I want to focus on youth baseball and how to teach prospective pitchers the art of pitching. I don’t want to focus on the Major Leagues or college ball today. They do so because they expect to be entering many games in the middle of an inning with runners on base, and therefore choose to only focus on the stretch position. There are many relief pitchers, however, who pitch exclusively out of the stretch. As a result, a pitcher often has the option of throwing from the windup in this situation, though it may still not be advisable, due to the large lead the runner will take. The exception to this rule comes with a runner on third most team will not attempt a steal of home plate, even in this scenario. In fact, if a pitcher throws out of the windup with runners on base, the runner will almost certainly steal the base successfully. The main reason they do this is because the set position makes it much easier to hold base runners on and limit their chances of stealing a base. This is true for almost all starting pitchers – they start with the windup and move to the stretch when runners are on base.
Most of the time, you’ll see the windup with no one on base, and the set (commonly referred to as the stretch) position when a base or bases are occupied.
Most baseball fans, and certainly all pitchers, are familiar with the two main, and legal ways to deliver a baseball to home plate: The Windup and The Set Position.
