Just wanted to solicit your opinions on a subject that has been pestering me. Maybe this belongs in the pitching thread but I really appreciate the broad spectrum of advise in the General Forum.

Bum, Jr. is what I consider a fly-ball pitcher. He has a shorter frame (LHP) that seems to give him success up in the zone with strikeouts and flyouts. But his Summer coach has been preaching keeping the ball down in the zone. I understand the concept is to get ground balls, but not all pitchers are ground ball pitchers.. are they? Bum, Jr. has had a great year but last game, following coach's advise, he tried throwing fastballs low and was missing thigh-high over the plate. We all know what happens there. I've posted this thought before, but I will do so again. Here's my fastball theory:

1) Shorter pitchers who generally work up in the zone with their fastballs tend to get strikeouts and flyouts. Down in the zone they tend to get hit.

2) Taller pitchers who generally work low in the zone with their fastballs tend to get strikeouts and groundballs. Up in the zone they tend to get hit.

It's only a generalization, and only applies to fastballs. I'm thinking taller pitchers, because of the plane of their delivery, have success down and shorter pitchers, working up in the zone, mess up hitters who might be used to taller pitchers throwing down. To the batter the ball appears to be almost rising. Am I right or wrong? Why?

Bum,

I have, based on my 5'10" LHP, have a different opinion. But I think it really comes down to the pitcher, the movement on the ball, and how he feels he is most effective. My son's pitch moves down and away from a right handed batter. He works down in the zone and, historically - this will be his first year in college, lives on ground balls to second. I'd say he gets a ground ball 8 out of 10 times a ball is put in play.

Bum,
I think that a HS pitcher can find success working higher in the zone with their FB because there is less power at the plate and you can get away with your mistakes.
In college and beyond those fly balls can suddenly become the dreaded long ball.That's teh issue. I think regardless of size, you are going to hear, keep it low, low, low. Hitters are smarter, more selective, more powerful and the strike zone shrinks, plus wind in or out becomes a huge factor. Coaches prefer it on the ground, from everyone. Contact is ok as long as they don't equate to Rs or ERs. For groundballers who get a hit out of someone now can rely on the GB for the DP, with men on base, high long fly out can become a run, or two. One pitch thrown to a hitter to the ss where he can play the ball is also much preferred to 5-6 or more pitches for the strike out to maximize usage of the pitcher.

Don't know about your son's future pitching coach, but I will bet he'll be working with him to keep it lower than he has.

FWIW, my hs soph son is tall and tends to get ground balls and come backers.

I don't know if you are right or wrong, but an out is an out. If you can get outs with flys or infield grounders, then the pitcher saves his arm.

eta: just read TPM's post (jinx!) good point about college and beyond....

quote:

Originally posted by Bum:
Just wanted to solicit your opinions on a subject that has been pestering me. Maybe this belongs in the pitching thread but I really appreciate the broad spectrum of advise in the General Forum.

Bum, Jr. is what I consider a fly-ball pitcher. He has a shorter frame (LHP) that seems to give him success up in the zone with strikeouts and flyouts. But his Summer coach has been preaching keeping the ball down in the zone. I understand the concept is to get ground balls, but not all pitchers are ground ball pitchers.. are they? Bum, Jr. has had a great year but last game, following coach's advise, he tried throwing fastballs low and was missing thigh-high over the plate. We all know what happens there. I've posted this thought before, but I will do so again. Here's my fastball theory:

1) Shorter pitchers who generally work up in the zone with their fastballs tend to get strikeouts and flyouts. Down in the zone they tend to get hit.

2) Taller pitchers who generally work low in the zone with their fastballs tend to get strikeouts and groundballs. Up in the zone they tend to get hit.

It's only a generalization, and only applies to fastballs. I'm thinking taller pitchers, because of the plane of their delivery, have success down and shorter pitchers, working up in the zone, mess up hitters who might be used to taller pitchers throwing down. To the batter the ball appears to be almost rising. Am I right or wrong? Why?

Bum,
Arm slot is very important. High 3/4 slot, throwing down hill will give you a lot of ground outs. I saw one pitcher throw like this in this year's Super Regionals, forget his name and team. I think he was from Arizona State but not sure, anybody has an idea?

Bum, My feeling is you Throw High inside, Low and away.
And mix up the speed.
Learn to throw from the stretch, and work on keeping runner's from stealing.
The coach will decide what pitch they want thrown at any given time.
They will use a LHP in many different way's during the season.

Example:
Runner on third less than 2 out's, They want a ground ball.
Not a fly ball.

