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MESA, Ariz. -- Brent Strom preaches to his Diamondbacks the value of pitching inside, but the veteran pitching coach was at a loss for how to drive the message home with something other than just words or statistics.

One night while tossing and turning in bed, he was struck with an idea.

So, this spring, he had his pitchers go over to the team’s hitting and pitching lab at Salt River Fields at Talking Stick and stand in the batter’s box against … themselves.

The D-backs have a pitching machine in the facility that combines a video screen with the machine to mimic the release point, spin rate and break of a pitcher’s arsenal.

So Strom asked them to step in against themselves and get a hitter’s perspective on what it looks like when they pitch inside.

“I want them to feel what a hitter feels when the ball is inside,” Strom said. “I have them stand in both left- and right-handed. I’ll have the machine throw a fastball inside, then I’ll have it throw a slider away so they can see what it looks like after an inside pitch. I’ll have the machine throw a fastball inside and then a fastball outside, and I’ll ask them if they thought the pitch outside looked like a strike. Because when you throw in and then throw away, it affects the way the hitter sees the pitch.”