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Hitting Approach Theories
by Dave
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
When I was a boy, my favorite science fiction series was Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy. I was very happy when, after I finished reading the trilogy, I discovered he had written more of the same. I believe I read them all though it's hard to be sure. I don't read much fiction these days, let alone science fiction, but in my formative years, it was very important to me. Good fiction is good, at least to me, when it can be extended into real life. Good fiction is even better when it can be extended into sports, especially diamond sports!
One of the elements of the Foundation Series which most intrigued me was a particular group of mathematicians who set out to forecast human behavior based on calculations. While I considered the theory absurd in everyday life, people being rather unpredictable and all that, I could extrapolate it to certain parts of human life such as baseball!
In any aspect of life in which there is a huge volume of actions and reactions, certain patterns develop. They make behavior somewhat, if not completely, predictable. Baseball and softball fit into this universe of high volume action and reaction. I'm certainly not the first person to view them as such. Throughout the sports of baseball and softball, a long sequence of actions and reactions has led to the development of "golden rules" and theories, some of which are essential to playing the game and some of which are questionable at best. We sometimes fall into patterns in which these theories exert too much influence over players and coaches. Today I want to delve into this area as it pertains to mental approaches to hitting though I do so with a little trepidation. There's no way to discuss a subject like this without suffering a bit of criticism. I predict with a high degree of certainty that not everyone will agree with what I have to say on the subject!
Golden RulesThere are a number of theories baseball and softball people carry with them. Some of these are just theories about which there is much disagreement. Some of these are "golden rules" and pretty much everyone agrees with them. Before we get into questioning plain vanilla theories, perhaps we ought to say a word about golden rules.
Golden rules are absolutes. Following them doesn't always necessarily work but over the long-haul, adhering absolutely to them yields the best results. You follow golden rules because over the course of a season, they will result in far more wins than losses. Yet golden rules in baseball don't always work in softball because of differences between the games.
If you read this blog regularly, you know that I advocate most baseball golden rules. That's because they have been so engrained in my head, from my early baseball playing years, that I have trouble deviating from them. The only way I can step away from these rules occurs when, via empirical evidence, I see that they are invalid in fastpitch. Even then, I continue to hold onto them unless they are proven completely wrong repeatedly.
For example, I view the golden rule "never make the first or third out at third base" as an absolute. But I don't hear it uttered all that much in fastpitch and I think that's because it isn't quite as much of an absolute here. Runs come at a higher premium in fastpitch than they do in baseball. Pitching is more dominant in fastpitch. And because the games are shorter, players and coaches feel they must be more aggressive. I can't dispute these facts but still I believe this golden rule works.
The reason you never make the first out at third is because the next batter can bunt you over. If you get bunted over, you can easily score from third on a flyball, more so in baseball than in fastpitch.
From second base, you are already in scoring position, though less so in fastpitch than in baseball. A runner at second almost always makes it home on a basehit to the outfield in baseball. In softball, it is much more difficult yet I would guess that, except at the very highest levels, perhaps even there, the runner will score safely more than 50% of the time.
Still the golden rule is valid because of bunting. If a runner can't make it home from second on a basehit, she still has a better chance to make it to third via the sacrifice than she does if she is out trying to stretch a double into a triple! The reason you never make the third out at third is you can't score while playing defense and being at second ain't so bad. So, to wrap up golden rules and specifically "never make the 1st or 3rd out at third," while I see the wisdom of trying to make third while playing in the 18th inning of ITB, I still believe players should be indoctrinated in the principle and it should be adhered to almost all the time.
TheoriesAside from absolutes, there are a number of theories under which we play this sport. I'm familiar with a bunch of them but certainly not all. Theories are those elements of the game over which there is still some debate. A theory doesn't carry as much weight as a golden rule and can only elevate itself to that stature if it is proven to be correct more than 80% of the time. With hitting, this is virtually impossible and we'll get into that briefly. The point here is, there are a few golden rules in baseball and softball,as well as numerous situational guidelines and other things which are not golden rules. It is these elements of the game about which we most frequently argue. These theories must be examined, tested, and revised based on empirical evidence.
