What Ever Happened to Taking a Strike?
Image by williamhartz via Flickr Last night in the Little League Softball Championship game, down by 4 runs, w/ the 7,8,9 batters up New Jersey went out there hacking??? This is not to single them out, I have seen this in just about every game that is close in the late innings. Baseball/Softball 101 says "Take a strike". For some reason, this isn’t the case any more. I have had coaches tell me "I don’t like to do that because it doesn’t teach anything". Huh?
Of course it does. It teaches kids THE RIGHT THING!
Why do we take a strike?
1. You only have about a 30% chance of getting on base swinging the bat . That means that if I swing and make contact, 2 out of 3 times I am going to make an out. Doesn’t sound like good odds to me. Do you think a professional gambler would play w/ these odds?
2. The last 3 outs are always the most difficult to get. How many times have you seen a team blow a 2,3,4 or more run lead in the last inning? I am beginning to think it happens more often than not.
3. Taking a strike eliminates any chance of your player swinging at a ball. Remove the pressure from your player, they already have enough stress on them. Let them take a strike and settle in. You might get a walk out of it.
4. You need baserunners! You can’t win if you don’t get players on base. Remember the objective is to get the tying run to the plate. You can’t do that if you ground out, fly out, or strike out.
Not only should you take a strike. If you get to 3-1 you should consider taking that pitch as well. If you have a great hitter up let them rip, but any player that is even slightly shaky should be taking 3-1 as well. Once you get up your power hitter as the tying run. Let ‘em rip! But until then. TAKE A STRIKE!
Can you think of another time you should take a strike?
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