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Guest post by Ken Krause, Life in the Fastpitch Lane blog

Photo taken by Vinnie Ahuja (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Over the weekend I saw a very well-played high school playoff game. It was a one-run contest throughout. But in the end, when the losing team needed to score, their coach's predictability killed them.

This is one of those coaches who believes you always sac bunt a runner from first to second with no outs.  He'd done it two or three times already in that game.  In the top of the seventh the defense was ready and ended up getting the out at second.  So for his trouble the coach gave up an out without gaining anything in return.

In pretty much anything in life, if you know what's coming, you can better prepare for it. People in coastal areas, for instance, pay close attention to hurricane warnings and board up their windows when one is coming.

People in snowy areas heed winter storm warnings (usually) and try to avoid being on the roads if they don't have to. Businesses close early too.

So it goes for softball.  Take the change-up, for example, the whole point of the change-up is the element of surprise.  That's its greatest strength because, theoretically, it's easy to hit if you know it's coming.

If a pitcher always throws a change-up with an 0-2 count it shouldn't take hitters long to start sitting on it. Heck, my oldest daughter Stefanie figured that out for herself at the age of 14 when facing a pitcher her teammates couldn't hit.  She saw that 0-2 change-up get a few of them, so she just conceded the first couple of BBs and waited on the change.

Same thing with relying on one location, or a particular pattern of pitches.  Even working the ladder, if you do it constantly, sooner or later the hitters will figure it out and just look for a particular pitch — which makes it easier on them and tougher on you.

Or what about the slapper who can only soft slap or bunt?  She's not too tough to defend either.  Bring in your infield, plug the holes with outfielders, and she's an automatic out.  (Incidentally, if you're confident she can't hit it out of the infield you can put all seven fielders in the infield — there's no rule requiring outfielders to be in the outfield.)

If you are a coach who always steals on the first pitch you're pretty easy to defend. The pitcher just has to throw a pitch-out, which gives her catcher a better chance of tossing the runner out.  And so on.

Pretty much every college team charts its opponents, looking for these types of tendencies.  They want to know who will pull a suicide squeeze, and on what pitch count, and at what point during the game.  They want to see if the coach is aggressive or conservative so they can game plan accordingly.  The more predictable that coach is, the better the game plan is.

Higher-level travel/club and high school teams tend to chart too, although with travel the value goes down the more variety of teams you see.  That's because of the way stats work.  The more stats you have on a particular team or coach, the more statistically valid your numbers are.

Consistency is good when it comes to your approach to practice and games.  Players like to know what they're going to get from you day to day so they can prepare themselves accordingly.

But on the strategic side too much consistency is a detriment; it can actually hurt you by giving your opponents knowledge you don't really want them to have.

Ask yourself if you always do the same things, or call the same pitches, in certain situations.  If so, take some time to mix it up a bit.  Even if it doesn't work you'll avoid being predictable and give your opponents more to think about.  And that's worth a couple of extra outs here or there.  And hey, you never know. Your players might surprise you by smacking a double instead of giving up an out on a sac bunt.

It could make the difference between winning and losing a close game.

Anyway, that's the way I see it.

Comment below.

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