Hitting Mental ApproachI admit that I was raised beliving you never swing at the first pitch. You've got to make the pitcher work. The more pitches a pitcher throws in a game or during a single inning, the more likely your team will score against him or her. If you swing at the first pitch, you are handing the pitcher a gift. You are "helping out" the pitcher. I have known this theory my entire life and never questioned it. Still, when I think of my playing days, I almost always swung at the first pitch! I assumed I was just overly aggressive or mentally too weak to get myself into an 0-1 hole. While that may be true, my limited experience told me that I always saw the best pitch on the first one.
Most baseball and softball people will utter the phrase don't swing at the first pitch. Not many ever question it. But if you look closely, at least one very important hitting coach does, in fact, question the theory.
Charley Lau, Jr. is the son of a major league batting coach. His father taught some of the best hitters in the game including A-Rod, Barry Bonds, Manny Ramirez, and many, many others. He picked up the family business and took it a bit further. The Lau approach is more scientific than their predecessors. The son has an article online which favors swinging at the first pitch. His reasons are purely empirical and impossible to dispute, at least on the surface.
Lau claims, an analysis of "100 of the game's top hitters suggested that (they) ... hit about 70 points higher and slug 130 points higher when they put the first pitch into play than they do in all other plate appearances. In fact, more than 95 percent of the big leaguers hit better and slug better on those 0-0 at bats than in their other bats."
As an aside, I'm using baseball stats because they are more readily available than softball ones. In this day and age, computers allow us to not only calculate a hitter's batting average but to do so in and after every possible count. If you page through baseball web sites, such as Yahoo's MLB stats, you can view the batting averages of individual hitters's in every possible situation: 0-0, 0-1, After (0-1), 0-2, After (0-2), 1-0, After (1-0), 1-1, After (1-1), 1-2, After (1-2), 2-0, After (2-0), 2-1, After (2-1), 2-2, After (2-2), 3-0, After (3-0), 3-1, After (3-1), 3-2, After (3-2).
I was looking initially for stats which would support Lau's theory so I pulled the situational batting stats for A-Rod, Bonds, Ichiro, Jones, Holliday, and Ramirez, arguably the game's best current hitters. I summed up their plate appearances and sorted the data by batting average. Understanding that my work did not involve 100 hitters - I'm too lazy for that - what I found did not support Lau's theory of first pitch hitting.
The 6 hitters collectively hit best on 3-1. To me, that's kind of a no brainer. Hitters hit best when ahead in the count, better still when way ahead. And most MLB hitters will not often swing when up 3-0 (but see below). Also, as you might expect, they collectively did worst when down 0-2. Again, a no brainer. Of the 23 possible scenarios, the best 5 were, in order from the top: 3-1, 3-0, 2-0, 2-1, 1-0. The bottom 5 were, in order from the bottom: 0-2, 1-2, After (0-2), After (1-2), 2-2.
(Just to clear up any confusion I may have caused, the stats I used viewed the batting average of a hitter on a specific count - when he hits the ball into play - and after the count. What I mean is a batter who stands in at 2-1 could end up 3-2 after two more pitches. How he hits on the pitch at 2-1 is necessarily different than how his average at-bat goes on all pitches after a 2-1 count is reached. But we cannot include in the analysis "After (0-0)" since that is every at-bat. And I believe this analysis is more telling than merely looking at batting average on each of the nine possible specific counts, before hitting, walking or making out, because it is a more complete way of viewing things.)
There aren't many surprises in my analysis. I expect it is more than conventional wisdom that the batter does better when he or she is up in the count. But the most interesting item I found while performing this analysis was not only that the batting averages on true "ahead counts" of 3-1, 3-0, 2-0, 2-1, and 1-0 were higher than 0-0, but also the even count of 1-1 and the down count of 0-1 were higher. These batters did better taking a first strike right down the middle than they did first-pitch swinging.
Lau could be forgiven for an incomplete analysis if, for example, the study he cited merely compared first pitch hitting with the players's career batting averages or slugging percentages. That isn;t the complete story, obviously, since in real life batters face all the possible counts many times in their careers. Hitting better 0-0 than one's career average does say that first-pitch hitting is a good idea but there's just more to it than that.
