Okay so let's talk about the strike zone and home plate because this is really
important so the counts determine where we're gonna aim on the plate and one of
the major things that's going to determine where we aim is the concept of
margin for error so margin for error means how much you
can miss and still do the job so if you were kicking into a soccer goal would
you aim to the edge if there was no goalie would you aim to the edge no you
would still aim for the middle because then you can miss to the right you can
miss to the left and still kick it in the goal right so in pitching one of the
first goals early in the count is to just throw a strike and get ahead of the
hitter so the reason we aim down the middle is not because we want to throw
the pitch actually down the middle right this is an easy pitch to hit this is
where good hitters want to hit the ball right so then a quest a valid question
would be well if hitters like this pitch why would I choose to throw it here
right we only throw it we only aim down the
middle because our goal is to give us the most margin for error to throw a
strike and get ahead of the hitter because when you're down in the count
say you're hitting and you have two strikes and a pitcher throws a ball over
here you might swing at it because you're afraid of the umpire calling you
out on strikes right that makes sense so this is what we call making a hitter
expand the strike zone so as a pitcher gets ahead in the count
when he gets more strikes on the hitter so such as oh one or one and two or oh
and two hitters become defensive and they start to swing at pitches that they
ordinarily know are not good pitches to hit so for this reason as a pitcher one
of your best strategies is to try to get ahead and account to get a strike as
early as possible especially on the first pitch and now the more strikes I
get as a pitcher so say I'm oh and to the consequences of Miep throwing a ball
and then throwing a ball they're not very high because I still am too into in
the count right so the more I'm ahead the more room I have to miss and the
more hitters will help me out by swinging it bad pitch
all right so as a hitter it works the opposite way if a pitcher falls behind
in the count so say you're hitting and it's two balls and no strikes there's no
reason you should swing it a pitch over here because there's no risk of you
getting called out on strikes right so as a hitter when you're ahead and
account when there's more balls than strikes you're acceptable zone of stuff
you swing at get smaller you get more selective so when it hitter is behind in
the count he will swing at more bad pitches because he's defensive when it
hit her is ahead in the count meaning the hitter has more balls and
strikes he does not have to swing at these pitches he will then you will then
contract the amount of pitches he will swing at he will only swing it the very
best pitches in the middle of the zone does that make sense to everyone thus
far so playing this strategy is important as a pitcher you want to get
ahead as soon as possible and the more ahead of the hitter you are as a pitcher
the more you then can start to aim for the edges of the plate if a pitcher
falls behind the count so say I throw a ball one and then I throw a ball two now
I need to go back over the middle to give myself margin for error to try to
catch up in the count so I don't walk him so there's always this risk and
reward of where we're aiming based on what the count is so the way we then
sort of choose our locations are kind of by slicing the plate into either halves
thirds or corners so in these four different zones number one is down the
middle so this gives us again the most margin for error and pitchers will aim
down the middle when we are either behind an account or it's the first
pitch because we want to try to get a strike as soon as possible so we would
throw down the middle on Ojo one oh two oh three oh three one two one and then
once you've gotten a strike we're gonna cut the plate into two halves and we're
gonna throw to the middle of each half and our catcher will move so the center
of his body is centered up with that half of the plate so now I'm still
aiming for a lot of the plate so I still have a lot of margin for error but I'm
starting to lose a little so when you're on the half I can still
miss here I can still miss here I can still miss all the way over here and
still get a strike so we would go to halves when we're even counts 1 1 2 2 3
2 because when we're at an even count it's still very important to get to the
next a head count or any at-bat so 1 1 getting to 1 2 is very important then
the next thing we would slice the plate into thirds so middle third one this
side third and this side third so it could be inner third or outer third
inner third or out of there and then we're gonna pitch ignore the middle
third and we're gonna pitch to the center of this third or this there so
now you can see we're starting to lose margin for error over here right you
could be very accurate but this is a ball but because we're gonna use this in
accounts when we're ahead it's okay that we don't have as much margin for error
so we're gonna throw to the thirds like one or the other on own one or one and
