{"id":74,"date":"2010-04-01T05:38:09","date_gmt":"2010-04-01T10:38:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/?p=74"},"modified":"2010-05-09T04:38:03","modified_gmt":"2010-05-09T09:38:03","slug":"patience-is-for-suckers-the-case-for-swinging-first-ball-fastball-by-justin-abramson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/archives\/74","title":{"rendered":"Patience is for Suckers: The Case for Swinging First-ball, Fastball"},"content":{"rendered":"
April 1, 2010<\/div>\n

Many coaches teach that the best way to approach hitting is to work the count against a pitcher.\u00a0 After all, the more pitches a pitcher must throw, the better chance a hitter has to time his delivery, get a sense for his stronger and weaker pitches and learn what he might throw in certain situations.\u00a0 This not only helps the hitter, these coaches argue, but also the team.\u00a0 If a pitcher consistently has to throw four or more pitches to every hitter, he will be out of the game relatively quickly, even if he is pitching effectively.<\/p>\n

As a hitter, I always looked at it differently.\u00a0 I felt that the first pitch I saw during an at-bat was often the best one.\u00a0 I also believed that as I got deep into the count, the pitcher would be able to dictate the at-bat more and force me to swing at pitchers\u2019 pitches.\u00a0 Further, true in all levels of baseball but especially in high school, pitchers are taught above all to get ahead of the hitter. <\/em>This usually means that on the first pitch, pitchers will try to throw a strike, typically a fastball.\u00a0 Very rarely will a pitcher start off by trying to get a hitter to chase an offspeed pitch out of the zone.\u00a0 This only begins to happen when pitchers are already ahead of hitters\u2014perhaps after the hitter has taken a quick strike or two.<\/p>\n

Looking at the numbers, here are the batting averages by count in MLB:
\n0-0 = .344
\n1-0 = .341
\n2-0 = .351
\n3-0 = .394
\n0-1 = .324
\n1-1 = .327
\n2-1 = .338
\n3-1 = .368
\n0-2 = .166
\n1-2 = .178
\n2-2 = .195
\n3-2 = .233
\nSource: Baseball FactoryBlog: A Premier Scouting Partner for Baseball America <\/em>http:\/\/baseballfactory.com\/blog\/labels\/batting%20average.html<\/a><\/p>\n

Looking at these numbers, one thing becomes clear\u2014the only hitter\u2019s counts better by a statistically significant amount than the first pitch are 3-0 and 3-1.\u00a0 This makes sense\u2014in these situations, pitchers are often forced to throw a fastball strike or risk a walk\u2014a \u201cfree pass\u201d.\u00a0 Conversely, once a hitter gets two strikes on him, his batting average drops like a rock.\u00a0 This also makes sense, because when a pitcher has worked an 0-2 or 1-2 count, he can afford to throw an offspeed pitch outside the strike zone in hopes that the hitter will chase.\u00a0 The hitter also has to protect the plate, meaning that if the pitch is close, he has to swing.<\/p>\n

Further, home runs occur most often in MLB on the first pitch\u2014more often than in any other count.\u00a0 0-0 counts also see the most doubles, triples and RBI.\u00a0 While of course some of this can be explained by the fact that every hitter sees a 0-0 count in every at-bat, it also leads me to believe that hitters, when coming up to the plate looking to be aggressive, can jump on that first pitch well if the pitcher is just trying to get ahead in the count.<\/p>\n

Finally, we can take a look at the OBP numbers for after the appropriate count.\u00a0 This is calculated slightly differently because obviously, no one (not even Barry Bonds<\/strong> in 2001) can walk on anything other than a three-ball count, so the OBP for 1-0 represents the OBP for all hitters who begin their at-bat with ball one, regardless of how many more pitches they see:
\n1-0 .394
\n2-0 .516
\n3-0 .760
\n0-1 .281
\n1-1 .321
\n2-1 .404
\n3-1 .595
\n0-2 .211
\n1-2 .242
\n2-2 .306
\n3-2 .263
\nHere, we see a much sharper rise from 1-0 to 3-0.\u00a0 However, more interesting is that we see a fall <\/em>in OBP from 2-2 to 3-2.\u00a0 We do see OBPs rise for non-two-strike counts.\u00a0 Contrary to batting average, OBP is actually better on 2-1 than on 1-0.\u00a0 Still, the biggest thing to notice is that the two-strike OBPs represent three of the lowest four on the chart.\u00a0 Sure, great hitters like Luke Appling <\/strong>may have been able to foul pitches away (once even 24 in an at-bat!) until they found one they liked, but in reality, the advantage is to the pitcher in these situations.<\/p>\n

In conclusion, I would draw the conclusion that if you have runners on in front of you and are trying to get a base hit to drive them in, taking pitches and getting deep in the count would be a horrible <\/em>idea.\u00a0 If you are trying to start an inning off, it\u2019s still not a good idea to get too deep in the count because two-strike counts lead to the poorest OBPs, but taking pitches makes more sense in this situation.<\/p>\n

I certainly don\u2019t expect everyone to agree, not only because this is anathema to conventional wisdom on the game today, but because my baseball career was the shortest of all of this blog\u2019s contributors.\u00a0 But in one hitter\u2019s opinion, the best way to hit with a two-strike count is to not get in one.
\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

April 1, 2010 Many coaches teach that the best way to approach hitting is to work the count against a pitcher.\u00a0 After all, the more pitches a pitcher must throw, the better chance a hitter has to time his delivery, get a sense for his stronger and weaker pitches and learn what he might throw […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12,18,6,13],"tags":[98,97,95,100,99,96],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76,"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74\/revisions\/76"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}