Free Pitch Charting for Bullpen Sessions

Charting on a clipboard today? Print a blank chart from our pitch tracking printables: strike zone grids and bullpen logs for baseball and softball, sized for 8.5 x 11 paper.

What a pitching chart tells you that a pitch count cannot

A pitch counter answers one question: how many. A pitching chart answers the ones a coach acts on. Which pitch can this pitcher throw for a strike today? When the fastball misses, does it miss high, low, or off to one side? Is the changeup a real pitch yet, or a strike once in five tries? None of that survives ten minutes after the pen is over, and none of it shows up in a season stat line.

A chart is also something you can hand to the player. “You were wild today” gives a pitcher nothing to work with. Eleven of fourteen misses finishing high gives them one thing to work on and a number to beat next week.

How to chart a bullpen

Stand behind the catcher so you see each pitch the way the chart is drawn. The grid is the catcher’s view: five cells by five, the middle three by three is the strike zone, and the ring around it is where a miss finished. Left and right are the catcher’s left and right.

1. Check everyone throwing. Type each pitcher’s name and tap Add, pick baseball or softball, then start. Two or three pitchers can be charted at once, and each gets their own pen. With an account you tap them off your roster instead.
2. Pick the pitch. Fastball is selected to start. Tap a different pitch button whenever the pitch changes. Each button shows how many of that pitch have been thrown.
3. Tap where it finished. One tap on the grid logs the pitch, and strike or ball comes from the cell. Undo removes the last pitch.
4. Move between pitchers. Tap a name in the chips under the header, or swipe, to chart the next one. Each pen keeps its own count.
5. Finish and go over it. Tap Finish and walk through the pen with the pitcher while it is still fresh.

Only need a count? Switch to Count only and each pitch is one tap on its pitch button, with no location. Change pitches sets which pitch buttons show, so a pitcher with a fastball and a changeup only sees two.

What you see when the pen is done

• A heat map of where the pitches finished. Filter it by pitch type to see one pitch at a time.
• Strike %, overall and for each pitch.
• Where the misses went: left, right, high and low.
• The pitch log, every pitch in the order it was thrown.

Save image turns the pen into a picture you can text to the player or a parent.

What is a good strike percentage?

Strike % is the most useful number on a youth pitching chart, because walks decide a lot of youth games, and at 9 and 10 they dominate. The finished pen grades strike % at these same cutoffs:

Sixty percent is the number most youth coaches chase. Worth saying out loud: a bullpen strike % runs higher than a game strike %, because nobody is standing in the box. Compare a pitcher to their own pens, not to their game numbers.

Reading the miss pattern

Where the misses bunch up is often a mechanical tell, and it is the part of a chart most coaches never get down on paper. The chart counts each miss on both axes, so a pitch that finishes high and to the left counts as high and as left. If the misses are spread evenly, it says so instead of inventing a pattern out of four pitches.

Left and right are the catcher’s. The catcher faces the pitcher, so for a right-handed pitcher the catcher’s left is the arm side and the catcher’s right is the glove side. For a lefty it flips.

Some common starting points for an overhand pitcher. They are places to look, not diagnoses, and every pitcher is built differently, so watch the delivery before you change anything:

• Misses to the arm side (the catcher’s left for a righty). Often the front side opening early, or the pitcher rushing and leaving the arm behind the body.
• Misses to the glove side. Often overthrowing and pulling across the body.
• Misses high. Often a ball let go too early, or a lower half that quits before the arm gets there.
• Misses low. Often a ball held too long, or fatigue late in the pen, which is why the order in the pitch log matters.

Give it a full pen before you coach off it. For the work behind these fixes, see the youth pitcher development guide. An underhand release reads differently; the fastpitch pitcher development guide covers softball.

How many pitches should a bullpen be?

In season, a common pattern for youth pitchers is one bullpen a week of roughly 20 to 30 pitches. That is enough to work on one thing without piling fatigue on top of game work.

The part that gets missed: bullpen pitches are not in the official pitch count, but they still tire the arm. A 30-pitch bullpen on Tuesday and a 70-pitch start on Saturday is 100 pitches of work that week, and that is the number worth managing. For game pitches, our pitch count tracker covers daily limits and rest days by age.

Charting a softball pitcher

Pick Softball before you start and the pitch buttons change to the fastpitch set: fastball, changeup, drop and rise, with the curve, screwball and drop curve under Change pitches. Everything else works the same way.

Rise and drop balls make the up and down half of the chart do more of the work. A rise ball that finishes at the top of the zone and one that finishes belt high are both strikes, but they are very different pitches. Filter the heat map by pitch to see which one you are getting. The fastpitch pitcher development guide covers what to look for in each.

Free pitching chart vs a Dugout Edge account

Everything on this page is free and needs no account. Pens are saved on the phone you charted them on, so a locked screen or a refresh mid-pen does not lose your work, and your recent pens are listed under the chart. Clearing your browser data does clear them. If you make an account later, tap Keep pens and the pens on this phone come with you.

Frequently asked questions