Baseball Questions

The Game Room
1

Hi SD,

Baseball Questions I’ve always wondered.

  1. Why do managers argue with umpires? Do they really have a chance of getting the ump to reverse a call? Is it for the drama, or is there some strategy behind it? To rally the fans, maybe? But I don’t see any way the manager can win…he either goes back to the dugout dejectedly, or he gets thrown out…the ump never says “Ok, I’ll reverse the call…” What’s the point? Antagonizing the ump will just make it more difficult for your team, right?

  2. Will players make allowances to be part of an opposing player’s good fortune? That is, if the score is 10-0 in the bottom of the 9th, two out, and you are the only thing between a pitcher and his perfect game, would you swing at pitches you know are out of the strike zone? Or if you’re a pitcher, and the batter has a chance to hit a record breaking home run or hit, or some other milestone, would you toss them an easy pitch? Have there been records of players doing this kind of thing?

  3. How would the game change if hitters always knew the type of pitch that was coming? (Fastball, curve, slider, changeup, etc.) Would that knowledge have a major impact on how many hits they would have, if we assume they don’t know the speed or location, just type of pitch. In other words, what has the most effect on whether or not the batter can connect?

  4. If a player quite obviously awkwardly and unintentionally scores a hit single (bloop or infield hit) to win the game, something that was quite accidental and unplanned, are they still given the same credit as a player who used skill to win the game (e.g. direct a ball through a hole in the infield)? It would seem embarrassing to be the guy who nubbed a ball and won the game, when anyone could see that they weren’t trying to do that?

  5. Is there more skill involved in hitting a grand slam than a regular solo home run? Does the pressure in having three men on base require a greater degree of talent? In other words, would a person with 100 grand slams be lionized to a greater degree than a person with 100 solo home runs?

  6. Why do pitchers hit the ball and get on base noticeably less than other batters? Shouldn’t they know the trajectory of a ball better than their counterparts and thus be able to draw more walks at least?

Thanks for any responses. These are things I’ve always thought about asking but never remembered to ask until today.

Dave

2

  1. Massive change. The players already do what they can to pick up tell-tale habits a pitcher might develop. Baserunners try to steal signs and so on.

  2. A winning run is a winning run.

  3. Pitchers are chosen for their pitching skill, not hitting. They also spend little time practicing hitting. They only pitch every 4th/5th game and usually only part of that. Too much time to devote to one or two at-bats.

Throwing the ball is totally different than having it come at you. As a batter, you only have a total flight time of .4-.55 sec. to track the ball, judge speed, spin, probable location, decide to swing and complete the swing. The pitcher just throws the ball. He has no time limit.

3

  1. For one thing, managers, being people, sometimes get mad when they think a call is wrong. Second, your team wants to know you’ve got their back; managing a baseball team is about dealing with people as well as game strategy. Third, sometimes umpires do change their minds; starting ten or twelve years ago, they would start getting together to discuss plays and sometimes change their rulings (two famous examples occurred in game 6 of the 2004 ALCS), and nowadays managers can as for replay review.

  2. People do. It’s frowned upon. Achievements should be earned, not given.

5

Sometimes a manager will argue with an umpire to get himself thrown out rather than a player. For instance, a player can get tossed for arguing balls and strikes. If a manager sees this is about to happen, he can go out and get himself tossed for arguing instead.

Some managers believe that by arguing a call, they will get better calls from the umpires in the future. It’s not this call they’re trying to influence - it the next one.

Some managers think they can fire up their players by getting into a screaming argument with an umpire. Also, it can be a way to engender player loyalty (by showing they’ve got the players’ backs).

Finally, managers do get angry sometimes. Some managers get angry a lot.

Generally not. Consider your example - it’s humiliating to be on the wrong end of a perfect game. There have been cases in the All Star Game where pitchers were suspected of deliberately giving someone an easy pitch to hit, but this doesn’t happen often.

It would be huge. Deception is a big part of pitching strategy. There are some guys you might never get out.

There are exceptions. Mariano Rivera made a career as a closer by throwing one pitch (a cutter). Hitters couldn’t hit it even though they knew it was coming. I doubt this would have worked for Rivera if he had been a starting pitcher - the hitters would start timing his pitch, and by the third inning they’d be hitting him.

The rules about crediting players with hits, runs batted in, etc. say nothing about awkwardness or intent. I don’t know why they should, or how they could. This isn’t gymnastics, where athletes are judged by how good they look. It does happen fairly frequently that batters get hits with bad-looking swings, or that bloopers fall in for base hits. These are accounted for exactly as any other hits.

I’ve never seen any analysis of this, but I doubt it. It might actually be easier to hit a grand slam. When the bases are loaded, the pitcher is under greater pressure to throw strikes, so the batter might get better pitches to hit.

The ability of a pitcher to pitch is so important that teams ignore the question of whether he can hit. Pitching and hitting require different sets of skills, and there aren’t many players who can do both well. The guys who can pitch but not hit end up on the mound, while the ones who can hit but not pitch end up in other positions.

