Continuing a thought

[scorekeeper]

I’ve been cogitatin’ on the things that were being kicked around about contact in the “Dazzling” thread, and now I think I’m ready to take another run at this stuff to see if there’s any kind of consensus about what to look for and how to measure it.

I think we all know what contact is, and its pretty easy to measure. If the batter swings and puts the bat on the ball, he made contact. Some may say to use BIP as a measurement, but I like to include foul balls too, and that gives me contact, or at least a representation of contact I can wrap my head around.

But before I get too involved in that stuff, I tried to find some way to look at pitches where no contact is made to see if I can justify my philosophy of contact is superior to no contact. Not in every case, but certainly in general enough to make it a philosophy that not only leads to “success”, but is reasonably easy to attain by any pitcher, unlike “electric stuff” that’s so dependent on velocity, and not able to be reasonably easy to achieve by every pitcher.

The closest ‘off-the-shelf’ metric I have available to look at that is pretty simple to understand, is this.

Looking at the 1st two pages, what you see is a breakdown of each pitcher that shows how many pitches it averages to get “rid” of batters in the various ways. Its pretty simple to see that what adds most to pitch “load”, are Ks and BBs. Its even easier to see on the 3rd page where its broken down the same way, but grouped a bit differently.

I suppose a good argument could be made as to how “valuable” a K is compared to other ways to get rid of hitters, but there’s no argument I can think of that can be made to show how a walk could be considered “good” in any way shape or form.

I added something new to each of the reports to try to give me a better gauge. “% of Pitches Thrown” All that is, is the number of pitches for any particular result, divided by the total number of pitches that player has thrown. FI, Stilwell threw 81 pitches walking batters and 981 pitches total. (81/981)*100 = 8.3%.

I used that same number on that final page, and something unexpected showed up. Now I can see that Stilwell was extremely efficient in the use of pitches he threw for strikes because such a high percentage of them went for strikeouts. Likewise, a very low percentage of his pitches were “wasted” on walking batters. Well, at least that’s how it seems to me. If anyone sees something else or can shoot anything you see down, please do.

[scorekeeper]

Its pretty cool that everyone agrees with my assumptions, so I’ll take the next step and see if that remains true.

This next metric takes thoughts from before and narrows down what’s being considered even more. Actually, it’s the opposite of contact in that its only pitches that were not made contact with.

pitchkinds1.pdf

[mudvnine]

I think we all know what contact is, and its pretty easy to measure. If the batter swings and puts the bat on the ball, he made contact. Some may say to use BIP as a measurement, but I like to include foul balls too, and that gives me contact, or at least a representation of contact I can wrap my head around.

Doesn't strikes thrown (Stk%) account for all of those? Maybe because my software is not so advanced, but any "strike" (called, swung on and missed, foul ball, or put into play) is all tallied into the Stk% thrown, and in my way of thinking....all meet the "pitch to contact" criteria.

This is why I look for 60%+ as a Stk% for a HS pitcher to work towards if he expects to be successful.

But before I get too involved in that stuff, I tried to find some way to look at pitches where no contact is made to see if I can justify my philosophy of contact is superior to no contact. Not in every case, but certainly in general enough to make it a philosophy that not only leads to “success”, but is reasonably easy to attain by any pitcher, unlike “electric stuff” that’s so dependent on velocity, and not able to be reasonably easy to achieve by every pitcher.

I think you're looking to justify or explain two different definitions of "superior", in the theoretical/perfect world vs. the real world.

If we could get every hitter out on the 1st pitch via "contact" to a fielder, thus requiring our pitcher to only throw 21 pitches (7 inning HS game), I think that we would all choose that for the long term arm health of our pitcher, over.....

A pitcher that throws all strikes and/or 63 pitches (same 7 inning game) to the hitters, that are all called, or swung on and missed....although from an assurance standpoint, this one is much better, as there is no possibility of human error besides that of the hitter (and a guess the catcher if there was D3K).

