Coaching Pitchers - Joe McFarland

Coaching Pitchers

by Joe McFarland

NEW, 208 pages

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About Coaching Pitchers

Want to improve the mechanics of your pitching staff? Can your pitchers hold runners and field their position? Do you know the finer points of developing pitcher-catcher chemistry? Coaching Pitchers offers complete details on every aspect of the pitching position. This practical guide on pitching will be a valuable reference you’ll turn to again and again.

Challenging technical instruction is communicated effectively through plain talk combined with clear illustrations. Practice drills and training aids provide supportive tools to get the job done. From mental attitude to managing a bullpen, Coaching Pitchers is packed with insights you need to help your pitchers shut down even the most formidable opponents.

Coaching Pitchers offers solid, proven advice from one of the college game’s best pitching coaches. Currently the head baseball coach at James Madison University, Spanky McFarland has coached 55 players on their way to the big leagues (including Kevin Brown of the Los Angeles Dodgers). Now McFarland delivers in book form the same instruction that took these players to the top.

About Joe McFarland

Joe “Spanky” McFarland is the head baseball coach at James Madison University. He started his coaching career in 1977 and has coached at Florida State, Georgia Tech, South Florida, and Northern Illinois University before taking over at JMU in 1998. McFarland has coached 55 pitchers who have signed professional contracts. In 2002, he was named the Colonial Athletic Conference's Baseball Coach of the Year.

Reviews of this book

”Coaching Pitchers is a great learning tool for both pitchers and coaches, from Little League to college ball. If you pitch or coach pitchers, try the ideas of a truly dedicated pitching coach who has worked long and hard at his job and his love.”

Kevin Brown
Los Angeles Dodgers

"This book is an excellent example of why Spanky McFarland is one of the best coaches in the country. If you want to elevate your pitchers and pitching staff, this book is a must!"

Rocky P. Manuel
Head baseball coach
Bellaire High School, Houston, Texas

”Spanky has worked to become one of the finest instructors in pitching fundamentals, mental preparation, and injury prevention as well as the other parts of pitching. This book will benefit any player or coach who wants to better himself on all phases of pitching."

Smoke Laval
Head baseball coach
Louisiana State University

"Spanky is one of the most knowledgeable pitching coaches in baseball. You can get all the ins and outs of how to become a better pitcher in his new book. Learn how to win from one of the best."

Jim Morris
Head baseball coach
University of Miami

From Collegiate Baseball
"One of the classic books ever written on the subject of pitching is Coaching Pitchers by Joe “Spanky” McFarland. Considered one of the gurus of pitching, McFarland's book is a timeless treasure for pitchers and pitching coaches which was first copyrighted in 1985.

From Scholastic Coach & Athletic Director
"Spanky covers the entire waterfront graphically and knowingly...

About Baseball

Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The goal is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot square, or diamond. Players on one team (the batting team) take turns hitting against the pitcher of the other team (the fielding team), which tries to stop them from scoring runs by getting hitters out in any of several ways. A player on the batting team can stop at any of the bases and later advance via a teammate's hit or other means. The teams switch between batting and fielding whenever the fielding team records three outs. One turn at bat for each team constitutes an inning and nine innings make up a professional game. The team with the most runs at the end of the game wins.

Evolving from older bat-and-ball games, an early form of baseball was being played in England by the mid-eighteenth century. This game and the related rounders were brought by British and Irish immigrants to North America, where the modern version of baseball developed. By the late nineteenth century, baseball was widely recognized as the national sport of the United States. Baseball on the professional, amateur, and youth levels is now popular in North America, parts of Central and South America and the Caribbean, and parts of East Asia. The game is sometimes referred to as hardball, in contrast to the derivative game of softball.

In North America, professional Major League Baseball (MLB) teams are divided into the National League (NL) and American League (AL). Each league has three divisions: East, West, and Central. Every year, the major league champion is determined by playoffs that culminate in the World Series. Four teams make the playoffs from each league: the three regular season division winners, plus one wild card team. Baseball is the leading team sport in both Japan and Cuba, and the top level of play is similarly split between two leagues: Japan's Central League and Pacific League; Cuba's West League and East League. In the National and Central leagues, the pitcher is required to bat, per the traditional rules. In the American, Pacific, and both Cuban leagues, there is a tenth player, a designated hitter, who bats for the pitcher. Each top-level team has a farm system of one or more minor league teams. These teams allow younger players to develop as they gain on-field experience against opponents with similar levels of skill.

Coaching Pitchers