it?

Again Trish thanks for your answer...

High and inside fastball is the hardest pitch to hit. It is hard to get a hit when you are trying make contact/slash defend your self from the ball.