But since neither of these has yet to be proven and probably never will be, we must then look into the real world for "superior", and since IMO, pitches for "balls" are simply a waste of a pitch (except when thrown intentionally for tactical purposes), the only "superior" pitch, would be that of a "strike", and by definition, all "strikes" should allow the batter to make "contact".....hence, "pitching to contact".

I suppose a good argument could be made as to how “valuable” a K is compared to other ways to get rid of hitters, but there’s no argument I can think of that can be made to show how a walk could be considered “good” in any way shape or form.

The only "way, shape, or form" a walk might be considered "good", would be an intentional one to setup a double-play potential to create a defensive advantage in some situations. Other than that, I agree with you about the usefulness of walks.


BTW - Your "attachment 109962" link gives me an, "Invalid Attachment specified. If you followed a valid link, please notify the administrator" error message....and no, I ain't going to "notify the administrator", Jake and CB have enough problems with me, I ain't giving them another.

[scorekeeper]

Doesn't strikes thrown (K%) account for all of those? Maybe because my software is not so advanced, but any "strike" (called, swung on and missed, foul ball, or put into play) is all tallied into the K% thrown, and in my way of thinking....all meet the "pitch to contact" criteria.

Your software is much more advanced than what I’m using, but how it presents the data it has is extremely inferior.

Depends on what you’re looking for and how you look at the numbers. In the largest view, a strike is a strike is a strike, and if you’re looking for the gross number of strikes and how they relate to the gross number of pitches, that’s precisely what strike percentage is. If then you’re personal definition of what meets the pitch to contact criteria is any strike, you’re done and need look no deeper.

Personally, I tend to look a bit more deeply than that. I’ll try to come up with an analogy you might be more familiar with. A gross percentage of all fires are caused by arson. If you happen to be charged with planning prison space, all you care about is the number of arsonists that might be sentenced out of that gross number, so you can add it to the space necessary for all the other types of crimes that require incarceration. But, if you’re charged with trying to break down all the different kinds of arson, you need a lot more in depth information. Hope that makes sense.

This is why I look for 60%+ as a K% for a HS pitcher to work towards if he expects to be successful.

If that’s what you find is true and meets your requirements for choosing pitchers, that’s fine. Now me, I believe there’s a bit more to it than gross percentage, so naturially I look deeper to see if I can prove that.

I think you're looking to justify or explain two different definitions of "superior", in the theoretical/perfect world vs. the real world.

To me they’re the same thing if I can prove a relationship in both words.

If we could get every hitter out on the 1st pitch via "contact" to a fielder, thus requiring our pitcher to only throw 21 pitches (7 inning HS game), I think that we would all choose that for the long term arm health of our pitcher, over.....

I’m not so sure ALL would be the answer, but let’s say the vast vast majority at minimum.

A pitcher that throws all strikes and/or 63 pitches (same 7 inning game) to the hitters, that are all called, or swung on and missed....although from an assurance standpoint, this one is much better, as there is no possibility of human error besides that of the hitter (and a guess the catcher if there was D3K).

Agreed.

But since neither of these has yet to be proven and probably never will be, we must then look into the real world for "superior", and since IMO, pitches for "balls" are simply a waste of a pitch (except when thrown intentionally for tactical purposes), the only "superior" pitch, would be that of a "strike", and by definition, all "strikes" should allow the batter to make "contact".....hence, "pitching to contact".

I guess in the wildest stretch of the imagination all strikes allow the batter to make contact because he always has the capability to throw the bat at a ball, but I wouldn’t say ALL strikes “allowed” the batter to make contact. I would say that all pitches in the strike zone certainly did that, and I would say that all pitches the batter swung at out of the strike zone and made contact with would also fall into that category. But a pitch the batter INTERPRETED as one he could hit solidly and started swinging at, but realized too late that it wasn’t in the zone, wouldn’t be in that category. Again, its all in what you’re looking for.

The only "way, shape, or form" a walk might be considered "good", would be an intentional one to setup a double-play potential to create a defensive advantage in some situations. Other than that, I agree with you about the usefulness of walks.

