THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

First pitch strategy

Dave is at it again on first-pitch at bats:

The red lines are for out-of-zone and black is in the strike zone.  Dotted means “take” and the undotted means “swing”.  So, you perform best when you take an outside pitch (puts you at 1-0 which is great) and worst when you swing at an outside pitch (likely puts you at 0-1 or weak contact).

This is the cool part: taking on a pitch inside the strike zone (forces you at 0-1) is BETTER than swinging at an outside pitch.  If you swing at a pitch outside the strike zone, pray you don’t make contact.  You’d be better off. 

(Doesn’t apply to all hitters.  Individual hitters may vary.)