OK, this is an unlikely scenario, almost impossible I’d guess, but it crossed my mind today and I’m wondering if it could ever happen. Can anyone think of an example of a batter in baseball intentionally missing strike three because he “knew” the pitch could not be caught by the catcher and he’d be able to get first base on the wild pitch? It would take an almost perfect situation for a batter to attempt something like that, and I think it would be pretty unlikely for a batter to even be thinking along those lines, but I could see it happening in certain situations (0-2 hole against a dominant pitcher for example). I think it would be pretty difficult to prove intent as well, and I guess we’d have to take the batter’s word for it if he said he swung and missed on purpose (as opposed to just getting really fooled by a pitch out of the zone). But, out of curiosity, can anyone remember this actually happening? I’d be most interested to hear about it happening in the major leagues, but I’d also be interested to hear about it at any level.
I often had the plan to do that, but when the pitch was thrown your instinct is to not get hurt. Then would you get away with a quick swing when the ball is bouncing off the walls?
I saw this very scenario today in Braves v Cubs. I think it was Soto who got a wild pitch which he swung at for a third strike. Braves catcher McCann couldn’t get it and Soto got to first base safely and a run scored. It’s the first time I have seen Kd3 on the scoreboard.
Of course, we have no idea whether Soto knew it would be a wild pitch - one has to suspect not.
There is a highlight/lowlight of Indians pitcher Len Barker throwing a pitch so wild it went above the backstop screen and it was on a two-strike pitch but the batter didn’t swing. Asked about it later, the batter said he was dumbfounded by the pitch he didn’t think to swing. But that would have been your opportunity because there was no way that wasn’t going to be a wild pitch.
I recall MLB game highlights from many years ago where for some reason the team batting wanted the inning to end and the team in the field wanted to keep it going. It had to do with some sort of rain delay and maybe there was the 1 am rule in effect, not sure. So the pitcher kept throwing these wild pitches way high, etc. And the batter would swing at them not even coming close.
Batters are trained from high school not to swing at bad pitches. It’s hard to break a lifetime of training.
I thought of this. Alfredo Griffin, when was with the Blue Jays, I believe. They wanted the game to become “official” so they could get out of the rain, so he started swinging at everything thrown his way (which, if you knew Alfredo Griffin, wasn’t that far off from how he normally approached the game).
Here’s an article about it: Alfredo Griffin — A swing for the ages |