When the Walk is Intentional
By: Cindy Bristow

Have you ever had that inning where your opponents have their best hitter up, runners probably on 2nd and 3rd , 1st base open and they very best hitter at the plate. The perfect time for the intentional walk. You feel like a strategy genius calling for it only to watch in horror as your pitcher heaves the ball to the backstop and both runs score. Learn the 6 keys to preventing this from happening by mastering the intentional walk.

It's always amazed me how pitchers can walk batters almost at will when you don't want them to and then the one time you intentionally want to walk someone they can't throw a catchable ball. It's not that intentionally walking someone is that hard, it's just that we never practice the 6 key steps.

Unless you're coaching in the Olympic Games where ISF rules allow you to simply let a batter you want to intentionally walk just march down to 1st base without any pitches being thrown, you're going to have to help your pitcher practice this seldom used skill. Intentionally walking someone is the act of not throwing one single hittable pitch to a certain batter for fear of how well they'll hit it. You typically only do this when nobody is on 1st base since you don't want to move a runner into scoring position by intentionally walking someone. But, if you have a big enough lead, or Crystal Bustos or Manny Ramirez is up with a runner on 1st base you might seriously consider intentionally walking them since their chance of scoring 2 runs on 1 swing is pretty high!

Intentionally walking a batter on 4 straight pitches involves the following steps:

The catcher will get into her catching position behind homeplate, but instead of squatting she will stand up.
The pitcher gets into her position on the rubber with both hands together and looks in to get the signal.
The catcher, while standing up, will stick her throwing hand out to her side even with her shoulder (catcher's throwing hand if the batter is right handed) or her glove hand (if the batter is left handed) signaling for the pitcher to throw a pitch that is outside of the strike zone and about shoulder high.
The pitcher should aim for the middle of the batter's box opposite of where the batter is standing and shoulder high on the catcher.
The pitcher then pitches the ball to this location, the catcher, ready for anything, catches the pitch and throws it back to the pitcher - Ball 1
The catcher returns to her position behind homeplate, stands up and signals for another pitch just like the first one. This continues until 4 pitches have been made outside of the strike zone for an Intentional Walk.

This is not easy to do! Pitchers and catchers need practice doing this since the pitcher is not actually throwing to a real target but an imaginary one - and it's usually an important situation so that's not the time to be doing it for the first time. Just like football practice usually ends with the 2 minute drill, pitching practice should end with the pitcher's doing a few intentional walks, a few pitchouts, then fielding some bunts and groundballs with throws to all 3 bases.