Disrupting Timing: How Pitchers Can Disrupt Timing With Their Delivery

"Hitting is timing. Pitching is upsetting timing." - Warren Spahn

If you have played baseball odds are that you have heard the above quote by Baseball Hall of Famer Warren Spahn. Pitching is simply put the activity of getting the hitter out of rhythm because the hitter is trying to hit a moving baseball that when thrown fast enough looks like a little white pill. There are hundreds of ways to disrupt the timing of a hitter. Whether that is through changing speeds of pitches, different arm angles, or changing the speed of the pitching delivery.

Changing the speed of the pitching delivery has always been part of baseball strategy, but one thing has caused coaches and players from attempting this strategy. That one thing is called fear. The reason why coaches and players are fearful of toying with a delivery, is the fear of the student-athlete messing up their pitching delivery mechanics. That fear has caused the opportunity for many pitchers to get an upper hand on their opposition.

If you are in the amateur baseball field, look no further than UNC- Chapel Hill's Tar Heel program and you will find a pitching staff that believes in disrupting timing with their delivery. In fact, the Pitching Coach of the Tar Heels, Robert Woodward, believes that every single pitcher should try to work different speeds in their delivery. As he stated in Coach Jonathan Gelnar's "Ahead of the Curve" Podcast, there are two things a pitcher can gain through attempting to change speeds in their delivery. One being another weapon that they can use if they get comfortable with this strategy. The other thing that the pitcher can gain is to learn how to pitch to different kinds of hitters. Either way, the individual pitcher will get experience and become better.

The next thing we must dive into, is to understand how to get your pitchers to buy in on attempting this strategy. In any pitching delivery there are steps. And in any delivery there is one specific aspect of the pitching delivery that each individual pitcher will be most comfortable with. With that in mind we must always remember that the pitcher must always feel balanced no matter which change in speed that the pitcher chooses to use.

Once the pitcher is comfortable with his choice in which point of his delivery that he will switch speeds in his delivery, he must practice the skill. There are two kinds of changing speeds in the delivery that the pitcher can use. The first kind is the change up strategy. This strategy has the pitcher pause a second before he continues his delivery. This allows to throw off the hitter's timing. The second strategy is the speed up strategy. This strategy takes out a specific part of the delivery to surprise the hitter and speed up the timing of the hitter. With the change up strategy the pitcher should use his harder or faster pitches. With the speed up strategy the pitcher can use his off speed pitches for success.

Once this is part of the toolkit for the pitcher, the question is now, when do you use this strategy? You would use this strategy when the pitcher is getting ready to go through the batting order for the 2nd or 3rd time. Now that we know when to use this strategy, then when do we not use this strategy? You do not use this strategy, when you are cruising and the opposing hitters are dumbfounded with your pitches that day of the game. This strategy is worth a try for all pitching staffs. At the least, this will be educational for your pitching staff, and at the most this will be another tool in the toolkit for the pitcher to use to cause an uncomfortable experience in the batter's box for the hitter.

Now let's look at some examples of this strategy at work: