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To Swing Or Take On 3-0
by Dave
Friday, September 26, 2008
As usual, I wrote a post the other day in which I casually mentioned something which resulted in a more or less minor philosophical question from a reader. I don't generally write additional posts on such things unless the mood strikes me. Given the state of American politics and economics, anything that focuses my mind on other things is good. So I have chosen to write too much on an unimportant issue in order to keep my mind off this mess. You can read it in that spirit too, if you like.
The other day I wrote, "one of the early instructions we give them is to take a pitch when the count is 3-0." After the piece was posted, I received a question which was as follows: "Some of our coaches prefer that girls not swing on a 3-0 pitch, while others are adamant that the girls should swing away. At what level is it best to begin teaching softball players to take a pitch?"
My response was: "the correct age to teach girls not to swing on 3-0 counts is 1U. That is not a typo. Girls (and boys for that matter) should be taught to always take a 3-0 pitch from the moment they are out of the womb."
I understand that some folks will disagree with the point. There is nothing you can say in an either/or, yes/no setting with which everyone is going to agree. I could say, for example, "you should always bunt in ITB" and someone is going to reply "we never bunt because that's exactly what they expect us to do." But while I understand there is plenty of room for disagreement on even certain fundamental points of this great game of ours, I'm not willing to yield on the issue of taking on 3-0. Here's why no matter what anybody ever shows or tells me, I insist hitters always take on 3-0.
The first traunch of what I have to say is, how did the pitcher get to 3-0 to begin with? Obviously, she did so by throwing 3 balls. But why did she throw 3 straight balls. I see the answer to this as falling into one of a few possibilities.
Maybe the pitcher was being too fine - trying to get the batter to swing on balls out of the strike zone. I'd be surprised if she did precisely that all the way to a 3-0 count. I can see the first two but after that, she's got to get herself back into it.
Maybe the umpire has closed up the zone too much. That certainly can change on 3-0. I've seen umpires call things very close and then, on 3-0, call a strike on a pitch which was a ball just a moment ago. There's nothing anyone can do about that. If the 3-0 pitch was really a ball and the ump called it a strike, so be it. Hopefully he or she reinstates the same strike zone on the following pitches.
Maybe the pitcher has lost her release point. We've all seen a girl do that and then find it again later. It sort of depends on how far out of the zone she has gone. And when she finds the point again, there's no telling whether she'll be throwing it down the middle or not.
Maybe this hitter has a reputation and the pitcher is issuing one of those unintentional, intentional walks. Or maybe the pitcher doesn't know this hitter but she doesn;t like the looks of her. Depending on the game and inning situation, she may not want to pitch to this kid. The first three balls were really on purpose and so will the fourth one be.
Whatever the reason for the 3-0 count, I would suggest to you that ball 4 is a likely event. If the pitcher was being too fine deliberately, she may come back with a strike. Or, having deliberately thrown 3 balls outside the zone, she may have trouble finding it again. If the ump closed down the zone, he or she may not open it back up again. On the other hand, the ump may be more liberal on 3-0. There's no good way to know until the next call and there's nothing you can do about it. If the pitcher lost her release point, she may regain it on this pitch. Again, nothing you can do about it. If she was pitching around a hitter, there's a pretty good chance she will do so again, especially when you consider that she really doesn't want to groove one.
I suppose those who suggest one should always swing away on 3-0 expect that the pitcher most likely lost her release point or was deliberately pitching too fine. They expect now that she'll either throw one down the middle to get back into the count or as she tries to find herself. They expect something fat on 3-0. They may get it. And, they reason, if the hitter is not swinging away, she's going to miss the best pitch in the at-bat.
But I guess I wonder, what is so tremendously different about the now 3-1 count - after taking all the way on 3-0? From a pitcher's point of view, she is still behind. If she was being too fine, she still has the negative feedback from balls 1 to 3 which will cause her to throw another meatball, if she really wants to get back into the count, if she really doesn't want to walk her. If she lost her release point and then got it back by throwing a fat pitch down the middle, odds are better than not that the next one will look about the same.
I guess what I'm trying to point out to you is that you don't lose anything much by watching a fat pitch go right by you. The next one is probably going to be just as fat. If she is deliberately pitching around you, you may know this. If you do, you aren't going to swing on 3-0. Perhaps you won't even get prepared to swing. And if the cause of the 3-0 pitch is the umpire, as I said, there isn't much you can do anyway. But if the ump was calling things too fine for the first 3 pitches and is now about to broaden the zone, how would the pitcher know this in advance? She wouldn't. If she wants to get back into the count, she'll probably groove one to get into the ump's zone from the previous 3 pitches. And if she grooves on on 3-0, no matter how good she is, she may accidentally groove another on 3-1.
I view the 3-0 pitch as an opportunity, not so much an opportunity to drive the fat pitch, but rather an opportunity to freely watch the pitcher through her wind-up and to the release. We often take it for granted that when a batter sees more pitches from any given pitcher, she will be better prepared later. 3-0 is the free opportunity to watch one additional pitch by this particular pitcher. If the umpire permitted hitters to stand in the batter's box during warm-ups, who wouldn't take advantage of that? This is a similar opportunity.
The next traunch of my reasoning is the longer you can keep a pitcher in the circle, the more likely she is to make a mistake. We don't think of game pitch counts as being particularly important in softball. Some girls can throw 300 pitches in a day. But inning pitch counts are important. They are important because: 1) physically most girls' speed and ball rotation rates will fall towards the end of an inning - performance tends to start dropping around 15-20 pitches; and 2) mentally, pitchers tend to lose focus at about the same point. On a percentage basis, more pitchers will give up more and better hits later in any particular inning because they are temporarily tired, whether physically or mentally. If you are at 3-0 and take a strike, you have at least added one more pitch to her inning pitch count. If the pitch is a ball, there's a decent chance you have added several pitches. It may not add up to a hill of beans since perhaps two or three other hitters will ground out or pop up first pitches. But making a pitcher throw more in any at-bat makes it more likely that she will throw too many pitches in the inning and thereby set up the chain of events in which she starts giving up hits.
Another facet of taking the 3-0 pitch is, whether the pitcher is being fine, has lost her release point or maybe just was a little cautious with you and got behind because the ump closed things up, when she watches you apparently "looking for a walk," she may lose a bit of respect. She may decide that you can't hit her and you know that you can't. I can tell you that on more than one occassion when I was calling pitches, I have fallen into this trap. And when I pitched in baseball, I also sometimes fell for this. If the pitcher falls into the trap of losing any sort of respect for the hitter, chances go up dramatically that the 3-1 will be grooved, thereby giving you an even better opportunity.
The best way I can prove my reasoning is to ask anyone with time on their hands to go and perform a little data gathering exercise. Now, I'm really trying to kill time and avoid reading or listening to anything about politics. My test, experiment or data gathering exercise involves observing a representative sample of 3-0 pitches. I want you to record these on a pad of paper using a very simple set of criteria and then analyze your findings. So get a pad of paper (at least 4 or 5 sheets), a pencil, and a clipboard. This will make you look really important at the fields. If you want real fun, buy yourself a shirt and/or hat with some college (UCLA, Arizona, Tennessee, etc.) logo on it. If you can, find one that says X softball or X athletics. Do this especially if you happen to be looking at a 10U/12U game or a high school one. And if someone asks if you are from the University of Tennessee, just mumble "hmmm," step away from them, and go about your business. They will spend the rest of that game trying to figure out who you are scouting. And later, when they see you at another tournament, they'll tell their friends that you are a college coach from X.
Take your pad of paper and draw 2 columns in the middle of the page of three or four sheets. Draw a fat line down and make 2 additional columns to the right of the first two columns, then skip some space and make one final column. On the left side, number from 1-100 and make note of each pitcher - team name and number or whatever. Then I want you to take notes regarding each 3-0 pitch in the 2 columns in the middle of the pages.
The idea here is to take a respresentative sample of 3-0 pitches. In order to do that, your sample size needs to be reasonably large and I have chosen 100 pitches randomly. More important is to have a relatively large sample of pitchers. You can't do this and achieve any reasonable results with just a couple of pitchers. I suggest a minimum of twenty.
What I want you to take note of for each 3-0 pitch in those columns is the following:
Column 1 - Was the pitch, in absolute terms, a ball or a strike? If swung at, you need to make a judgment, otherwise use the umps call. Note "B" or "S."
Column 2 - Was the batter taking (TA) all the way or swinging (SW)?
If the 3-0 pitch was a called strike, I want you to continue on with the same analysis in the 2 columns further to the right for the 3-1 pitch.
In the final space, all the way to the right, I want you to note the outcome of the at-bat for all at-bats which reach 3-0. Use "A+" for a walk or a hit, "F" for an out.
Once you have gathered this information for 100 pitches, or more if you like, and at least 20 different pitchers, it is time to analyze it.
On another piece of paper, create two wide columns, one for "TAKE" and another for "SWING." On the "TAKE" side, place a sub-heading for "on-base percentage" or OBP. The first part of the analysis should count the number of 3-0 pitches which were balls regardless of whether the batter swung or not. Count up the B's in column one and divide by 100. This will yield an average like .350 for 35 balls, .230 for 23, etc. Underneath the OBP subheading write "walked 3-0" and the average you just calculated.
Next, I want you to calculate the OBA for all batters who took the 3-0 for a strike. You already counted up the number who actually walked plus those who should have walked but swung. Now you need to count up all the batters who took a strike on the 3-0 pitch and then note how their at-bats ended.
Count the total number of these and then count the number of A+'s for just these rows in the final column. Divide the second number by the first and that should give you the OBP for those who took the 3-0 pitch for a strike. Write this down calling it "OBP 3-1" and that to the "walked 3-0."
For example, let's say you counted 30 balls on the 3-0 pitch, that yields .300 who should have walked. Then you counted up the batters who took a strike, say another 30, and the number of those at-bats which ended successfully, say 6. That would have yielded .200. Adding the two together would give you an OBP of .500.
