We were at a baseball game this afternoon, during which a couple of the players sent ball after ball into the stands, and after a beer or two my friends and I got to wondering, do batters sometimes intentionally hit all those fouls in one at-bat?
I can see how it might make sense strategically, say if the next person up is one of the team’s power hitters and you want to wear down the pitcher a bit. But you’d also tire out your batter, and you run the risk that after half a dozen foul balls, they don’t have as much control over where the ball goes as they’d like to think.
Yes. At least the better ones do. Wade Boggs used to do it a lot. If you bat against a pitcher 3 times in one game and average 6 pitches per at bat that’s (breaking out calculator) 18 pitches.
Say you foul a bunch of pitches off each at bat. 10 total pitches per at bat let us say. That becomes 30 pitches!!!
Thanks. I’m pretty new at being a baseball fan and am still picking up the nuances. Yeah, I can see it would add up if a batter does it regularly.
With the ones who do it a lot, though, wouldn’t the pitchers come to expect it and change how they pitch to that batter? Or is there not much a pitcher can do, besides a ball, if the player really wants to hit a foul?
I think a lot of the times they’re also fouling not just to tire down the pitcher, but on the third strike to get rid of pitches that are technically strikes, but not in a good place for them to hit. For instance, if a batter has two strikes already and gets a pitch high and inside, he may foul it off and hope the next pitch veers low and outside, which is where I think most batters prefer them.
Deliberately fouling off after two strikes is perquisite for any good batter. A good batter in this situation will defend the plate and even parts outside the plate area, especially against great pitchers who tend to get positive calls on pitches taken (e.g. Pedro Martinez). That is why you notice that many pitchers, including great ones, don’t pitch too many strikes on an 0 and 2 or a 1 and 2 count. He hopes that a batter would chase a bad, virtually unhittable pitch.
The most famous sequence of consecutive batters fouling off pitch after pitch after strike two before each got on base, occured during the 1986 World Series, Game 6. Each of the last three batters for the Mets, Kevin Mitchell, Ray Knight and Mookie Wilson, had 2 strikes against them. We all know what happened next, so I won’t cause any more grief to the Boston Red Sox fans.
Not only does deliberately fouling off pitches give the batter a chance to see a pitch that he can hit better, it also serves to wear down the pitcher.
The most notorious foul ball hitter was the Chicago White Sox shortstop Luke Appling of the 1930s and 40s. He supposedly could foul off any pitch and even hit his foul balls in places that he wanted.
This skill not only made him very difficult to strike out, but he also drew a lot of walks.
I agree with voguevixen: Batters don’t foul off pitches to tire the pitcher out so much as they do to protect the plate, and keep from striking out on a pitch that they could not hit solidly into fair territory. It wouldn’t make a lot of sense to foul off a pitch that you otherwise could hit pretty hard, as you won’t see that many hittable pitches per time at bat. If you see a pitch you can hit (fair) hard, you generally don’t try to foul it off.
However, I suspect that most batters do NOT prefer the ball low and outside (particularly power hitters). I imagine they prefer the ball waist high, down the middle of the plate. Also, I believe it’s generally more difficult to intentionally foul off an inside pitch than an outside one, since you have the thinner “handle” part of the bat protecting the inside part of the plate, while the thicker “barrel” part of the bat protects the outside part of the plate.
BobT is right–Appling was possibly the most notorious foul ball hitter of all time. Richie Ashburn, center fielder for the Phillies, was another one. By the way, generally the very best foul ball hitters are hitters who don’t take big swings, and are NOT the biggest power hitters (because players adept at fouling off pitches are emphasizing contact over power).
There’s a story about either Appling or Ashburn (I forget which) that the player in question once asked the owner if he could take some baseballs home, to give away to friends and family. The owner refused.
Bad move. Appling/Ashburn decided “I’ll show him”, and proceeded to foul 30 or 40 balls into the stands the very next game.
Also (slight hijack because this was unintentional), Richie Ashburn once hit the same fan twice with foul balls in the same at bat. Seems the first pitch injured the lady in question enough to require medical attention, and, while the lady was being loaded onto a stretcher, Ashburn hit her AGAIN.