The player's in College will put a more consistent bat on the ball then they do in HS.
FO and GO are great, In the right situation's during the game.
HR are mistakes by pitcher's.
Strike Out's are mistake's by Hitter's.

BUM;

When you son obtains the next level, he will make the necessary adjustments. Every Australian pitcher is taught to pitch waist to knees.

Our American 16-18 hitters will soon predict this
pitching philosophy. Each college pitching coach have their own techniques in coaching.

ADJUSTMENT: will be necessary for the player to have success at his next level. Adjusting to the environment, the coaches, the teammates, the classroom and the batter while keeping his individual thinking. Teach him to be a "leader"!!!

Right handed hitters like the ball "up"
and left handed hitters like the ball "down".

If I am hitting against your son, I would know his arm angle, pitch selection and location
when he "warms up" in the bullpen. I would wait for one pitch.

Bob Williams

This sounds like a question for Sabermetrics!

I will bet this question has been asked and researched. Actually it is more than one question:

1) Is it true that some successful pitchers fly ball pitchers and some successful pitchers ground ball pitchers?

2) If the answer is "yes," then is there a physical attribute to each kind of pitcher, say, height, that is correlated to which kind of pitcher a kid is.

Bum,
I ask this very question back in November. Here are some of the responses.

http://hsbaseballweb.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/1491034941/m/3021071752

Bum,
Your theory may be right, it would be interesting to find statistics on the subject.

Unfortunetly many of our players are recruited for different roles other than the ones they are accustumed too. All of this will be determined by the coach and he will make adjustments to his needs.

Not all pitchers are the same and shouldn't be molded to be the same. In college it is more desireable for a starter to keep the ball in play on the ground not in the air. If a team has enough arms, pitchers fall into specialty roles, starter, long relief, set up, closer. The bottom line is that they have to produce outs.

Bum,

There’s no doubt in my mind that any STYLE a pitcher has at any level lower than professional ball has the possibility to enjoy a lot of success. But, because of the low quality defense and hitters, compared to the pros, no one should try to compare what a pitcher at any of those lower levels does, with a pro, let alone a ML player! Instead, they should look at the team behind the pitcher, and perhaps at the field they play at to get the best picture possible about what’s goin’ on.

Here’s a small example. My son had a GBO/FBO well over 4:1. His HS teams had a career IF FPC of .900. His infield made an error about every 17 batters he faced over 1,200 batters. They also played at a home field that was 325’ down the lines, 365’ in the power alleys, and 405’ in CF. The FPC for the IF team I’ve scored for for the last 2 seasons has been .940.

Pitchers on his team that gave up lots of fly balls did pretty well in general, and although my son did extremely well, how much more success would he have had if he had an infield that fielded 40 points better?

I don’t know about all HS IFs, but I’m gonna guess that .900 is around average to below average, and .940 is a pretty darn good one. While although I’m not gonna check, I’m gonna guess the IFs for ML teams are up around .970+. With those kinds of numbers, its pretty easy to see why ML teams drool over P’s with great GBO/FBO numbers! Heck, not only do the ML fielders make many more outs, when the ball is on the ground, it can’t go over the fence. In HS, not only will the defense not make nearly as many outs, its unusual for a HS team to have more than a couple players who can pop one out, while everyone in a ML lineup can do it.

What I’m trying to tell you is, for the age you’re talking about, the odds are that he’s gonna do just fine and have lots of success allowing batters to hit the ball in the air. But at some point in time, even if the coaches don’t really understand all the factors, they’re gonna want to see pitchers working in the lower part of the zone, unless of course they can hump the ball up there 10-15% faster than decent pitchers at his level.

As for your fastball theory, I don’t know. But, I suspect much more depends on release point and velocity than height. But there’s good news. Soon there won’t be any more need to theorize! As the analysts get more and more used to working with technology like Pitch f/x, a lot of baseball theories are gonna bite the dust, and a lot are gonna be substantiated by fact.

Skeep,
You make good points however I do disagree with some points about college and what is done in pro baseball. Every coach that recruited son mentioned his ability to keep it low and on the ground. While FO/GO, pitch f/x is not a statistic used in college baseball, it is VERY important to many pitching coaches of quality programs to keep it on the ground. They do NOT like the continuos high pop ups.

Your posts sound familiar, you have posted here before?

I agree there are certain types of pitchers - this is a fly ball guy and this is a groundball guy - but you do have to be able to locate to all over the zone to be successful. You might not be as strong throwing up in the zone as you are low in the zone. You just need to be able to spot it enough to keep them honest.

