Hitting...the most important tool

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Originally posted by BeenthereIL:
Agree...If you can't hit, you can't play.

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Disagree ... If you don't have a pitcher, your never going to start the game ....

Phoenix...do you know how to do that "linking" stuff?

To link the article to this site...or this site to the article?

Definately agree. Other weaknesses ( average arm, smaller, less speed...)can be overlooked some- if you can hit.If you can't hit, you don't play.

Also agree. In the past light hitting was ok for certain positions. In this day and age if you can't hit you will not get the opportunity to play long.

If you can hit you will play. That is a fact. Hitting is the most important tool.

Baseball America Article URL

thanks, pbone

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Originally posted by Coach May:
If you can hit you will play. That is a fact. Hitting is the most important tool.

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not exactly...if you can hit you will hit...not necessarily play...at least on the HS and College teams I have seen. Technicality..

STARZZ

I have to agree with Coach May-- if the boy can hit he will play --especially with HS and college teams using the DH -- the coach will always find a way to get a hitter into the lineup

Approximately 40-50% of college players can't hit a lick and they are still playing. They are listed as RHP or LHP. My son is one of them.

Not sure if I'm reading the thread correctly or not, but I'll take a great pitcher over a great hitter any day. I've never seen a great hitter shut down a defense, but I've seen plenty of great pitchers drop the hammer on great offenses.
Hitting is huge, and for position players, it is a necessity...but I still like quality arms over ANYTHING else.

Gee thats a shocker! No really, my son once played for a tournament coach that thought speed was, by far, the number one thing. He stated, " I want to create havock on the basepaths!" He would have boys with a .400+ batting average, that were team leaders for the team in RBI's, average with men on, and on base percentage on the bench while a couple of other boys with a 1 to 2 tens faster speed in the 60 (we're talking about 7.2's vs. 7.4's and 7.5's here) played and turned in their .200 batting averages. Then he couldn't figure out why the team was only a 50/50 type team and couldn't score runs. These .200 batting kids also had the 2nd & 3rd most errors on the team. One of his relatives lead the team in errors, but in this case he had a good bat, just had a hard time in the infield. The really funny thing, neither of the kids were related to him and other parents on the team couldn't figure it out.

Beware of Coaches who put an emphasis on speed over hitting........

Coach Knight, a great pitcher who faces a great hitter also gets to face a bunch of not-so-great hitters the same day......If a team is loaded with great hitters, your observation wouldn't hold up near as well......

Probably not...but I've watched great pitchers in MLB All-Star games face great lineups and dominate too! Pitching is the name of the game...never met a successful coach at the varsity level or higher that didn't believe that.

Coach Knight, you mean like Clemens in last year's All-Star game?.....

I think you understand the point, right? Are you telling me, Blue Dog, that you'd take a great hitter over a great pitcher?

I think the original topic "Hitting ... the most important tool" is intended to apply to the individual player, i.e., not everyone on the team is going to be a great pitcher, but really goood teams have an abundance of individual good hitters, and elite position players are first and foremost great hitters before their other atheletic attributes come into play. This doesn't mean they can only hit ... just the most important attribute of being an elite position player is hitting, then your defensive abilities.

In viewing the success of an entire team in comparing the importance of team pitching versus team hitting you can simply ask: How many teams that have dominant and deep pitching but average or worse hitting are successful? Lots ... because in a 0-0 or 1-1 game, luck does have a role. How many teams that have average or worse pitching but dominant hitting are successful? Not many ... you just can't consistently put up double-digit run games or make up 7+ run deficits while your pitchers are throwing BP.

Of course the best teams try real hard to have both good pitching and hitting .

Speed? Can't use it if you can't get on base. I've seen several kids come up that had blinding speed but couldn't hit the broad side of a barn ... they quit baseball and stuck to football where their speed was a great asset and their lack of hand-eye coordination wasn't a liability ... the hard part is holding onto the football while someone cleans your clock.

"It ended up being one and done for Clemens, as he allowed five hits and three earned runs while striking out two. The six-time Cy Young Award winner threw 35 pitches in the inning..........Even a sure-fire Hall of Famer like Clemens can be prone to such an onslaught."

Coach Knight, that's what can very well happen when a great pitcher faces great hitting.......

phonesteel, success is in the eyes of the beholder........I think your reality is what you want it to be........

The Giants go pretty far lately with not so great pitching......And, they do it with only one great hitter.......

The Astros were out of it after great expectations and great pitching until they started hitting the ball and made a good late run..........

The Cubs had a great pitching staff with lofty expectations and faded after they quit hitting.....

Who were the two best hitting teams in baseball last year?.....And, who made it to the World Series?....The answer to both is the Cards and the Sox.........

So, would I rather have Bonds or Clemens?.........I would much rather have Bonds......

BlueDog-
While I appreciate the "cut & paste" knowledge, you could find more articles about Clemens' domination of good hitters than you will of his getting rocked by them!
Good pitching beats good hitting....simple as that. Not true every night, but Bonds doesn't get hits every night either. I've seen HIM get beaten badly on numerous occasions....including every playoff game in his career until a couple of years ago...and some of that was against mediocre pitching at times.

When a great pitcher makes poor pitches (mistakes) great hitters show thier stuff. Great Hitters rarely hit great pitches.

Good hitters want to face good pitchers--I won't use the term "great" because that belongs to a limited few.

quote:

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Originally posted by Coach Knight:
Not sure if I'm reading the thread correctly or not, but I'll take a great pitcher over a great hitter any day. I've never seen a great hitter shut down a defense, but I've seen plenty of great pitchers drop the hammer on great offenses.
Hitting is huge, and for position players, it is a necessity...but I still like quality arms over ANYTHING else.

