fellow Aucklander Jason Matthews<\/a>.<\/p>\nNZ baseball\u2019s weakness<\/p>\n
The lack of early exposure to the sport was most visible in pitching, the throw of the baseball toward home plate to start a play, Crockett said.<\/p>\n
![\"New]()
New Zealander Jason Matthews plays baseball in the minor leagues in the US. Photo \/ Brett Phibbs<\/p>\n
\u201cOur pitching depth is shallow. You need a large enough pitching staff on any team, and at the moment, we don\u2019t have that.\u201d<\/p>\n
While throwing skills from other sports, including cricket, can be transferred to baseball, Crockett said pitching is unique.<\/p>\n
\u201cBowling and pitching are fundamentally different,\u201d she said. \u201cThere\u2019s biomechanics around baseball pitching that are very specific.\u201d<\/p>\n
Strengthening pitching knowledge has become a key focus of the Padres\u2019 visits, with specialist pitching coaches included in both New Zealand visits.<\/p>\n
Learning from spring training<\/p>\n
As part of the partnership, Baseball New Zealand also sent local coaches to San Diego to attend MLB spring training, where players compete for roster spots ahead of the season.<\/p>\n
\u201cSpring training is pretty brutal,\u201d Crockett said. \u201cBut it\u2019s a huge learning opportunity for our coaches to see how high-performance environments actually operate.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those lessons are then brought back to grassroots clubs like the Hamilton Raiders, where the emphasis is on improving coaching quality rather than identifying elite talent.<\/p>\n
Infrastructure challenge<\/p>\n
As a minority sport, baseball competes not only with New Zealand\u2019s major codes for participants, but also for facilities.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe outside of our baseball [diamonds] often becomes part of a corner of a football or rugby field,\u201d Crockett said.<\/p>\n
A standard baseball diamond has 27.4m between bases, with the pitcher standing 18.4m from home plate. <\/p>\n
Outfield distances can stretch beyond 120m to centre field, making it difficult to fit regulation diamonds into shared spaces.<\/p>\n
![\"A]()
A Hamilton Raiders hitter takes a swing at Mahoe Park. Photo \/ Tom Eley<\/p>\n
There is only one purpose-built baseball diamond in New Zealand, located in Hamilton\u2019s Mahoe Park.<\/p>\n
The Hamilton diamond acts as a national training facility, Crockett said. <\/p>\n
Another diamond is under development in Auckland\u2019s Unsworth Heights, Crockett said.<\/p>\n
Despite the challenges, Crockett believes international support can help baseball continue to carve out its place in New Zealand.<\/p>\n
\u201cAny time you get access to that level of expertise, it lifts the whole system,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Tom Eley is a multimedia journalist at the Waikato Herald. He previously worked for the Weekend Sun and Sunlive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThey see talent down here and raw talent. [The Padres] know that we\u2019re athletic.\u201d Among the talent that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":521153,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2407],"tags":[12144,5,4756,1477,33096,16928,845,2044,1371,14,12896,3353,4815,69143,24015,4,43,17099,7879,5534,69145,844,137,18,4339,4338,4825,964,417,5557,25816,69144,4826,1984],"class_list":["post-521152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego-padres","tag-americas","tag-baseball","tag-been","tag-biggest","tag-clubs","tag-coaches","tag-diego","tag-football","tag-from","tag-game","tag-hamilton","tag-have","tag-international","tag-kiwi","tag-lift","tag-mlb","tag-padres","tag-partner","tag-pitch","tag-raiders","tag-rugby","tag-san","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-padres","tag-sandiego","tag-sandiegopadres","tag-taking","tag-their","tag-to","tag-under","tag-used","tag-usually","tag-wing","tag-with"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115897302194157400","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=521152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521152\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/521153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=521152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=521152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=521152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}