ESPN was keeping track of Johnny Damon versus Mike Mussina a couple days ago. Damon, in one at-bat, saw 25 pitches. Not that I think Mike needs me to second-guess him, but I’m thinking by the time you get in the neighborhood of, say, 22, just plunk him. =)
No discussion of plunking is complete without Stan Williams.
Stan Williams was a hard throwing pitcher with little control (interestingly, he may still be a pitching coach somewhere).
At one point, he was given some sort of incentive for not walking batters. Because he had limited control, he did not often throw three consecutive strikes. So…when he would go 3-0 on a batter, he would often plunk him.
Also, the story goes that he once hit Henry Aaron on the batting helmet with a pitched ball. He went and apologized to Aaron, who said it was all right, he knew Williams didn’t mean it.
At which point, Williams is supposed to have said, “I didn’t mean to hit you on the head. I meant to hit you in the neck!” :eek:
DRY, great stories about his Whiteness (as Harry Kalas used to refer to the great Ashburn). Richie was legendary for this skill, supposedly able to do it at will.
For anyone who doubts that there are (were) those adept at this art, I’ll only add that Richie once fouled off 14 straight pitches against Cincinnati’s Corky Valentine with the count 3 and 2 before drawing a walk. Richie may have just been protecting the plate (as opposed to trying to tire out the pitcher), but I’ll just bet Valentine was mad enough to spit by the time Rich went trotting off to first. Is 14 consecutive a record?
You will also notice that the greatest practitioners of intentionally fouling tend to be contact hitters, not surprisingly.
The ability to get a piece of pitches and keep fouling them off is ESPECIALLY valuable in a place like Fenway Park. It’s far LESS valuable in a place like SHea Stadium.
Everyone knows that Fenway PArk is an ideal “hitter’s park,” but most people don’t even THINK about the biggest reason it’s a hitter’s park: there’s almost NO foul territory! That means, if a batter can keep fouling off the less-than-ideal pitches, the foul balls almost ALWAYS go into the stands. On the other hand, at Shea Stadium, there’s a HUGE amount of foul terrirory. If I hit a foul pop at Shea Stadium, it’s probable that someone will catch it before it reaches the seats.
That’s ONE of the things that made Ted Williams so effective. At Fenway Park, he could keep fouling off pitch after pitch until one of two things happened:
The pitcher gave him a juicy pitch to hit.
The pitcher eventually walked him.
(Ted had 2000 career walks, so both things happened a LOT.)
Speaking of baseball, can a batter who has two strikes against him swing at a really wild pitch (that the catcher would have no chance of getting), therefore causing strike 3, and allowing him to steal first?
It’s nice to see Ashburn mentioned. He was also a great bunter and hated seeing it used to sacrifice. I listened to him do the Phillies color for many years and he had a way of using one syllable (“ooh”). Whenever something ugly happened on the field. What a great sound that was. Always made me chuckle.
By the way, I’m kinda new and I guess this was a hijack. Sorry.
It could happen, but batters are so used to laying off a bad pitch that their instincts are not to swing. Besides, they can’t be sure that the catcher won’t catch – or at least block – the ball.
Echoing this point, I was at a talk Saturday given my Mark Parent, a longtime backup catcher and now a minor league manager, and he related that during a baseball game events happen very quickly. While there might be a lot of standing around, once the ball is in play, the nine fielders all have to make snap judgments on what to do. To help this, baseball players drill repeatedly to make most things second nature.
The same things happen with batters and runners.
So, a batter won’t take a swing at a potentially wild strike three because he’s not supposed to swing at a pitch that far out of the strike zone and it’s hard to change your mind.
A batter is usually thinking something like “Fastball, low and inside and take a shot to right.” He’s not thinking “Two strikes, look for the wild pitch and swing at it.”
I’ve also noticed that with the bases loaded and two outs that when there is a dropped third strike, the catcher will almost always chase the batter or throw to first even though he could just step on home plate to end the inning.
According to Phil Wood, a baseball expert (who was on
the air in Washington, DC when I moved away in 1995,
on WTEM), there was a batter who once swung at a wild
pitch for strike 3 to get to first.
Then there are batters who throw the bat at pitches headed for the on-deck circle, and wind up with hits. Dave Winfield was great at that, although the 3000-hit free-swinger struck out more often with the bat throwing style of swinging. The throws made for good highlight film, though.
Yeah, I can see it would add up if a batter does it regularly.