6

You should witness this phenomena in cricket, some bowlers appear to be handling a bat for first time in every innings.

7

I’ll echo this. Great hitters (without help) can detect ‘tells’ of pitchers - so they might know - with only the fraction of a second notice - what he’s throwing. If the batter somehow knew the pitch in advance…*

(*most famously, it’s said Bobby Thompson in the great game against the Brooklyn Dodgers - was getting signals from a guy in the outfield bleachers with binoculars).

The exception is the knuckleball - The Great Equalizer. It’s softly tossed and hopefully there’s no one on base because even the catcher doesn’t know where it’ll end up. It’s like wiffle-ball. Perhaps 10 times in a game, a knuckleballer will throw a “fastball” that will baffle the hitter. If that hitter knew that was coming, watch out!

8

“The rules about crediting players with hits, runs batted in, etc. say nothing about awkwardness or intent. I don’t know why they should, or how they could. This isn’t gymnastics, where athletes are judged by how good they look. It does happen fairly frequently that batters get hits with bad-looking swings, or that bloopers fall in for base hits. These are accounted for exactly as any other hits.”

Ok, but say a player goes 5 for 5 in a game, all of them awkward hits (seemingly accidental). The media would still lionize them as going 5 for 5…wow, he must be damn good, when he obviously wasn’t. I guess, thinking about it, hits are rare enough in baseball that even accidents can be lauded as skill? Or, would they chalk it up to luck? If there’s no delineation between skill and luck (i.e. “a hit is a hit”) maybe the answer is that the players must be at least somewhat skilled to make it to the major league level, and more often than not they will be displaying skill and talent, so any accidental hits would not count as a reflection of their true abilities?

Also, regarding umpires and managers, what do you mean by reversing a call? I can understand since the advent of instant replay, but before that? Even if the umpire was convinced they got it wrong, they’re the only one with the optimal view of the play. The other umps would be far away. What would getting together with other umpires prove? I could just imagine the conversation: "Guys, I think I got it wrong. Did you guys think he was safe or out? " Why trust the opinion of a third base ump on a play that happened at first base? Furthermore, why would an umpire allow himself to be convinced by a manager who was in the dugout and far from the play? And this manager would undoubtedly have an agenda?

While I’m thinking about it…

  1. Do relief pitchers and starting pitchers really have that different a skill set? Are they interchangeable? Do relief pitchers have the stamina to last seven innings? I can’t believe that a relief pitcher who routinely throws at 80-90 miles an hour would somehow lack the stamina to go seven innings like their starting counterparts. If you can throw that fast, and do a 30 pitch inning, then why can’t you do 110 or 120 pitches? Are there really “lefty specialists” who can get out left-handed batters easier? How so, if pitching is all about location?

Thanks,

9

The particular skills a relief pitcher would have is coming in with players on base, so some pressure (thus relief). Nolan Ryan was a spot-starter and reliever for the Amazin’ Mets. Tom Seaver usually did all nine, so did Koosman. But if the Mets had a chance around the 8th-9th inning, and here comes fireballer Nolan Ryan - it’s game over.

I reckon 100 MPH fastballs will close out games. I always liked Jessie Orosco, who was throwing three kinds of pitches. Also Franco had a nice screwball.

10

Sometimes they’re just pissed, sometimes they’re trying to fire up their teams, sometimes it’s just fun. Sometimes the umpire enjoys it too. Watch Earl Weaver and Bill Haller demonstrate the art. :wink: Once in a great while, a call will be acknowledged as wrong by the league office after the game, but almost never on the field barring a review via replay.

You’d never admit it if you did, but it has to happen sometimes. The code is that you keep trying to win at all times, though.

Watch Home Run Derby the day before the All-Star Game and you’ll see.

On the scoreboard, yes. In the clubhouse, they’ll get ribbed by their teammates, but happily.

Not as embarrassing as losing that way. There are good and bad kinds of embarrassment.

Maybe less, since the pitcher’s options are reduced with a run just 90 feet away or less, especially in a close game. If the batter knows the pitch is likely to be a low fastball or slider, in the hopes of an inning-ending double play, he can swing down there. The pressure is all on the pitcher with the bases loaded, except for the pressure the batter may put on himself, and partly that’s because things haven’t gone so well if he let the bases get loaded in the first place.

They practice less, for one thing, and for another most of them were never great hitters anyway, having been drafted solely as pitchers. They also actually have an incentive to go back to the dugout and keep their arms warm, especially on cold nights. Only one league still goes through the farce of having pitchers come to the plate, clogging up the lineup and ending rallies, but for some reason its fans keep waving the banner of Tradition.

11

There’s another factor in pitchers being lousy hitters. I played in a women’s D-league summer softball league. Underhand slow pitch. I had always played right field when I played on summer parks and rec teams as a kid, and usually right or center, occasionally second base, when I played in the neighborhood. When I played as an adult, no one else wanted to pitch, so I said I’d try it, and I turned out to have a pretty good eye. You just have to get the right arc on it, and get it over the plate-- the game at this level doesn’t depend on a lot of strike-outs, it’s about the fielders making the outs.

