"I Throw Strikes But Get Rocked"

Not good, but we can fix it.

“I throw strikes but get rocked”

Ok

Well first, congrats on being good at throwing strikes. That's way harder to teach than the other half of pitching. 

Second, there are a few things that cause this.

Primarily, if you throw a ton of strikes but get hit around you probably don't throw super hard. 

Generally speaking, if you are >88 mph you have enough to be serviceable at most amateur levels. You might not be getting tons of scouting heat with your 88mph heater, but generally speaking you have enough in the tank to produce good outcomes if you optimize everything else. 

BUT

If you do all that, then here is the checklist you need to go down in order to figure it out, again you have done the hard part, everything else is pretty trainable if you work hard. 

Checklist:

Fastball Shape:

“Deadzone” heaters characterize fastballs that have bad movement profiles and don't really add anything to the table. 

At almost any velocity, your fastball being deadzone is going to lead to a lot of hard contact. 

This depends on your armslot and release, but generally speaking, the lower your slot the less vertical movement you will need for it to not be deadzone. 

The higher your slot, the more vertical movement you will need to not be deadzone.

Fastballs around 12-16 inches of vertical break are considered deadzone from an average release point. 

This is an oversimplification, but if you find yourself in this range its a good indicator you need to make a change.

Offspeed Shapes and Pitch design:

This is one that I think almost everyone should prioritize and most people haven't. Growing up, most of us are told our off speed pitches are “good” without much backing. 

Now, really good coaches can generally tell you if your stuff is good or not, especially when basing it off of hitters and their reaction.

But here's the catch, most highschool hitters are terrible. 

Your 88 mph fastball and loopy curveball will get them out simply because they get themselves out. It doesn't mean it will translate to the next level.

I learned the hard way that my slider isn't good when I got to professional baseball. I had to make some changes.  

Now, telling you specifics on what needs to be done here would take so long that I am not going to even try to go down that rabbit hole. 

Here is the Jist, if you throw 88-90 here are some guidelines. 

If you throw a “hard” breaking ball, meaning one that doesn't move a ton but is short/sharp, it needs to be over 82. Not meaning 80-82 I mean this thing should at least be 82-84.

If your breaking ball isn't this fast, this pitch should have more than -15 inches of movement  either vertically or horizontally. 

All this to say: Avoid the middle ground. Pick a side. 

Don't have a hard breaking ball that isn't that hard, and don't have a big mover that doesn't move that much. 

If you can't throw your slider 82-84 then stop trying to throw one that's super hard and try to make it move. 

This arbitrary 82-84 guideline is probably enough to get college hitters out. But the higher you go the higher the requirements will be.

In pro baseball, if you can't throw a small slider at 85-87 it's not going to be good. 

My slider was 82-85 and I was told immediately to ditch it in favor of a sweeper. (a slider with a lot of horizontal movement. 

Pitch Usage and Priority:

This one is easy. Throw your best pitch the most. 

For me. It is my slider. And when I was primarily 2 pitches FB-SL I would have outings where 13/15 pitches would be sliders. 

But now, I throw FB-SL-CT-CH. And I throw probably 40% sliders, 30% cutters, 20% Fastballs and max 10% changeups.

You gotta know what you are good at. My fastball is okay, sometimes it is more than ok. My slider is truly really great, some systems rate it as an elite Major League offering, (Meaning its better than about 90% of major league sliders)

Don't make it complicated, throw the best thing.

Pitching Ahead of Behind:

Even if your stuff is great, pitching behind in counts is going to catch up to you. You are either going to walk guys or hitters are going to sit on whatever pitch you depend on for strikes. 

The most important count in baseball is the 1-1 count, if you find yourself in more 2-1 counts than you do 1-2 counts, you need to prioritize the heart of the plate more and be willing to attack the zone earlier. 

Personally, if I could throw my slider for strikes as often as my cutter I would throw it probably 60-70% of the time. But I don't usually do that. 

So I prioritize getting in the strike zone earlier by throwing a marginally worse offering (my cutter). 

This leads me to better counts,  and hitters hate being behind in the count. This leads to better outcomes. 

Now

If you check all of these boxes off and still get rocked (you need to actually go deeper and spend more time on trackman to see if you really do meet all these criteria.) then there is one more thing you can check

Tipping pitches.

If you are doing something differently dependent on what type of pitch you throw, the other team will probably figure it out.

Take video in games and in bullpens, check to see how you look when you throw each pitch and make sure they are all the same. 

Best of luck, hope this helps.

John