two for the most part now if we go two-thirds early so say it's the first
pitch we aim to the third and we miss now we're behind in the count and now we
have to try to catch up so we end up going back over that's why you want to
start going to the edge of the plate only when you start to get ahead of the
hitter okay so again oh one or one two or thirds and then lastly when we're
going to we're super far ahead of the hitter so we can aim for the corners
with no downside really now when we row into our goal as a pitcher is probably
to get a strike out if we can on that one pitch so that means throwing a pitch
that's a borderline ball strike this is the time where if we threw a curveball
we would try to bounce the curveball or throw the slider that breaks out of the
zone or elevate a fastball because hitters like to chase high fastballs so
oh no and - we might go in the corner the corner
we might elevate a fastball to get them to chase we might bounce a curveball
where we might have a slider that breaks out of the zone the goal oh no - is to
throw a pitch that looks like a strike but ends up a ball by time they swing
but we won't try to get strike outs on any of the other counts because if we
try to do that we're going to end up bouncing too many
is missing too much and our pitch count will get very very high and then
pitchers won't be at a pitch very deep in the games they won't be the pitch
many innings so for starting pitchers especially we need to go five six seven
innings that means only twelve or fifteen pitches per inning so if you're
trying to strike everyone out and now you're throwing six pitches per batter
you're not going to end up making that five six seven innings that we need from
you as a team so starting pitchers hopefully you can give your team six or
seven innings but in seven innings you're going to typically face about 30
batters and for a starting pitcher you usually won't throw more than a hundred
pitches in a start so if you do the math a hundred pitches divided by thirty
hitters is about three and a half pitches for a bat so three and a half
pitches of per bat means we need to have hitters put the ball and play early and
get out early in the count in one two or three pitches for us to go six or seven
innings and on only 100 pitches we need every batter to get the ball into play
in hopefully less than four pitches so our goal is pitchers for almost every
count except 402 is to have the hitter hit the
ball we want him to put the ball into play that means to hit it into fair
territory Hold'em they don't find you've gone his brain is melting right now
there's a lot of translation yes terms you don't have a word so our goal is as
a pitcher is to get weak contact we want the hitter to hit the ball early in the
count if we get them to hit the ball weakly early in the count
we'll get outs fast and pitchers will be able to pitch lots of innings which
helps the team whereas if you try to strike everyone out you'll end up
throwing five six seven pitches for it back and then you want you to make it
very many innings so let's talk about that from the hitters perspective a
little bit more so hitters your goal is always to drive pitches that are in the
middle of the plate in the middle of the strike zone so your goal is pitches on
the edge of the strike zone or that are balls we want to take them and not swing
at them as a hitter when you get ahead in the count meaning
there's more balls and strikes your goal is to have a smaller more selective
strike zone of pitches that you swing at when you fall behind in the count you do
have to protect from striking out a little bit more which means you have to
swing at pitches that are more borderline but your goal as a hitter is
only to swing at these borderline pitches when you have to only when it's
like 1 and 2 or oh and 2 where you might strike out otherwise take those pitches
and wait for a pitch that's more in the center portion of the plate so we looked
at some heat maps earlier right of some major league players they swing the most
when the ball is in the middle and they take the most when the ball is in a part
of the zone or is a as a ball when they can't drive that pitch very well and the
thing to remember the number one the number one best thing you can do as a
hitter is not making out outs are the most valuable thing in baseball so yeah
a homerun is more valuable than a single but if you can go up there and walk or
get a base hit those are the best things that you can possibly do so it pays off
to be selective on the stuff on the pitches that you swing at because if
you're very very selective pitchers will miss a lot and you're their pitch counts
will go up which means the best pitchers will have to be replaced by released
pitchers when you take more pitches you will get ahead and account more often
you will walk more often which puts runners on bases and runners on bases or
runners on base gives you a chance to score and lastly you won't waste your
swings on pitches that you can't hit hard this is a very hard pitch to hit
hard no matter how good you are so you want to save your swings for when you
have a better chance of hitting the ball hard so it is a very good thing as a
hitter to be patient to end to be selective to only swing at the best
strikes that you want to swing at
you