At any rate, I had always been a good hitter. I could reliably get on base every time, and usually be counted on to get at least a double. I got home runs sometimes. I was really good batting third or fifth.

Well, once I started pitching, me batting went to hell. I got one home run the whole summer, and it would have been a triple, but the other team made an error. I didn’t strike out, but I got tagged out on first a lot, or ended up getting forced outs on second or third.

It was because I was exhausted. The pitcher works harder than anyone else on the team. I remember once coming in from a particularly grueling outfield against the best team in the league, and just wanted to sit down, only to find out I was first up. I didn’t think I’d make it.

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  1. Pitching is a very demanding activity. You simply can’t go all out for 100-120 pitches.
    One of the reasons batting averages were so high in the earlier years of the game is pitchers paced themselves as pitching the entire game was expected. Relief pitchers only came in if the starter was getting hit hard.

Modern relief pitchers can go all out because they know they only have a inning or two to work.
Knowing they only have to go 5-6 innings means the starters can throw harder, too.

Pitching is not all location as deception is critical. Even a poor hitter who has trouble with a specific location can hit it if he knows it’s going there.

13

One other reason you see managers coming out to argue is to take over from a player who’s already getting into it with the ump. He’ll push the player away to get him out of it and keep him from getting ejected, since the manager is more expendable than any player. He’ll continue the argument, justified or not, as a way of demonstrating to his team that he’s got all their backs.

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Another thing to consider re grand slams vs. solo home runs: while it’s not always the case with the bases loaded (since it’s really hard to steal home) most of the time with runners on base the pitcher is pitching from the stretch, rather than a full windup, which reduces the efficacy of his pitches.

Essentially, the closest umpire doesn’t always actually have the best angle, and four (six in the playoffs) umpires sometimes see things that one cannot.

The two I mentioned above went like this: in the fourth inning, Mark Bellhorn hit a line drive that bounced off a fan in the front row of the stands, just above the wall. The umpire claimed that it had hit the top of the wall, and Bellhorn ended up with a double. Red Sox manager Terry Francona argued, the umps got together, and at least one other said that he had indeed seen it hit the fan, and the call was reversed. Here’s the play.

The second one happened in the 8th, when, with a runner on first and one out, Alex Rodriguez hit a weak grounder down the first base line. Pitcher Bronson Arroyo fielded it, and because the first baseman had also come to try to field it, Arroyo was forced to tag Rodriguez instead of throw to first. The ball came out of his glove and bounced down the line. Rodriguez ran to second and a run scored. Replays showed pretty clearly that Rodriguez had intentionally swatted the ball out of Arroyo’s glove, which is illegal, but the first base umpire was shielded from the play by the first baseman, and couldn’t see it. Francona argued again, the umpires got together again, and the call was reversed again. And Yankee stadium was very pissed. Here’s that play.

15

#6 has already been well answered, but here’s the Straight Dope: Why can’t pitchers hit?

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Even those "awkward " hits require a great deal of skill. I could stand in the box all day swinging freely and I doubt I’d get on base. There are no “accidental” hits. Some are line drives and some are bloop singles. They’re all hits.

17

There was a really cool Mets -v- Cincinnati game in 1986.

http://www.hardballtimes.com/baseballs-craziest-game/

Takeaways: two of the Mets relief pitchers, Orosco and McDowell, batted back to back. This is because Davey Johnson, the Mets manager, was out of pitchers and would rotate the pair between the pitchers mound and right field (where Lucy plays; ironically Orosco did catch a ball!).

Also, The Great Pete Rose, the other Manager, put his arse into the game and got his last hit!

The 80’s were the last great decade of baseball (*ducks & runs from yankee & bosox fans) :slight_smile:

18

since we’re doing misc baseball questions
do you have to have 9 people on the field?

if you use up your bench and then someone gets injured can you try to play with 2 outfielders or something or do you have to forfeit

19

Nitpick: his last pinch hit. He would get another nine hits that season.

20

It would be pretty hard to go 5 for 5 and have every hit be a squibber or bloop. Even if most or all were, it’s difficult enough to hit major league pitching that being able to put all those balls in play and get on base would be a noteworthy achievement.

As for pitchers generally being crummy hitters:

There’s a story in Halberstam’s “Summer of '49” about Ted Williams ribbing teammate Bobby Doerr for not maximizing his skills as a batter. Doerr responds by telling him that as a middle infielder he’s in the game on every pitch, and the degree of concentration that requires takes something away from his ability to hit (Williams by contrast was an outfielder, and while respectable was not known for his fielding).

Players make certain allowances to either be part of baseball history or not screw up others’ chances. The most obvious example is the taboo against bunting your way on base in the late stages of a pitcher’s no-hitter attempt. There’s also the question of whether some pitchers have “grooved” balls to allow a celebrated slugger to close out their career with a home run.

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Rule 4.17: A game shall be forfeited to the opposing team when a team is unable or refuses to place nine players on the field. (Page 41)