As I continue my evolution as a coach, my use of my tools, especially the PitchLogic ball, in bullpens has gotten more refined and the quality of the training and the information gained has increased dramatically.

Several weeks ago, PitchLogic hosted a webinar for ABCA, “What Pitching Data Really Means & How to Use It at the High School, College and Professional Levels“. It was a terrific webinar that delved into the experiences of pitching coaches at all levels. Truly enlightening, but not as focused on using the technology as I’d hoped. So, as a step toward improving our own bullpens, I’ve decided to share out how we’re doing it. I suspect this will provoke feedback and allow an iterative process to improve this for everyone.

Our environment

I’ve implemented the use of technology in our practices and in in-game bullpens over the course of the last 4 years. The pitchers involved are probably significantly younger than most PitchLogic users, ranging from 10-year-olds up to 15-year-olds. Since I started in Virginia and moved to North Carolina, no individual player has been in the system for more than 2 years. In 2024, it will be the first time that more than 3 of the pitchers involved has been tracked for more than a year. In every case, I’ve been the only person with regular access to the data (and the only one who understood it for most of that time!) For most of the time, I was the head coach. The past six months, I’ve been just a pitching coach and more focused on the process and data. I’ve also started sharing the spreadsheets with one of the players who envisions a career in engineering, since it’s good to have another set of technical eyes on the data.

The tools

For our bullpen tracking, we’re utilizing the Smart Coach Pocket Radar, F5 Sports’ PitchLogic ball, my own bullpen tracking sheets, Microsoft Excel, iCloud Notes, and the apps for PitchLogic and Pocket Radar.

The SmartCoach Pocket Radar was the first piece of technology that I acquired to help me coach my pitchers. While some of the old men that I play with contend that it’s not accurate (they think they throw 75mph while in their 60s), it shows readings matching the stadium signs when we use it at minor league ballparks. It doesn’t read speeds below 25mph, but unless you’re coaching 9u, that won’t be a problem. The best use of this is in-game to track velocity. We use it in bullpens for immediate feedback on the pitches. This is the velocity that we record on the bullpen tracking sheets.

The PitchLogic ball provides the detailed feedback on your pitches, to the extent that it provides far more information than you can use at first. I’m up to using 9 of the 23 columns of data returned after using it for 4 years. At first, we only used velocity, spin direction and arm slot. Then, we added more as we understood the use of each and saw patterns in them.

During the bullpens, we use my own bullpen tracking sheets. Each has room for 20 pitches, which is our standard bullpen. (MLBs PitchSmart guidelines have 20 pitches in a game as the max for pitching the next day, without rest.) For every pitch, we record pitch type, velocity, and location. The pitch location gets marked with an X and for pitches with movement, we draw a line indicating how it moved. There is a spot for any notes on a pitch. At the end of a bullpen session, we take a photo of the bullpen tracking sheet for our records and hand the paper copy to the player.

The data that gets collected by the PitchLogic ball can be downloaded as a CSV file (comma separated variable) and opened in Excel. Over the course of a season, I dump all the data for my pitchers into a spreadsheet and then create tabs for every player. Each of the columns that I use has formulas in it for highlighting good and bad results. By reviewing player data over time, it’s easier to see their improvement and find areas that need more work.

After the bullpen, we upload the photo of the bullpen tracking sheet to the player’s Note on iCloud. This way, all bullpen tracking sheets are in the same place, easily accessible and comparable. Any notes on the bullpen get added, then game stats, commentary or notes on usage get added to the same note. This single location for data collection and commentary ensures that guidance, practice results and game results can be understood.

Coach ‘Em All

Since we’re coaching 13u and it was fall, everyone threw some bullpens, and several players caught them. We discovered a couple of pitchers we didn’t realize we had – one of whom threw a 4-inning, one-run “complete” game win. As a Little League coach, I started every season believing that had 12 pitchers on the roster and you had to prove me wrong. I also started every season with a one or two catchers and finished with four or five, since everyone had to catch some bullpens and some ended up liking it a lot.

