Speed of softball pitch

[SNIPERBBB]

Ship your guys here, id love to have them. Our guys here wont enforce the 6 ft minimum. Balls that barely reach the waist are called legal an alarming amount of time. The mat is the most evil device ever to be instituted. The only time they are to be used is if you have to pull clueless people out of the stands to umpire.

[prekowski]

Originally Posted by SNIPERBBB

Ship your guys here, id love to have them. Our guys here wont enforce the 6 ft minimum. Balls that barely reach the waist are called legal an alarming amount of time. The mat is the most evil device ever to be instituted. The only time they are to be used is if you have to pull clueless people out of the stands to umpire.

I cant possibly know how accurate your guys are at determining the lower limit (6 ft). What I can tell you is, that from a batters perspective, when you have a 6 ft pitch, about 97 out of a 100 batters will complain that pitch is too low. And those 3 out of a hundred who say no it is not too low are probably pitchers who have put in the time to determine how high a 6 ft pitch actually is. When I was practice pitching, I took two string lines on either side of the plate and ran them from the 6 ft height at pitchers rubber and tied it to the backstop so the lines when very taught were close to 6 ft between plate and rubber (plus or minus an inch) and demonstrated it to many guys and they were astounded at how low a pitch really was that was just above the string.

With regard to mat versus strike zone, be careful what you ask for. If you have guys that are bad calling mat ball when all you leave to judgment by the ump is one dimension (the vertical dimension i.e. height) and you put them calling strike zone where they have to make a judgment in 3 dimensions (vertical, horizontal and depth) then you are going to have a nightmare. That is the good thing about mat ball, it gives the batter much more ability to determine what is going to be called a strike because in the one area of judgment, the batter is told verbally by the ump if it is illegal, while the pitch is in flight, and the other two dimensions are cut and dry as it is either going to hit the mat or it isn't.
I am the first to admit umpires are human and subject to mistake just like everybody else and their judgment is not always going to be right (remember I was an ump too and know that as well as anybody) but when you have umpires that get paid to do their job, and they don't make the effort to try and improve their ability to judge by practice, and continue to make the same mistakes over and over, then they are deserving of criticism.
To some umpires, at least the ones I have experienced, their attitude is "my word is the law, even if I am not so good at interpreting the law and if you don't like my interpretation of the law", they will yell "QUIT RESISTING" as they beat you into submission.

[SNIPERBBB]

Originally Posted by prekowski

I cant possibly know how accurate your guys are at determining the lower limit (6 ft). What I can tell you is, that from a batters perspective, when you have a 6 ft pitch, about 97 out of a 100 batters will complain that pitch is too low. And those 3 out of a hundred who say no it is not too low are probably pitchers who have put in the time to determine how high a 6 ft pitch actually is. When I was practice pitching, I took two string lines on either side of the plate and ran them from the 6 ft height at pitchers rubber and tied it to the backstop so the lines when very taught were close to 6 ft between plate and rubber (plus or minus an inch) and demonstrated it to many guys and they were astounded at how low a pitch really was that was just above the string.

With regard to mat versus strike zone, be careful what you ask for. If you have guys that are bad calling mat ball when all you leave to judgment by the ump is one dimension (the vertical dimension i.e. height) and you put them calling strike zone where they have to make a judgment in 3 dimensions (vertical, horizontal and depth) then you are going to have a nightmare. That is the good thing about mat ball, it gives the batter much more ability to determine what is going to be called a strike because in the one area of judgment, the batter is told verbally by the ump if it is illegal, while the pitch is in flight, and the other two dimensions are cut and dry as it is either going to hit the mat or it isn't.
I am the first to admit umpires are human and subject to mistake just like everybody else and their judgment is not always going to be right (remember I was an ump too and know that as well as anybody) but when you have umpires that get paid to do their job, and they don't make the effort to try and improve their ability to judge by practice, and continue to make the same mistakes over and over, then they are deserving of criticism.
To some umpires, at least the ones I have experienced, their attitude is "my word is the law, even if I am not so good at interpreting the law and if you don't like my interpretation of the law", they will yell "QUIT RESISTING" as they beat you into submission.

