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Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Ryne Sandberg’s hitting approach
Fantastic stuff. I’d quote the whole thing really. This part I particularly liked:
DL: Why did you have so much success against Bruce Sutter [8 for 20, 4 home runs]?
RS: His split-finger fastball came into my hot spot. I was able to recognize that pitch, and also anticipate it, coming down and hard into me. With him, I would swing where the ball would end up, which is very unnatural. That’s what made him so tough; if you swung at the pitch where it was, by the time your bat head got there it was too late. The ball would have disappeared. I was able to anticipate where the pitch went, which was in my hot spot.
Mike Bossy would say something similar. While the goalie was angled to one side, Bossy was in the slot in front of the goalie. When he’d get the pass, and he’d have to one-time it, he would shoot the puck directly at the goalie, because he knew the goalie would have to move from his angle to face him straight on. So, he anticipated that the goalie would get into the right position (for everyone else except Bossy), and thereby leaving the position he was previously in.
So, this part also captured me:
RS: I faced them both a lot, and Darling mixed his pitches up. He was effective against an aggressive hitter, an aggressive fastball hitter, because he’d throw his split-finger fastball — a forkball is what he had — which to me appeared to be a fastball. I considered myself a fastball hitter, and when I was ahead in the count I was aggressive on the fastball. I tried to put those balls in play hard somewhere. He knew me as a hitter and would pitch me backwards a bit. He was a guy I had to battle, so I’d take a single up the middle if I could, or a single to right field.
That’s game theory right there. While Sandberg would get success with other pitchers by anticipating, Darling knew that’s what Sandberg would do, so he had to “pitch backwards” against him.
Cue the Youtube video of Princess Bride.
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