Question for scouts/.recruiters

Don't we already have enough stats ??

Rob I was sitting with Billy Godwin HC at ECU one weekend watching a tourney. We were talking about pitchers and I asked him outside of the obvious - velo etc what he looked for in pitchers not only the ones he recruited but the ones he had on his staff. He said he really looked at how many times a pitcher could get the swing and miss. Did the pitcher have a pitch he could produce swing and miss on. Or as we say an out pitch. He went on to say to him it was very important that guys have the ability to produce a certain amount of swing and miss. I dont know if he actually kept stats on it or not.

As far as hitters I think it would depend on the hitter and what he brings to the table. If a guy has a lot of swing and miss swings he better be a guy capable of doing serious damage when he connects. If its a contact guy , big obp guy he better not have a bunch of swing and miss.

Rob,

Don't know for sure but I think Mark Reynolds of the Diamondbacks has to be in that conversation with 767 K's in his 1982 ML AB's. On the Espn site it lists a players chase zone where a batter swung and missed pitches outside the strike zone and Reynolds has 184. That's besides the ones over the plate that he missed. I know for a fact some of the sabermatic sites keep track of pitches thrown that are swung at and missed.

Some hitters swing and miss more with less than 2 strikes. From a stats standpoint I think strikeouts is more important than swing and miss percentage.

I think seeing a hitter swing and miss a lot doesn't leave a good impression.

Seeing a pitcher miss bats leaves a good impression but it depends on the type of pitcher.

Coach May- Coach Godwin is a character huh? I met him a few times this summer...in Morehead City and the again at a Mets game towards the end of August

related to this: when the hitters are coming up and needing only one swing to put the ball in play you know it's time to get the bullpen busy.

Swings and misses, to me, tell you more about the pitcher than the hitter. A high strikeout total for a Pitcher, over the season(s), would tell you he's a guy that employs all the skills; velocity, deception and movement, to get "misses."

Any pitch, by a hitter, that's not centered is a "miss." Thus Batting average, over time (as you suggested the swing and miss theory would require) would probably lead you to the same conclusions about hitters and would require less data collection.

Don't think the "juice is worth the squeeze in this scenario." Interesting consideration though.

I have heard Scouts comment, however, that when evaluating hitters during BP (which they often must do), "they quickly eliminate from their interest lists, hitters who aren't consistently centering the ball." That makes sense to me because if they can't center it up during BP then certainly it will only get tougher with live pitching.

quote:

Originally posted by trojan-skipper:
related to this: when the hitters are coming up and needing only one swing to put the ball in play you know it's time to get the bullpen busy.

Huh? One swing and a ground out or DP can be a lot better and a lot more efficient than 5 pitches or more for a strike out, would you agree?

CADad is correct, a lot depends on the pitcher.

i disagree, a pitcher doesn't control much once the ball is in play (double play ball vs. grounder through the hole) the best way to get an out is to keep them from hitting it.

I've never heard of a pitcher trying to strike everyone out. Sure, there are times when a pitcher might throw a specific pitch in a specific instance in an attempt to get a strikeout. But I'm pretty sure the objective of pitching is to be efficient and to not allow them to hit the ball hard consistently. At least that's how I was taught.

An interesting thing happens to pitchers as they move past the high school ranks (at least with mine)... while strikeouts are great, many pitchers are taught that coaches/management would much rather a guy get one or two pitch outs (ball in play) and be able to go 7 innings (or more) vs. striking out 7 or 8 and only being able to go 5 innings (due to the heavy pitch counts that tend to go along with strikeouts). If you want to be a starting pitcher you need to learn to be efficient, "get them to hit your pitch" has been the motto that has been drilled into my sons head. The goal is to get an out in 4 pitches or less… now if you can register a lot of strikeouts in 4 pitches are less…

As Prime9 points out, any pitch that isn’t hit squarely tends to be to the pitchers advantage. Ground balls are a pitchers friend (I never thought of this during HS years), while swing and miss is something that baseball people look at, the stat that teams give a ton of credence to is the number of ground ball outs that are recorded by a pitcher.