…and swung at a pitch thrown in an intentional walk sequence? You know, just for shits & giggles?
Sure. If you think the runner’s going to get caught, might as well try to foul it off. I’ve seen it once or twice, but I’m afraid someone with a better baseball memory than me will have to provide specifics of who and when.
Miguel Cabrera for one:
I’ve seen it happen several times. Pitchers get lazy and don’t throw far enough outside.
I’ve also seen the alternative, the catcher sets up for an intentional walk with the count at 3-2 then the pitcher throws a strike.
He’s asking about intentional walks, not pitch-outs where a runner is running.
If you step completely out of the batter’s box (your own batter’s box!) and hit a pitch, you’re out. For the batter to hit an intentional walk pitch, it has to be close enough that he can reach it without doing so.
I’ve often wondered why they don’t intentionally swing and miss, in an attempt to get the pitcher (catcher, manager) to change their minds and pitch to them with like an 0-1 or even 0-2 count. Now I know that the hitter’s chances of success drops when they are behind in the count, but by just standing there they are basically saying, “Yes, walking this guy is a great idea-for us! The more baserunners the merrier!” and thus disagreeing on the strategy of the IW.
I’m probably crazy but eventually a big slugger, frustrated by all the IWs, will decide to do just that. Else I guess it is one of those “unwritten” rules you simly don’t break.
Because the manager would have them killed?
Henry Aaron famously stepped across home plate to hit a home run off a big fat curve ball thrown by the Cardinals’ Curt Simmons in 1965.
He was called out for stepping out of the batter’s box. There probably would have been a bigger fight about it, but he had done it in his previous at-bat as well, when he flied out.
I’m still not 100% convinced that they shouldn’t only have to throw one “ceremonial” walk pitch and then let the batter take his base, just for times sake. It’s not like the pitcher is wearing out his arm with four weak tosses to the catcher so I’m not totally sold on the purpose of making them throw all four pitches anyway.
I guess it allows more chances for the possibility of a wild pitch or passed ball.
Wait until the count is 3-and-0, and then swing. Managers love that.
And I get that, I do. But I don’t think that the rare occaison of that happening is worth making the game even longer. Of course this is baseball, so YMMV wildly.
The example given in the link provided by Jas09 is precisely WHY you don’t get to just hand the runner the base. As with everything else you do in the game, you have to earn the result.
As for why you don’t try to avoid the intentional walk by creating a 0 - 1 or 0 - 2 count, it’s because the statistics all show that simply getting on base is the best way to get more runs. Getting on base without having to run the risk of being out is too good to pass up.
Do you realize how little sense this makes? If it’s such a no-brainer decision, and the batter is obviously much better off to accept the walk, why is the defensive team opting to do it, hundreds of thousands of times in baseball history? Are all these decisions made in order to lose an advantage?
And sorry about the hostile tone.
There ARE scenarios where swinging at an intentional ball makes sense. Let’s say, your #8 batter is up, with two outs and men on second and third, in the NL, tie game in the top of the seventh. The batter is a pretty strong #8 hitter, the next batter is a very weak-hitting pitcher who’s throwing a great game, only thrown 80 pitches so far, and you think he’s got another inning left in him. You have no one warming up, and your closer is terrific and well rested, and you could easily ask him to go two innings today.
In such a scenario, I would think about telling the eighth hitter to try to poke an intentional ball to the opposite field and drive in a couple of runs, if any pitch comes remotely close to the plate, because if he simply walks, I’ve got to pinch hit for my pitcher, and I don’t want to, and it’s probably a wasted at-bat.
I could add other factors as well (the 8-hole guy is a great bad-ball hitter, I’ve only got good OBP guys on the bench, whom I’d like to pinch hit for the pitcher at the start of an inning, not with two outs, etc.) but these factors alone are common enough.
How often does a pitch even come close, though? I think the catcher is usually standing near the far end of the open batter’s box when he catches an intentional ball. That seems like it’d be close to the far end of arm’s length for the batter and would make decent contact very unlikely. According to Wikipedia, the last guy to get a hit out of an attempted intenational ball was Miguel Cabrera in 2006.
I would say it depends on relative advantage. If they’ve already chosen the intentional walk, the only way you get them to pitch is if you put yourself in a big enough hole that the advantage swings over to the pitcher. You’re not improving your overall chances, you’re actually making your overall chances worse, good reason not to do it.
As to the need to pitch all four balls… I hate it. The #1 most boring part of any game, when the players are actually “doing something”. The handful of times that something “exciting” happens, I’d happily trade them in to avoid having the game drag out longer than it already is. In terms of entertainment value, even the exciting stuff is just the inevitable “to err is human” factor, it doesn’t have anything to do with competing, or striving for excellence, it’s just playing catch and hoping that this isn’t the 1 throw in a thousand that goes wrong.
I admit I’m mostly saying this to be silly, but I do wonder: is there a limitation on how long a bat can be? I mean, if I were a Barry Bonds in my prime and were coming up with a man on second and first base empty, wouldn’t it be awfully tempting to bring the Extra Long Bat with me? Ya know, just in case?
The average length of a Baseball game is not substantially longer than the average length of a Hockey or Basketball game, and is usually shorter than the average Football game.