Can a major league pitcher know his own velocity? Would he be able to tell you,
accurately to within two or three miles an hour, how fast he throws the ball? Is there an advantage to knowing this from a pitcher’s point of view?
I asked in another thread, “Why don’t batters take pitches more often? Isn’t it more probable, statistically and strategically speaking from the pitcher’s perspective, that the ball would end up out of the strike zone? What are the chances that a pitcher is going to throw three fastballs in a row as strikes?”
I was informed that pitchers are generally able to make their non-fastball stuff bend in for strikes so it’s not better to take pitches. The best option then would be to watch and follow the ball, and pray it goes where you think it will.
If it’s true that pitchers can throw non-fastballs for strikes, why throw fastballs at all? Would you not be giving the hitter an advantage by providing them with a ball that behaves predictably? Isn’t the advantage to curves/sliders/etc. that they misdirect the hitter? You’d have to be crazy to refuse to use that to your advantage all the time. Besides, fastballs are fastballs, so they must be harder to throw, requiring more effort. I sometimes hear about a fastball overpowering a hitter. Well, if they are late and swing through it, they’re in the right general area, so it’s a timing issue as opposed to thinking the ball is in a different place.
What am I missing? Thanks for your answers! You guys are great at clearing up the game for me.
You can’t watch a pitch and see where it goes. To hit a major league fastball, you start swinging when the ball is still 25-30 feet away (halfway to the plate).
Any pitcher has to get all his pitches over the plate though each pitcher varies as to which pitches he throws best. The fastball is usually the easiest to control.
A curve or change up is thrown as hard as a fastball, Velocity is reduced by the wrist turn and grip on the ball. If arm speed is reduced, this will tip off batters that a non-fastball is coming.
As was noted in one of your earlier threads – it’s not just about the pitch, it’s also about the location. Even if the batter knows (or is able to guess) at what pitch is coming, that alone isn’t likely to be enough. He also needs to guess at where the pitch will cross the plate – and, as running coach just noted, he has to make that decision well before the pitch is anywhere close to the plate.
Also, most batters have areas of the strike zone in which they are weaker hitters than others, and the pitcher (or his catcher, or his pitching coach) are well aware of this. Teams take very careful note of each opposing batter’s strengths and weaknesses. So, a canny (and reasonably accurate) pitcher will usually put their pitches in areas where the batter is less likely to be able to make solid contact, and keep the pitches away from the batter’s “wheelhouse”.
Until radar guns were introduced I doubt anybody could accurately gauge velocity. Now a good pitcher knowing the velocity of his pitches by accurate measuring may be able to tell based on his feel for the delivery. Just as positioning the pitch is important, so is the ability to control velocity. Pitchers want to be able to change the pitch speed without showing it in their delivery but they don’t need some specific velocity, they just need to know it’s not what the batter is expecting.
As for your question about why pitchers throw fastballs at all, there’s the old saying: “Hitting is all about timing; pitching is all about disrupting timing.” By changing speeds, locations, and types of pitches, pitchers can screw up the timing of the batter to make it much more difficult to make solid contact.
A few other points: Fastballs are usually the easiest type of pitch to throw, and usually the most accurate to locate. Sure, the effort can be taxing, but a fastball is considerably easier on the elbow joint than a curve or other type of breaking ball (a screwball is right out!). Fastballs aren’t always straight - two-seam fastballs typically have a little break to them, cut fastballs can be infuriatingly hard to hit square, and many pitchers can even make four-seam fastballs run in on or tail away from hitters. And pitchers with blazing fastballs around the 100-mph mark can sometimes throw the pitch past a batter who is even expecting that pitch.
It’s changing things up that is key, though. Get the batter guessing for a pitch, then throw something different, and you often make him look silly. If a pitcher constantly throws pitches at the same speed over and over - fast or slow - major league hitters are going to figure out the timing pretty quickly.
So how do announcers and commentators know that a pitcher has no control versus he is getting the pitches exactly where he wants them and the batter just isn’t swinging? Any given walk could be a loss of control or just a really good eye on the batter’s part. Conversely, a three pitch strikeout with the batter swinging through the pitches could be a control issue with the pitcher that is hidden by a batter’s impulsiveness. Is it usually one or the other? I find it difficult to believe a pitcher just loses control when in his last start he had perfect control. If certain mechanics are superior, are they just hard to reproduce every start?
It is difficult for pitchers to be consistent. Pretty much the same for hitters also. As for control, the reactions of pitchers, catchers, and the batters action will tell someone if the pitcher is losing control. There are big signs also, when the pitcher is getting hit on or serving up walks often. The announcers don’t know for sure but they it’s reasonable to assume a pitcher with good control who has a certain zone he favors is suddenly throwing high, low, or way out of the strike zone. Remember that an announcer’s job is to make a dull game more exciting, they may just be looking for something to say to fill the air time.