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Absolutely correct coach Knight. Every year when colleges begin spending their scholarships, who are the first to get selected? The best pitchers usually go first and get the best scholarships. I think this speaks for itself. The hitters go next and get the small shares of what's left in the scholarship pool sometimes the hitters are splitting what's left to get on a team.

If any geat pitcher faced an All-Star hitting lineup every time they pitched, they would have a poor pitching record.........

Great hitting beats great pitching........

"When a great pitcher makes poor pitches (mistakes) great hitters show thier stuff."

This is an example of someone creating their own reality.......You should have said, sometimes pitchers don't bring their "A" game.......That used to be a laugher, too....

Blue,
A really great pitcher pitches even better when facing great hitters!

Quality pitchers get better scholarships because they usually have several choices in their selection of schools. Quality hitters, who are fast and multi talented get good offers as well.

Now a great pitcher who is a great hitter has got it made!

To be honest, I believe defense is the most important tool. Why? because if you are being stopped from scoring runs then how is the great hitting helping you win games.

Bluedog,

The World Series this past fall did showcase two good hitting teams, but most of us saw ( the ones who want to admit it )that the pitchers of the Red SOx were able to shut down the good hitters of the Cardinals. So in the end, pitching and defense will win you Championships.


Scooter

Let's see... Randy Johnson, Curt Shilling, Mark Prior (healthy)and Johan Santana, vs. Barry Bonds, Carlos Beltran, Vladimir Guerrero, and Alex Rodriguez. I'll take those arms everytime. The hitters will probably average .250 ba. over a 3 game series.

If my memory serves me right(and it seldom does at my age!) didn't the Texas Rangers and Baltimore Orioles live by the "Great hitting will beat great pitching" philosophy for sevral years? And they won how many World Championships?

It truly gets tiring to see people post and then continually get belittled by Blue Dog/ Teacherman

Perhaps we should just sit back let them pontificate to their hearts delight

Got to love it when they just say "WRONG" as if they have all the answers.

This is a forum for discussion and debate not for putting everyone else down as if they were fools

Just my thoughts which boiled over this morning

TRhit, people see what they want to see.......Perception is their reality......

Lets quick looking at this from a coaches frame of mind and look at it from a players point. If a player is a pitcher hitting is not his most important tool. If he is a posistion player then it is.

TR ... agree 100%.

I have no problem being wrong ... my wife reminds me of that often .

I enjoy spirited discussion of different, even passionate, opinions because I learn a lot ... particularly when the concepts, ideas, positions are debated on their merits with other curious, insightful, and positive people. In the end I'm not all that interested in being right, but more in learning what is right from people that are more knowledgeable than me ... and maybe make some connection with other people in the process.

I find it pretty rude when someone feels they need to elevate and promote their position in a discussion by attempting to undermine others on a personal level ... i.e., stating you're wrong because your position is 'imagined' in your own little 'reality', instead of on presenting stronger evidence that supports the merits of their opinion.

Well, in my own little 'reality' of local HS baseball teams (this is HSbaseballweb after all), the emperical evidence is very strong that teams with at least two dominating Div-I bound pitchers almost always go very far, placing 1st or 2nd in league and moving on to post season play. HS teams lacking a decent pitching rotation have struggled to win consistently regardless of their offensive depth. They win a game here and there ... but not consistently. Ultimately, for 'winning' programs, it's not an either/or proposition ... you have to have a well rounded team both defensively and offensively, but in a vacuum, at least at the HS level, great pitching will usually take you farther than great hitting. By the time you end up in post-season play, of course you'd better have a decent offense because the quality of pitching starts to equalize ... if your HS hitters can only hit average pitching, you'll be knocked out early.

I've also seen the same thing on our club team, which has quality .370-.475 hitting throughout the entire lineup ... for the past three years we've only done really well and advanced into the final rounds of tournaments when we have had a deep pitching rotation.

pb

As I see it for a team to succeed you need pitching, hitting and defense and not necessarily in that order.

Some years the strength will be hitting, in other years it may be pitching and in others it may well be defense but to win or go deep in tournament play you need a solid comobination of all three.

You also need coaches who know how to maximize the team strengths and minimize the teams weaknesses

Let's see, the kids are headed into a tournament this weekend and looking at the batting order we're stronger top to bottom than we've ever been. We got a good draw and the field is relatively weak. Do I hope we'll do well? Yes. Do I expect us to do well? No. We don't have enough pitching.

You people are mising the point, entirely.....Most of you are talking about average hitting......I'm talkng about great hitting......Very few High School or College teams have great hitting.....

For example, L.S.U. won several National Championships during the 90's......They accomplished this because they had great hitting.....They still win because they hit better than most.....

Cal State Fullerton are the National Champs because a great pitcher (Jason Windsor) and pitching staff shut down Texas' great hitting. Extremely difficult to do with aluminum bats in the mix I might add.

Successful teams historically are always built around pitching and defense first. Of course you must score to win, but even with very below average hitting the St Louis Cardinals of the Bruce Sutter era were very successful.

Blue,
You teach hitting, so one expects you to feel that way.
Food for thought, my son is a pitcher and utility player and maintains a BA of over 350. However, that is not what got him his scholarship.

And we are not even sure that BlueDog teaches anything !!!!

He may just be a troll with no real foundation