Your son cannot go warm up in the bullpen and be ready to take the mound and have the coach say "keep it low" and then call low pitches and expect success. From the sound of it your son has not really worked on staying low in the zone. He needs the off season and preseason to work on this. To change the location it involves stride length, release point and several other factors.

Your son can become a low ball pitcher and still have success up in the zone but it takes work. Just get him with a good pitching coach and they can work on it and your son will be much more successful.

Coach, Bum, Jr. usually has exceptional control. Even down. I'm just saying that the Summer coach emphasized the low pitch and I think Bum, Jr. went from 50/50 up/down to maybe 20/80 up down.. and a fly ball pitcher should pitch to his strength. He's given up five home runs this year and ALL have been pitches down in the zone (belt and below), not up. It seems counter-intuitive, I know, so it makes me wonder about my theory. BTW, I think any pitcher should get ahead, regardless of location, and once ahead should be careful to pitch it far enough up in the zone (more than half-way from belt to shoulders, for example) to ensure a chase pitch and not a home run.

I also think it depends on the pitch movement. A pitcher who primarily has tail to his pitch is more likely to be fly ball pitcher than the pitcher who primarily has sink.

Bottom line is, of course, it will be up to his coaches where he pitches. I'm just curious.

Can't resist:

From the poster's tagline above:

"When life hands you gators - make Gatorade"

Bum's son was named the Gatorade Player of the Year in the State of Washington. He pretty much knows how to pitch!

quote:

Originally posted by TPM:
You make good points however I do disagree with some points about college and what is done in pro baseball. Every coach that recruited son mentioned his ability to keep it low and on the ground.

I’m assuming those two sentences go together, so that’s how I’ll comment on them.

I have absolutely no doubt at all that every coach who recruits players, whether its for a t-ball team, any of the top D1 programs, or any other team at any other level, is looking for P’s who get lots of GBs. But is that because those pitchers would be the best for his team, or because baseball dogma says pitchers that get lots of GBs are better than those who get lots of FBs?

I suspect the latter. And its not that I don’t think it’s a perfectly valid concept, but I more than strongly suspect it comes from people thinking about GB pitchers in terms of MLB, where the fielders have an enormous skills advantage, rather than a bunch of 9YOs. Yes, folks might want to see a 9YO P with the bases loaded, 1 out, and the championship game on the line, entice the batter into hitting a GB in hopes that it’ll be turned into a game saving DP, but what are the odds of that happening?

Compare a MLB field to a typical field where 12U kids play. What are the chances a GB is going to bounce true? Assuming it does, what are the chances the fielders are gonna make the play without making some kind of an error, and still get the batter/runner? The fact is, although it’s a good thing the players at lower levels get to try those things, the chances they’ll pull off the play are really poor compared to a short fly to the OF.

It’s the same thing for HS or colleges. Is it likely that a P throwing at Rice will have his defense roll 2 if they get the chance? Sure is. But how about Blue Bye U in the corner of La with an enrollment of 500 students? Remember, you have to consider all colleges, not just the very best ones.

The fact is, the GBO/FBO ratio is something easily computed at the affiliated professional level, and it is. But how many teams below that level do it? As far as I know, I was the only SK not using an electronic scoring device in the entire state of CA that computed it for a JUCO team, and the same goes for HS teams.

Without having that data available, first of all its impossible to do anything more than guess about whether a pitcher is a GB or FB pitcher, and without very good fielding data, its impossible to do more than take a wild guess as how likely it would be that a given team might be able to take advantage of a P who throws lots of GBs.

How did any of the scouts/recruiters know your boy kept the ball low and on the ground? I’m certainly not saying they were wrong or that he didn’t, but I’d really like to know how they measured such a thing. Did your school’s coach maintain such a statistic, or was it something else?

The bottom line is, while I’m 100% sure that’s something scouts/recruiters look for, I have serious doubts about how valid their information is, or how much that would actually benefit their team.

quote:

Originally posted by TPM:
While FO/GO, pitch f/x is not a statistic used in college baseball, it is VERY important to many pitching coaches of quality programs to keep it on the ground. They do NOT like the continuos high pop ups.

I’m sorry if I didn’t explain what pitch f/x is. All that is, is the electronic capacity to measure pitches. As far as I know, its not being used anywhere other than MLB stadiums.

And I sure do agree that FO/GO isn’t a statistic used in college baseball, or at least not on a regular basis like say K/BB would be. I also completely agree that it is VERY important to many PC of quality programs, but I have to wonder why it is they feel that way. Is it because they too have been swayed by the MLB numbers, or because they just KNOW its important?