For instance, watch where the catcher is set up to receive the pitch, versus where he actually winds up catching it. If he has to move his glove a lot, and often, then the pitcher may not have good control.
This is true, too. Some announcers (such as Bob Uecker or Vin Scully) understand the game well, but others’ opinions may not be entirely correct.
As for why doesn’t the batter take every pitch, which is a strategy many baseball sabermetricians would not argue that hard against, the fact is high level baseball pitchers CAN get almost every ball over the plate if they wanted to and at the end of the day, you’d have a lot of batters getting struck out looking. Hence the trickery.
Theres a reason the term “dealing” is used by announcers when the pitcher throws the ball: think of the pitcher a blackjack dealer, and the batter the player; based on the one card shown for dealer and player, the batter has to guess whether to “hit” (swing) or “stand” (take) based on the information given. Batting is God-given talent+ gambling, while pitchers are more like the poker player sitting at the table with headphones and dark sunglasses and a hoodie, trying to not give any tells. Richie Ashburn once said he wouldn’t let his daughter marry a pitcher, because they are so deceptive. I THINK he meant it in jest. . . . .
A good pitcher BETTER know their velocity; a decreasing velocity is a tell-tale sign that the pitcher is losing their mojo.
As for announcers, they often don’t even know what pitch was thrown, let alone whether the pitcher is having a bad night or not. I would suggest you get the free CBS Sports App which records during a game not only the type of pitch, but the velocity of each ball. This is an entertaining way to track the pitchers shell game versus the batters.
What is so beautiful about baseball is there is so much chaos that takes place in the actual pitch; you have a pitcher who thinks through manipulation of the ball, he can control the exact way it goes across the plate; and a batter that somehow, 30 percent of the time, must connect a narrow piece of wood with a spinning orb moving at over 90 miles per hour in such a way he can make it 90 feet before someone picks it up and throws it there. It really is the purest form of gambling.
If he’s never been clocked before, no he probably doesn’t know how hard he’s throwing. If he knows that on his best day his fastball is 95, then yes, he can tell you within 2-3 mph how hard he’s throwing on any given day.
Because even the best curveball becomes predictable if that’s all you see. You have to change speeds. I could never hit a curve very well, but MLB hitters can hit any pitch if they know it’s coming (except maybe a knuckleball, but that’s another story). Changing speeds is what keeps the batter guessing. And frankly, a 95mph fastball is not exactly a piece of cake for any hitter.
Thanks to everyone. I’m learning so much! A couple more:
Now, I wonder about home runs. I don’t understand why players don’t just motor around the bases when they hit a fly ball deep. But no, they have to show off and start trotting, because they know it’s out. But sometimes it isn’t, and boy do they look stupid having a double or even a single when they could have had a triple! I think you’d see a lot more triples in baseball if people hustled all the time.
There’s really no positive to showing off. It only makes you look silly when you guess wrong.
I understand that announcers often compliment certain players by saying they “hustle” all the time. I don’t understand why that shouldn’t be mandatory to playing baseball. People drop routine fly balls every so often, and there’s just no excuse to not run your heart out when you’re sitting in the dugout for half a game, getting paid top dollar.
I saw Darrell Ceciliani of the Mets catch a fly ball in foul territory and catch a runner trying to tag up from third base. He threw a bullet to home and got the double play. Why is a runner allowed to tag up in this situation? It’s foul territory. Foul means not fair. If Ceciliani doesn’t make the catch, the play is dead. So why do they allow this? Additionally, would it provide an unfair advantage for the baserunner because of the additional throwing distance and unusual positioning required to throw to a base from foul territory?
Why do players chew tobacco and/or gum? Tradition, I know, but it seems very distracting. Having to break concentration in the middle of pitching/sliding/throwing/catching/hitting to make sure you don’t choke or bite your tongue seems stupid to me.
I’m far from a baseball expert but the answers from how I understand it.
Because a ball isn’t dead until it hits the ground in this case. It’s no different from a caught fly ball in fair territory. You tag up and you can try to advance a base. You rarely see it attempted though because it’s hard to advance a base when the ball is near the infield.
Mostly because it relieves tension. Baseball involves a lot of sitting around doing nothing in the dugout, or a lot of pressure if your the pitcher. Chewing helps break up the monotony and tension.
I’d like to echo the love for these threads of yours. You have a knack for asking baseball questions that have seemingly clear-cut answers on the surface, but in chewing over my response, I often learn something new about the game myself in the process.
There are two different questions here. First, how do we distinguish between the pitcher’s control versus the batter’s eye? And second, how can a pitcher’s control vary from outing to outing?
