Pitching and Pitchers Discussion Indoor Pitching Mats

[ChrisDennis13]

I am fortunate enough to have a basement that is tall enough and long enough to allow my daughter to pitch indoors during our cold winter months. So we modified our basement enough to set up a hitting and pitching area. Upgraded to a nice heavy net, a plate to hit with, tee, a pitching plate with zones, a nice mat to stand on when hitting, and most important of all a good automotive creeper seat for Dad to sit on (if you are still using a bucket to catch I highly recommend!). Then things get a little more "home grown", don't judge.

We started with just power lines on the concrete with duct tape. Which worked, but then we (yes daughter and I) thought we could do better. Then we made our own pitching mat, you know, indoor/outdoor carpet, rubber, painted a power line on it. Well it looked great for about 2 months. Now that we are getting late into the winter, she has worn a hole in the carpet and the painted lines have a definite drag leg pattern missing. While I think we can make this work until it warms up outside (hopefully another month or so), it may be time for an upgrade.

I have 2 questions for you guys and gals.

#1. Do you have a good pitching mat that you recommend? I see pricings from $150 to $400. Which one is good to get and will outlast our $40 home made jobber. I am hoping for multiple seasons out of it.

#2. What homemade contraptions have you made for softball training?

 

[yocoach]

I used a 3/8" 4'x8' piece of this to make a very durable pitching mat for our indoor facility. "Elephant Bark" Rubberized Flooring (rubbercal.com) I put a thin piece of 2" wide by 24" long steel plate on the underside of the mat and drilled my holes for the rubber pitching plate I bought on Amazon. Amazon.com : macgregor pitching rubber. All in I had around $200 in it. I've also made them for around $20 when I found a piece of old conveyor belt from a coal mine while visiting the in-laws in WV. I know there's several conveyor manufacturers/repair facilities across our state for the coal industry and the mining industry in general. Maybe there's one within a reasonable driving distance near you. Often times they'll be happy to get rid of old conveyor belt instead of paying to have it hauled off. If you go that route, beg borrow or steal a battery operated saws-all.

I've made Pitching Mats, Quant tee, the board (hitting aid), saved the bottle caps off of the 5 gal water cooler water jugs and used them for ball tracking drills, a framework to be able to stack stuff in my tournament wagon ( I can carry my tent, 2 camping chairs, 2 buckets of balls, my radio/speaker, and 2 bownets in one trip) and numerous other silly things.

 

[DanMaz]

made a few of these myself over the years. Using a piece of rubber mat seems to be the best. Use white tape down the middle for a power line. You can use screws if you want or i used some heavy duty wide Velcro tape on the rubber mat and back of the pitching rubber. Works well. You can bring these mats to indoor facilities on turf and it helps keeping the turf in good shape and lets the pitcher pitch from a some what normal surface and pitching rubber. I also bought one of those rubber foam fake grass roll up mats with the power line already painted on it and pitching rubber already glued to it. Its kind of bulky and the thickness doesn't allow it to set flat on the ground so it may get in the way of balls hit to the pitcher during games. The rubber ones lay flat.