Pitch out swing and miss9/28/2023 ![]() ![]() If I’m a reliever and want to be fresh for tomorrow, I want to be back in the dugout in less than 15 pitches.īut here’s the thing: pitchers miss their spots even when grooving fastballs. Those cost us much more dearly, as we wasted 5-7% of our available energy (assuming 100 pitches) and got zero outs to show for it. What really hurts pitchers is 3-2 walks, 3-2 hits, 2-2 bloopers. 4 pitches later, I’ve gotten a ground-ball double play and have two outs on five pitches. If you swing at the first pitch, I get a one-pitch out 3 out of 10 times, and now my innings are nice and easy.Īnd even if you get a hit, chances are it’s not a bomb, and I’ve still only thrown one pitch. I’ll even entice you by throwing a bunch of fastballs early in the game. So, as a pitcher, the odds are good for me when you swing at the first pitch. Even the best of you only get a hit 3/10 times and most of you, only 1 in 4. There’s no magic and no advantage to putting bat to ball in a certain count…unless you’re a pitcher. The only difference maker is the hitter – how well can he barrel up the pitch he chooses to swing at? A line drive in an 0-0 count flies just the same as a line drive on a 3-2 count. The count you choose to hit the ball in makes absolutely zero difference as to the outcome. I’m not a hitter, but I know this because I’ve watched it and exploited it personally for many years.īut I used the word EXTRA SURE because if you ground out on pitch #1 too many times… Clayton Kershaw will be pitching into the 9th inning (and no one wants that). Or, they get into an ambush mentality and get too aggressive, making poor decisions on what to swing at because they’re excited to hopefully get a hit in a certain count or situation. Most hitters think it’s their pitch, then realize it’s off-speed or not in the location they initially thought. 632 in 0-0 counts is absurd, and really all he’s doing is narrowing his focus so much that the only pitches exist to him are pitches in the exact location he wants. ![]() Pick only the fastballs down the middle and leave everything else.Īnd that appears to be exactly what Mike Trout does, right? To hit. The resounding commonality between good hitters – at any level – is that they’re better at selecting pitches that give them a higher probability of hitting hard. I’ve pitched since I was 8 years old, including the last 7 years in pro baseball. Only If You’re Extra Sure It’s Your Pitch This is going to lead me to my conclusion for the question, Should A Person Swing at The First Pitch… This photo simply tells us that good hitters (the guys above are All-Stars, and the worst average shown was Catcher Salvador Perez, whose position is widely accepted as defense-first) are good at choosing to swing at pitches they can hit hard, with Mike Trout being unreal at it. Kudos to Ken, as his comment was right on track.
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