I could offer my own theory or the conventional one, in contravention of Lau, by telling you that you should always take the first pitch but, then again, that would be absolutely wrong too. And this is where I'm trying to take this little lecture.
There are fundamental problems with taking an absolute approach at the plate based on analysis of major leaguers. Of course, we are talking about people who have spent perhaps 30 years perfecting their swings in order to face pitchers who can kill an ant on the face mask of their catchers while throwing 90 miles per hour. Almost everything these batters and pitchers do in a game is entirely on purpose. If every major league hitter walked to the plate taking the first pitch, every major league pitcher would then throw a strike on the first pitch. If every major league hitter walked to the plate looking to hit the first pitch, every major league pitcher would then throw a ball. There are no golden rules which apply to first pitch approaches. They are situationally determined. The same is true for beginner baseball and fastpitch softball at most levels.
Lau's article includes the following comment: "Pitchers, after all, are programmed from the first day they ever toe the rubber to get ahead in the count and throw strikes. That means throw a strike on the first pitch." There's certainly some truth there but I think it is an incomplete thought. If you took away the batter from a major league pitcher and made him pitch a simulated game of simple balls and strikes, unless he entended to throw a ball, I doubt he'd ever throw more than an occassional pitch that got away from him. So, at least at the highest levels, a pitcher is almost always able to throw a strike, if he wants to.
Put a hitter in against our major league pitcher and everything changes. He doesn't want to just throw strikes. Sure he wants to be ahead in the count but getting the batter to swing and miss on a ball is just as good as, perhaps better than, throwing a called strike. Pitchers at the highest levels are not programmed to throw strikes. They are programmed to get hitters out.
In little league baseball and early age group softball, pitchers struggle to throw strikes. Their coaches, the other players, and even their parents try to program them to throw strikes. "Let her hit it!" But once they learn to throw strikes, the next step is to learn to throw balls! "Don't just hand it to her on a platter!!"
In 10U age group ball, the pitcher who can simply throw the ball fast over the plate is often rewarded with the victory. But move it up a few notches and the opposite is true. Even in 12U ball, throwing the ball hard down the middle of the plate is the single best way to get yourself hurt. At 11, we start teaching young girls to hit the corners. Once they master throwing less "perfect strikes," we start teaching them to purposely throw balls just off those corners. By 14U, most if not all outs come on balls out of the strike zone, excluding, of course, called third strikes. In the upper age categories, the pitcher who is most devastating is the one who can come into and outside the strike zone at will. The pitcher who wins has command of her stuff. She throws a strike when she wants to and then tries to get the batter out with balls just outside the zone.
The single most effective high school pitcher I ever watched was a girl who was a master at throwing balls on purpose. During her senior year, there were, I think, just 4 runs scored off her in over 30 games. I was speaking to the head coach of one of two teams which beat her. She had played Div I college ball and had participated in the WCWS one year. She was huge on the mental side of the game. She observed this pitcher through her team's first two games against her, both losses, and saw her again on a couple other occassions when she had the opportunity. She came to the conclusion that this girl never, or at least infrequently, threw a pitch for a strike.
The coach programmed her hitters to take anything that was not in a certain narrow piece of the strike zone. During practices leading up to the game, she made girls run or do push-ups if they swung at anything outside her narrow channel. When I watched the final game between the teams, I was unaware of the strategy being employed. I was surprised at this pitcher's lack of control! Later I asked her pitching coach what had happened. He didn't offer anything up and didn't disagree with my conclusion that she had just had bad control that day. Later I had the discussion with the coach who had figured her out and she told me about the strategy.
I imagine that had this pitcher known her opponent was deliberately narrowing the strike zone down, in terms of what they would swing at, she would have thrown strikes just outside the hitting zone. That's the kind of cat and mouse game which goes on in higher level fastpitch. It's certainly not a situation in which the best pitchers throw a strike on the first pitch.