By allowing everyone to throw bullpens, you can discover those unknown pitchers and work on the arms of your fielders directly, rather than as part of a broader drill. When you’re coaching kids, you can’t know their potential. You can guess, but you’re likely to be wrong. The USA 12u National generally only contains 1 or 2 kids who make the National team in high school. Early growth and early success do not necessarily lead to continued interest or success. The move from the 60’ diamond to the 90’ diamond ends the youth baseball careers of many young all stars.

Setting up for the Bullpens

Depending on the facility, we might have a full bullpen with two mounds and two plates, or we might have an open space at the field that we have to lay out ourselves. It’s good to have a hard pitching rubber and a throw down plate and your measuring tape (or pre-cut string) handy when you don’t know what you’ll get.

Probably the most important thing to keep in mind is what happens when the catcher can’t stop the ball. I’ve lost a PitchLogic ball in the underbrush and had players chase another down a hill. If you can have a backstop, net or 60′ of open ground behind the catcher, that’s good.

Initializing the PitchLogic Ball

Before the bullpen, connect your PitchLogic ball to whatever mobile device you prefer. We generally get the best connection and display of data on an iPad. Once connected, you need to select the pitcher in the PitchLogic app so that their data is stored properly and, if they have the app, shared with the player. Lary Sorensen of F5 Sports gives a good intro to using the roster.

Remember, for any throw to be recorded, the PitchLogic ball needs to be held stationary for a half second. This reminds players to “make sure you don’t balk”.

Sometimes, we have the camera on for the bullpen and sometimes not. Usually when we do, it’s on the arm side behind the player facing home plate. This allows visual feedback of the movement and location. Sometimes, we have used arm side, 3 quarters in front to provide a different view of the pitch mechanics. When video is used, it’s best to have the iPad or phone on a tripod to keep the video consistent and to allow everyone to focus on the pitcher.

Setting up the Pocket Radar

For bullpens, I usually do not launch the PocketRadar app to record the velocity of pitches or to do the video. Sometimes, there seems to be interference on Bluetooth when I try using both the PitchLogic ball and the PocketRadar. So, I either hold it in my hand, connect it to the fence or have it on a tripod, always behind the pitcher. When there are no problems hooking both devices up with Bluetooth, I’ll put it on a fence using a Nexus Mount – either behind the pitcher or behind the catcher.

The most critical accessory you can get for your PocketRadar is a Power Bank. Relying on the batteries in the PocketRadar itself is a recipe for disaster. When using the app or just running continuously, the batteries die quickly. Better to have the power bank or plug it directly into an outlet at the field. (Often, you can plug in behind home plate, but I’ve never run across at outlet at the bullpens where we’ve practiced or played.)

If you can use the app, it allows you to tag which player is throwing the bullpen. When I use the app with video during a game, I will usually tag the pitches after the game, removing throws from the catchers and hits. Since you can set the threshold for minimum velocity on recording, you can usually prevent the app from recording catchers’ throws. This season, we’re going to start using it with GameChanger when streaming the games.

I wish that I had an application that would create pitch video season collections online for each of my pitchers so that we could easily review that online. If I had employees or interns, they might be able to manually execute that.

Timing

After players do their individual warmups (bands/weights/plyos), they will do their “every days”, throwing and fielding. This is typically followed by a team warm up, with team captains running the show. Coaches don’t necessarily intervene until 20 minutes into the practice. This allows us to validate the rest of our practice plan and finalize assignments, including the order of bullpens.

Each bullpen consists of 20 pitches and takes about 10 minutes of elapsed time. This includes the player throwing to loosen up a little, resetting all the technology and paperwork, some conference time after 15 pitches and assessment at the end. I keep thinking it can be two throws a minute, but there’s a lot of process around it.