I’d like to have some kind of reason for what I allowed to my recruiting scheme. With real numbers I could say much more how important something was. Heck, if I was a college PC and knew it was very very important, I’d go crazy because there was no way I could really get a good feel for the players I was seeing since its not a stat that HS’s keep!

As for not liking continuous high popups that would be another thing I’d have to question if a coach said it to me. I truly don’t know of anyone who tracks high popups as opposed to popups, as opposed to fly balls, other than MLB. For me to believe a fellow like that knew what he was talking about, I’d have to see the ratio of high popups all the Ps had and then compare that to how successful those guys were.

Look, I’m not saying any of that stuff is BS. In fact, everything you mentioned is something I happen to agree with to a major degree. The only difference is, I know there’s an easy way to measure it, and since there is, I want to see it measured to judge to what degree I should place its importance.

quote:

Originally posted by Bum:
Coach, Bum, Jr. usually has exceptional control. Even down. I'm just saying that the Summer coach emphasized the low pitch and I think Bum, Jr. went from 50/50 up/down to maybe 20/80 up down.. …

Can’t help but ask, who called pitches during games. If it was the coach and that was his philosophy, its easy to see why he changed so much. If it’s the catcher, I would be a bit surprised if the coach told him he wanted pitch locations much more low in the zone than up.

But, even though your perception is that he went to 20/80 from 50/50, how do you know? It’ll be pretty easy to see those kinds of things for ML pitchers because of pitch f/x, but its really darned difficult to say where pitches REALLY were without technology.

quote:

Originally posted by Bum:… and a fly ball pitcher should pitch to his strength. He's given up five home runs this year and ALL have been pitches down in the zone (belt and below), not up. It seems counter-intuitive, I know, so it makes me wonder about my theory.

Actually it seems exactly right to me. Although I don’t hold batters in especially high regard as to their IQs, it would have to take a particularly thick headed hitter to not realize a P was throwing such a high percentage of his pitches with a particular tendency. It seems to me that that’s when they’d start looking for pitches in that area, and thus be much more prepared to hit them.

quote:

Originally posted by Bum: I also think it depends on the pitch movement. A pitcher who primarily has tail to his pitch is more likely to be fly ball pitcher than the pitcher who primarily has sink.

What makes you say that?

quote:

Originally posted by Bum:Bottom line is, of course, it will be up to his coaches where he pitches. I'm just curious.

It will be up to them where the pitches will be called, but it’ll be his skill that makes it happen or not.

quote:

Originally posted by Krakatoa:
Bum's son was named the Gatorade Player of the Year in the State of Washington. He pretty much knows how to pitch!

Congrats to the boy!

But that begs the question, was he calling his own pitches? LOL!

Skeep, I am learning out of pure curiosity. I might have an opinion or even a philosophy about this but no way am I going to sell it to my son. As soon as he steps foot on campus this fall he will do exactly what his college coaches tell him. But I think they have an inkling about Bum, Jr.'s tendencies. In the past two games all of the hits he has given up have been thigh-high to belt, not belt up. Since you asked, I can tell because I typically sit perpendicular to the path to the plate (his arm side). (No reason why, it's just traditional with me.)

I think the strikeouts need to be factored into the mathematics of choosing a gb vs. fb pitcher as well. (This is not to say gb pitchers don't get strikeouts too!)

How's this for a fun question? Assign 3 points for a strikeout. 2 points for a groundball out. 1 point for a flyball out. Which major league pitcher would have the highest score on average? Is he a flyball pitcher or a groundball pitcher?

quote:

How's this for a fun question? Assign 3 points for a strikeout. 2 points for a groundball. 1 point for a flyball. Which major league pitcher would have the highest score on average? Is he a flyball pitcher or a groundball pitcher?

Bum,

My guess is, using that formula, he would be a strikeout pitcher!

Actually flyball pitchers are typically strikeout pitchers. They have to be. There are lots of groundball pitchers who do not get a lot of strikeouts.

The problem with fly vs ground out stats is that most extra base hits are fly balls that don't figure into the stats. Also line drive outs are placed in the flyball out category. So if all line drives and extra base hits and homeruns are flyballs and most outs and double plays are ground balls it is easy to see why there are many guys in the big leagues because they are ground ball pitchers.

Come to think of it, I have heard of lots of groundball specialists, but I don't think I've ever heard of someone being described as a flyball specialist. You know... bring them in the game to get a flyball or a line drive.

I think those flyball specialists are better known as strikeout specialists.