Regarding the first question, as kenobi 65 mentioned, the key is to look at where the catcher sets up before each pitch. This is a huge part of learning to watch baseball, and one that takes some practice to get used to - our eyes instinctively focus on where the ball is, rather than where it’s going, so a new baseball watcher’s eyes will, for each pitch, essentially go “pitcher to ball-in-air to strike zone to catcher’s mitt.”
The trick is to train yourself, before the ball is even released, to note where the catcher has set his mitt relative to the strike zone, and then compare that location with where the ball is actually caught. If the pitcher is consistently “missing his spots,” then chances are he doesn’t have great control (at least that day). If he’s really missing badly, it’ll be even easier to notice as you’ll see the catcher moving around during pitches a lot more than usual - his glove arm diving from one side of the plate to the other. By contrast, if a pitcher is having a really good day, the catcher’s arm won’t move much at all. For example, if you go back and watch Felix Hernandez’s perfecto from a few years ago, it’s incredible how he just nails his location over and over and over again, despite ridiculous movement on every one of his pitches. He had absolutely filthy stuff that day and combined it with pinpoint control of every pitch.
With more experience, you’ll even start picking up whether a pitcher has control of individual pitches on a given day. For example, he might be nailing his spots with his fastball, but his curve is consistently missing high.
So that’s how to tell if a pitcher is controlling his pitches well. Distinguishing that from a batter’s eye is trickier, as the two are obviously related. Even the most aggressive free-swinger can work a walk if the pitcher is missing the strike zone by 3 feet every pitch. Generally, it’s easier to just look at a batter’s track record at drawing walks (subtracting their batting average from their on-base percentage is a reasonable measure of this skill), since a batter’s eye is fairly consistent from game to game (although note that this doesn’t mean a batter will walk consistently from game to game). But you can get some sense of this during the game by noting how well the batter reads close pitches - pitches just within the strike zone or just outside.
Ultimately, learning to read this can be quite difficult, given that a batter may intentionally lay off a strike at the outside corner in a 2-0 count, or may swing at a borderline ball in an 1-2 count in an effort to foul it off and stay alive. The game theory aspect of the batter/pitcher battle is incredibly complex. But if a batter is swinging away at fastballs at his shoulders or chasing sliders way outside, he may not have the best eye.
Regarding your second question, it all comes down to the fact that pitching is a dizzyingly complex series of motions. Every pitcher has a unique delivery, combined with a unique grip for each of his pitches. The outcome of a particular pitch hinges on perfect execution of both, and is further affected by a myriad of factors ranging from the temperature and humidity of the stadium, the wind, the stitching and surface texture of that particular ball, the feel of the mound, and a million other things, not the least of which is the batter standing in the box. As a result, even maintaining consistent control/stuff from pitch to pitch is quite the challenge, much less maintaining it over an entire start.
As far as variations from outing to outing go, you could imagine that small changes from day to day might impact a pitcher’s effectiveness. Maybe he slept weird the night before and the calf of his plant leg is a bit sore. Maybe he has a hangnail that makes it uncomfortable for him to push his thumb and pointer finger together the way he needs to for his circle change to attain its normal armside movement. Maybe he grew up in the Dominican Republic and never really got comfortable pitching in cold environments, like Fenway in early April. Maybe he’s a knuckleballer and relies on the air being below a certain density to get the knuckler fluttering properly. All of these things, and more, can have a significant impact on a pitcher’s ability to execute a given pitch on a given day.
I think you can just chalk this up to human nature. Now, sometimes, the ball is hit so hard and far that there is no question of it going out. Go ahead and trot. But yes, players should always hustle when the outcome is in doubt. They don’t. Not a lot you can do about it. They’re not going to make a rule (how do you quantify “hustle” anyway?) and managers are going to weigh everything that a player does when deciding their value to the team. Hustle is just one factor.
This is one of those things where the answer is really just “that’s the rule”. Rules don’t have to have any basis in logic. They could change the rule so that you can’t tag up on a foul ball. They could change the rule so that a caught foul ball is just a foul ball and not an out. They decided to go with this rule. As to any unfair advantage: the fielder doesn’t have to catch the ball.
Because they’re stupid (at least with regards to tobacco).
The rule in question (runner can try to advance after tagging his base on a caught foul ball) seems to have a good basis in logic.
A base runner can try to advance pretty much any time. It makes sense that one exception comes when his teammate at bat squirts the ball into foul territory. It also makes sense to end this exception when the fielding team regains control of the ball.
Sure. And it would make sense to say “any foul ball is dead, and runners can not advance, nor batters be retired”. They didn’t.
I’m not complaining or anything. I’m just noting that when it comes to games, you can pretty much set whatever rules you want. Those rules tend to be shaped by what the relevant people think makes the best game, not necessarily what makes the most sense.