Now perform the same exercise for all batters who swung at 3-0. Write that down on the right side of your analysis sheet. My guess is you will probably end up with something like .300. Lastly compare the OBP of hitters who swung at 3-0 with the outcome of all batters who took it or should have taken it. In the example provided, that would figure to .500 vs. .300. In case it is not obvious, a .500 OBP is better than .300.
My guess is what you will find is caused by batters hitting at basically the same rate whether the count is 3-0 or 3-1. I can't find stats on this for softball but I'll use MLB as a surrogate. Batter's averages on various counts is available via Yahoo Sports-MLB.
I randomly chose a bunch of hitters in MLB and checked their batting averages on 3-0 and 3-1. Remember, we aren't interested in anything other than their BA on 3-0 and 3-1 because we want to see instances in which they swung on 3-0 and determine whether they have lost an opportunity to drive the best pitch of the at-bat. We assume that if they take on 3-0, they get a certain number of walks. Of they don't swing on 3-0, they either walk or get a 3-1 pitch. So then we look at their BA on 3-1 pitches to see what kind of opportunity that pitch presents. My findings were particularly interesting.
What I discovered was it is relatively difficult to locate hitters who swung on 3-0. If a batter faced 20 3-0 counts, had 20 walks, and, therefore, didn't have a batting average, this was caused by him taking all the way for a four pitch walk. Only the absolute best hitters had any at-bats on 3-0, meaning they swung and something happened which ended the at-bat like a ground out or homerun. What I found without exception was, when these few very good hitters swung away on 3-0, they had pretty low batting averages. A number of such batters hit .250 even though their overall BAs were around .300+. Additionally, all of these hitters who apparently took a strike on 3-0, went on to have very good batting averages on and after the 3-1 pitch. To a man, I found BAs well above their season averages. In other words, they had great success hitting on 3-1, probably better success than I guestimated in my fabricated example above.
The lesson in this is, even at the professional level, after years and years of training and competing at the highest levels, a very few hitters are permitted by their coaches to swing on 3-0. of those who are permitted, they'd be well advised to take the opportunity with some caution - to swing at very few pitches. They'd be better off to get themselves prepared to swing at 3-1 pitches after taking the 3-0 delivery for a strike.
So what's different about your daughter, if you are a parent, or your team's roster, if you are coaching? I'm not sure I can parse the circumstances of 10U, 12U, 14U or whatever level of softball to develop a reasoning which says these youth players are so different from major league baseball hitters that the same rules ought not to apply. I'm not sure I can parse the differences between baseball and softball to come up with reasoning which claims that they are so different that simple rules like this ought to be altered to fit softball.
A few people who have told me they like their hitters to swing away on 3-0 have based their reasoning on a few anecdotes. Sally hit her first homerun on a 3-0 pitch. Jennie hit a double the other day because I told her to swing away on 3-0. OK! I don't doubt that these things happened. That still does not change the basic equation. You cannot say with any certainty that Sally would not have hit that homerun on 3-1. You can't know that Jennie wouldn't have driven the 3-1 into the gap. You have to act and manage on the law of percetages. And if you're the hitter, you muist take advanatge of every advantage provided to you. 3-0 is an advantage. Taking all the way on 3-0 is an added advantage.
The bottom line here is, in this game, the proper measure is not anecdotal base hits but rather what every player can do to better her averages. A few kids can stand in there and drill some 3-0 pitches but most batters do better by just taking one even if it is right down the middle. There is just too much stress associated with batter looking to swing on 3-0. I have seen more hitters swing and miss at bad pitches on 3-0 than I have seen drive the ball. That's anecdotal, of course, but I'm adding my anecdotes together to develop a percentage.
If you still feel firmly that girls should swing away on 3-0, I want you to go back to the analysis and extend it. Use something beyond a mere A+ for the outcome of the at-bat. Perhaps ignore all walks. Re-perform the analysis and maybe come up with a batting average for 3-0 and another for 3-1. Perhaps you could use slugging percentage. If you are certain that hitters do better swinging at 3-0, go out and test your hypothesis. If you find you are right and I am wrong, I'm willing to live with that, but I'm still going to tell my hitters to take until I perform a test which tells me otherwise. That is counter to my experience.
Finally, it is obvious to me that absolutely every decision in this game is situationally altered at one point or another. For instance, if I've got runners on second and third with no outs, early in a game, I suppose I would prefer my batter to swing on 3-0 in the hope that she might ground out to a middle infielder and give us a run. But that's a special circumstance. If my hitter is capable of giving me a ground ball in this situation, I'm going to call timeout and have a conference with her. I'll say, "remember how I told you not to ever swing on 3-0, well this time ios different. This time, a grounder up the middle is better than a walk and as good as a hit. So please swing away and don't worry about making an out."
Well, I believe I've spent enough time on what to me is a nothing point. I've avoided looking at or listening to anything about this political mess. Now I'm either going to take a look at some articles on politics or I'm going to completely analyze whether to swing or not on 0-0. But that will take considerably more time and space. So don't look for it anytime in the next couple of hours.Labels: batting
 
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