I recently had a discussion with a scout about my experiences and observations having grown up pitching in the Midwest and playing college ball in warm weather states. The scout and I agreed that a different game is being played high school baseball in the Midwest than in, say Florida, Texas or California.
The conversation centered on pitching, and pitching philosophies, be it coaches (mainly) or pitchers themselves. The observation, which incidentally, was agreed with, was that pitchers are much more defensive in the Midwest. The prevailing mentality is to get ahead with a fastball and then throw slop. Even worse, a number three or four hitter for a team is usually seeing nothing but slop (slop being secondary pitches). In many cases, you would think that a juiced up Mark McGwire (let’s call a spade a spade) was standing at the plate.
I didn’t make this observation to be a jerk, but to try to better understand the reason behind it and, hopefully, to provoke some conversation. Why do these hitters get that much credit and what is being missed? The conclusion that was collectively made is that there is a fear of throwing the same pitch twice and giving up a hit on the second pitch. In other words, hindsight is being applied before the event actually takes place. With apologies, this is completely asinine.
If you want to prove out this theory, go watch batting practice at a high school game. In batting practice, the hitters are being thrown fastballs at 70 miles per hour, right down the middle, and can time every pitch. Employing the philosophy of many coaches and pitchers, one would think that these batters would hit balls on the button for (what would be in a game) base hits nine out of nine times. In reality, the number is, at best, more like four to five on average. So, a batter is a .450 hitter on BP fastballs, yet you fear backing up your fastball with another fastball? Somehow, this doesn’t add up.
I have said it many times, yet it bears repeating: DO NOT GIVE HITTERS MORE CREDIT THAN THEY DESERVE. If you throw a fastball for a strike, be it a called strike or a swing and miss, you DID NOT get lucky. The attitude shouldn’t be “Phew, I got away with that one” - it should be “Hmm, I thought so.”
I apologize in advance if this should offend anyone, but one, I promise brutal honesty in my columns and two, this is merely an observation.