Seven year-old local league, where my son plays, using
Juggs-type pitching machine. Batter gets 7 pitches to put
it into play. If batted ball strikes pitching machine, batter
re-starts his entire count! So it is punishing the defense
because the batter hit the machine. There was a movement to
ammend the rule to make it a deadball/no pitch, but it failed.
Park board reasoned that they know better than the coaches.

In the local "learning to pitch" 7-9 year old league, the strike zone is ankles to shoulders and 6 inches on either side of the plate. The width of this zone means that a baseball called for an inside strike could be almost three feet from a ball called for an outside strike. And since men are going to tend to overestimate 6 inches :) the actual called strike zone is likely to be even wider than that.

Since most pitches at this age have an exaggerated arc, having the ankles be the bottom of the zone means that pitches that land near the front edge of the plate are often technically strikes.

Correction...
 

To Bluezebra....
I would amend that to say

"Local rules are made by local fools."

FED has proven that there have been a couple of non-local rules made by non-local fools.

A long time ago I was league president in a league that used a pitching machine at the 7-8 year old group. We ruled a dead ball single when a batter hit a ball that struck the pitching machine.