Quote Originally Posted by WSOPdawg View Post
Regarding Foxhall's pitching philosophy: Get up 0-2 as quick as you can to give the batter the opportunity to get himself out swinging at an out-of-the-zone pitch.

So if you're the opposing coach, surely you've reminded your batter to expect the next couple of pitches to be out of the zone. Hence, don't help the pitcher. Our counter should be to find strike 3 as fast as possible (ie, no nibbling), thereby greatly reducing all of the BB's after an 0-2 count (originating from our SPer starting to nibble). This also allows the SPer to get deeper into the 6th or 7th inning as opposed to 100+ pitches after on 4 innings.

Is Foxhall's pitching philosophy "dated"? Shouldn't or SPers be taught to catch the hitter by surprise more (cuz I remember a lot of 0-2 count, but very few K's on the next pitch sans Landon Sims)?
To my understanding...

Foxhall wants our guys to pitch up in the zone to generate swings and misses and rack up K's. Which is a big reason why we led the SEC in K's a couple of years ago.

Best way to get ahead 0-2 IMO- THROW STIKES- don't nibble trying to get guys to chase. HAVE TO locate. When you nibble hitters in the SEC more often will take- and then they'll eliminate pitches and sit on your fastball if they get ahead in the count.

Foxhall's style works great for some pitchers- like Landon Sims. But it takes a skill set to pitch like that. Which Landon had. Hard four seam fastball with lots of MPH's and RPM's on it.

The thing about pitchers is they are all different. But because of that your pitching coach can't have a one size fits all philosophy. You wouldn't ask Greg Maddux to pitch like Nolan Ryan. But both are HOF pitchers.

Some pitchers need to pitch down in the zone. Like if they have a lot of sink and don't throw as hard.

What happened last season is we had some guys that were scared to live up in the zone- so they nibbled or overthrew. Which led to getting behind in counts. Which led to baserunners. That was partially due to the recruiting gap between Henderson and Foxhall who had two different philosophies.

Foxhall did a really shitty job with our staff last year.