Additional prep

Sometimes, we have a few players allocated to the bullpen session before they toe the rubber there. There are a number of additional tools that they might employ and tasks they might perform to help run a bullpen session.

The easiest tool for us to use is the CleanFuego. Our youth players of any age never have any trouble figuring out how to use the CleanFuego. When I pull it out in a group of old men playing baseball, they spend a lot of thought on how to throw it. It’s honestly as easy as the kids make it. When you throw a pitch with no gyro spin, the ball flies smoothly. When your spin direction is not right, it wobbles. Sometimes, it wobbles crazily. Kids adapt to it in 2 or 3 throws. It’s been great for getting them to impart backspin on their fastballs. So, when we have a couple of extra pitchers getting warm before their bullpen, we break out the CleanFuego.

We expect to start using our Core Velocity Belt this year and I think we will be integrating it into bullpens for warm ups at the start. Having just one Belt, we’ll start cautiously and expand it’s use as we get more comfortable with it.

We also occasionally have players do the tracking. This has ranged from having them just monitor and report on velocity to having them fill out the tracking sheets. As we train them in the process, I do expect that we will eventually be able to have players running the bullpens with coaches able to simply focus on coaching instead of dual-hat work as a data-recorder and coach. When we get to that point, we will likely also run more than one bullpen at a time which will greatly increase our data collection.

The Bullpen Tracking Sheet

Every bullpen is recorded, whether we have technology to provide velocity and other details or not. Simply tracking location, type of pitch and the number of pitches is going to useful over the long haul. In fact, if you don’t want to record or track velocity, just tracking the base data is going to help.

We start by filling out the top part of the bullpen tracking sheet. It’s straightforward to name the pitcher and catcher. Date is also an obvious one.

When I coached Little League, we’d have 2 games a week and I had a pitcher throwing a bullpen every inning. At the start of the season, that pitcher was always the one throwing the next inning. By the end of the season, with players throwing 2, 3 or 4 innings, some of those pitchers were just getting work in. Whether we had 1 or 2 practices in addition to the games, there was never enough practice time. By throwing a bullpen during the game, the player got focused attention and practice one more time. Some coaches will argue that the time is better spent in the dugout learning ‘situational baseball’, but we’d rather have them develop their physical skills whenever we can.

”Record By” was added when it was realized that if a player was marking balls and strikes in the bullpen, they might not have the same criteria as the pitching coach.

The initial version of the sheet didn’t number every pitch, so when left to untrained hands (parents or players) sometimes the pitches weren’t recorded in the order that we expected. So, every cell now has its number from 1-20.

Not every bullpen is the same, but once the pitcher is loose, we have a quick conference on what the pitches are going to be. We might script 5 pitches of three types (FF, CH, CB) and try to throw 60% from the stretch. With some players, like me, it can 100% from the stretch, for simplicity.

The person recording marks the pitch type and whether it’s from the windup or stretch before each pitch, so everyone is on the same page.

At the end of the session, we take a photo of the tracking sheet so it can be loaded onto the iCloud page for that pitcher.

iCloud Notes

We create an iCloud Notes page for each pitcher on our team. As pitch tracking sheets are created, each gets added to the bottom of the page. We add notes on the session, evaluations of the player and plans for future use (in games or in bullpens) at the top of the page. For both sets of information, the most recent image or text is placed at the top to allow quick reference.

Thus far, having them stored on the same page, but with images and text separated seems to provide the most value for us. Since we’ve just had this in use for a single fall season, we’re not yet sure whether to have new pages for new seasons or if all the data for a single pitcher should remain on one iCloud Notes page.

Finally

Hopefully, this gives you a good idea of the logistics, technology and paperwork to set up and record information about your team’s bullpens. I do expect to write more on the process and on what we’ve done when evaluating the data. For me, probably the greatest asset is being able to review objective data and recorded video of our pitchers, rather than just relying on my memory of how well their bullpens went.