I'm going to add another little anecdote into the equation. For a long time I had the opportunity to watch 10U girls pitch when they were first beginning to develop change-ups. Almost every time one of these girls would go up 0-2 on a hitter, the next pitch was a change. They never threw one on 0-0. They never threw one 3-0, 3-1, or 3-2. Infrequently, one might be used 0-1, 1-2 or, far more rarely, 2-2. I vowed to never get myself so patterned that I always called a change-up on 0-2 and never any other time.
A few years later, at a higher age group, I found myself calling pitches in a game against a pretty good team. I don't remember specifically what I called because there was no easy pattern to it. But say my pitcher had 5 pitches: fastball(1), change-up(2), screwball(3), drop(4) and curve(5), my pitch calls might have looked something like:
1st batter: 1-1-2-5-2
2nd batter: 2-2-3-5
3rd batter: 4-3-2-5-3
After this game, the opposing coach approached me and asked who had been calling the pitches. I was surprised by the question but felt so reason to refuse to answer it. I said, "I did. Why do you ask?" We then got into a brief discussion about how he was impressed that we didn't just use the change-up on deep 2 strike counts. He noted that in all his experience he almost always saw a change on 0-2 and almost never anytime else. Afterwards I thought about this quite a bit. I didn't deserve any accolades for being different than "everybody" by calling changes in "odd" counts. I have seen many pitchers who seem to use the change only on 0-2 but I have also seen a large number of effective pitchers who do not fall into this trap.
Similarly, I have observed a number of pitchers who always throw strikes on their first pitch of the game and, thereafter, to most batters on the first pitch. These inexperienced pitchers usually do not deliberately throw balls out of the zone unless they are up 0-2. And almost like clockwork, you see them throw a ball on 0-2 and then have trouble getting their release point back after that. This flies in the face of another of our theories (if not a golden rule) to protect the plate aggressively on 0-2 but that's another story for another day. The point is experienced pitchers do not simply try to throw strikes all the time. They pick and choose their spots. It is a cat and mouse game except at the lowest levels.
So, I suppose the question is what do you teach your hitters? What mental approach should you tell them to adhere to when their turn to hit comes? I don't believe it should be always anything. You can't tell them to stand there with a blank look on their face and take the first pitch right down the middle on every at-bat. You really cannot tell them to always swing at the first pitch because it is always the best one they're going to see. It isn't regardless of what some might try to tell you. I suppose the best advice you can give an experienced hitter is to look for "her pitch" on the first pitch but be prepared to take it if it isn't something she can really drive. It's OK to take the first pitch if it isn't something you like. It's also OK to swing at the first pitch if it is in your zone.
I also suppose that the best thing coaches can tell their teams is, you will always examine a pitcher's tendencies during games and sometimes you may tell them to go up there swinging, sometimes you may suggest they take the first pitch, and sometimes you may leave it up to them. Presumably you have signs which instruct your hitter when you want them to take a pitch or swing away aggressively. Presumably you have a bench coach who is offering advice to girls before they step out into the on-deck circle. Presumably the two coaches are "talking" to each other before and during innings at-bat. You ought to be able to observe a pitcher for the first couple of innings and thereby judge what kinds of actions you feel might work against her. If these things are not true, what exactly is it you do during games, flirt with the single parents?
In conclusion, there is no golden rule of hitting which tells a batter to swing or not at the first pitch. The common wisdom that we need to make pitchers work is not necessarily valid since being in an 0-1 or 0-2 hole is an easy way to lower your average. Charley Lau's advice to always go up there swinging because the top 100 MLB hitters do best when they take that approach isn't a panacea since MLB circumstances are somewhat unique and, in fact, my little analysis says somebody got the stats wrong or performed an incomplete analysis. These hitters do not hit best on 0-0 counts. They do quite a bit better when they are up 2-0 and in several other types of counts, not just when they are ahead.
Golden rules are an important part of our sport. So too can theories be important guidelines for playing well. But just as, despite Asimov's fiction, it is not possible to predict what human beings will do at any given moment, there is no mental approach to hitting which should dominate the approach of a batter every time she steps to the plate. Different pitchers, different levels of play, different game and inning circumstances dictate that each at-bat is a new experience. This is a thinking gal's game and no single approach at the plate is going to yield desired results every time up or even a majority of times.Labels: batting, coaching, mental toughness
 
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