We get a lot of guys that play USSSA and ASA and when they pitch ASA, they'll try to get away with a lot of low pitches if you dont enforce the limit.

[prekowski]

Originally Posted by SNIPERBBB

We get a lot of guys that play USSSA and ASA and when they pitch ASA, they'll try to get away with a lot of low pitches if you dont enforce the limit.

Enforcing the limit is all I ask for, but when you have umpires consistently calling a 6 to 7.5 ft pitch illegal, that to me is incompetence. Like I say a mistake in judgment here and there on a 6 to perhaps 6.33 ft pitch is going to happen, and no human can be faulted for that.

I will admit, that as a slow pitch hitter in my approximate first 35 years of playing slow pitch, I too would believe a 6 ft to 6.5 ft pitch was too low. But after becoming an umpire an umpire 4 years ago (taking a year off of playing), and a pitcher in the last year, and studying in the field the actual height of a 6 to 6.5 ft pitch, I have had a rude awakening that pitches that are pitched at near the 6 ft limit have to be at or above it unless it is pitched at and obviously excessive speed. You will note when I say first 35 years of playing, that I started playing at approximately 20 years old, so you can do the math to figure out my age.

[SWFLguy]

The mat. The local leagues back in CNY wanted it, because they thought it would make more constant ball/strike calls by mostly incompetent local umpires. I hated it. It was at its worst in the women's league where there were some pitchers who had trouble hitting the mat! Batters would come up, look at four balls miss the mat and trot down to 1st base thinking they had done some great feat of softball. I felt like asking them why did they bother bringing a bat with them. I wonder if they got rid of the mat after I moved down here.

[SNIPERBBB]

Originally Posted by prekowski

Enforcing the limit is all I ask for, but when you have umpires consistently calling a 6 to 7.5 ft pitch illegal, that to me is incompetence. Like I say a mistake in judgment here and there on a 6 to perhaps 6.33 ft pitch is going to happen, and no human can be faulted for that.

I will admit, that as a slow pitch hitter in my approximate first 35 years of playing slow pitch, I too would believe a 6 ft to 6.5 ft pitch was too low. But after becoming an umpire an umpire 4 years ago (taking a year off of playing), and a pitcher in the last year, and studying in the field the actual height of a 6 to 6.5 ft pitch, I have had a rude awakening that pitches that are pitched at near the 6 ft limit have to be at or above it unless it is pitched at and obviously excessive speed. You will note when I say first 35 years of playing, that I started playing at approximately 20 years old, so you can do the math to figure out my age.

It really isnt that hard to judge a pitch making the 6ft limit, especially when most male pitchers are going to be around 6 ft tall on average. Ive been umpiring, not necessarily a sanctiomed umpire those first years since before I could legally drive. Helps thst my dad was a former U-trip state tournament official.

[Linknblue]

I am in frustrated agreement with Prekowski's assessment of how a lot of umpires call good low pitches illegal. I too play and umpire.

It was a real eye opener to see the 6' pitch with a measuring device. Several of us tried to pitch at exactly the 6' height and found pitch speed is definitely ciritical to executing this pitch using the mat as a "zone".

It's really funny with players. They will complain about every 6 footer being too low but they'll not complain about the 12 and 13' pitches that consistently are not called. I find the higher pitches harder to hit than the lower pitches....but if you want to hit the lower pitches you have to be ready for one....higher pitches give you some decision time on whether to swing or not.

I haven't called many games with a real "zone" in slowpitch but when I did I enjoyed it more that a "mat zone" assignment. Like FP, you have to stay in the game.

It all comes down to a "physical" demonstration and a consistent UIC/Assignor to make sure his/her umpires call heights correctly.

[chapmaja]

When I umpire, I think it is pretty simple for me to judge the six foot limit. I am 5-9. My eye are usually about 5-0 when I get into a set position. I better be looking up seeing the ball come in on a pitch. If I am not having to look up, the pitch is too low.

I personally have more trouble with the 10 foot (or in our league 12 foot still) rather than the 6 foot.