I don’t even believe they’re useful for that at levels below the pros. I don’t know what the real numbers would show, but I suspect IBBs are virtually indistinguishable from all other walks at say the HS level.

BTW - Your "attachment 109962" link gives me an, "Invalid Attachment specified. If you followed a valid link, please notify the administrator" error message....and no, I ain't going to "notify the administrator", Jake and CB have enough problems with me, I ain't giving them another.

Hmmm. It may well be that it didn’t like me uploading 4 different attachments with the same name. I was making changes to it while I was writing. I have no trouble seeing it, but I’ll upload it again with another name. Hope it works.

pitp.pdf

[CircleChange11]

I'm not sure this applicable, but I went through and did something similar with my son's (pitcher) TB games.

Outcome - # of events - # of pitches - average # of pitches per event - % of total pitches
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

BB - 13 - 81 - 6.2 - 16%
K - 45 - 208 - 4.6 - 41%
E - 10 - 30 - 3.0 - 6%
O - 32 - 95 - 3.0 - 19%
H - 30 - 97 - 3.2 - 19%

total strike % = 66%

A few things were interesting to me ...

1. 6 of the walks were 7+ pitches. IMHO, the batters "earned" them because they kept fouling off strikes. If people want to know why one would be interested in teaching a youth pitcher a type of pitch with movement, it would be for these cases. The more fastballs a batter sees the better they can time them. While you can "tip your cap" to the batter, I'd rather put him away earlier. At 10U, it's not a huge deal to me, as the emphasis is still "throwing strikes". Getting batters out with fastballs is, by far, the best skill a pitcher can have at this level.

2. When batters put the ball in play, they generally do so earlier rather than later. This makes sense. If you have a strike thrower on the mound, the batters that can hit at the velocity will do so, those that won't ... generally won't.

3. 10 reached on errors out of 72 BIP stinks. That leads to quite a few extra pitches, and not "low stress" pitches.

Pitches per IP = 20.3, Pitchers per BF = 3.9.

Some of this is a little deflating as it has been my experience that "high pitch count" pitchers will very often continue to be "high pitch count" pitchers. I used to tell my HS pitchers that their PC should go down in college due to better hitters and defenders. It didn't happen. They continued to be about the same pitcher, as they found that there were still plenty of batters at the next level that couldn't hit them even if the batter wanted to.

The positive might be that as we develop and age, adding pitches with movement will increase the K's and not have a lot of "deep counts". At the 10U level, there really aren't many "put away pitches", and as I've said before the guys that throw "real changeups" don't have the disparity in velocity that they will at the older ages (10-12mph), and the best changeups (best = most effective) appear to be nothing more than "lobs".

---------------------------------------------------------

SK, I'll check around and see if I still have my old HS pitching charts around. We had a kid that was incredibly hard to hit. Went on to throw a CG SHO in D2 CWS as an AA. I'd love to look at his numbers. He had the incredible ability to walk the 8 hitter every time. It was uncanny. He'd text me from college sometimes. "Hey coach, I got the 8 hitter out today."

[scorekeeper]

I'm not sure this applicable, but I went through and did something similar with my son's (pitcher) TB games.

Outcome - # of events - # of pitches - average # of pitches per event
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
BB - 13 - 81 - 6.2
K - 45 - 208 - 4.6
E - 10 - 30 - 3.0
O - 32 - 95 - 3.0
H - 30 - 97 - 3.2

Those numbers look pretty similar to mine, and I’m betting would be similar if all pitchers’ numbers were “averaged”.

A few things were interesting to me ...

1. 6 of the walks were 7+ pitches. IMHO, the batters "earned" them because they kept fouling off strikes. If people want to know why one would be interested in teaching a youth pitcher a type of pitch with movement, it would be for these cases. The more fastballs a batter sees the better they can time them. While you can "tip your cap" to the batter, I'd rather put him away earlier. At 10U, it's not a huge deal to me, as the emphasis is still "throwing strikes". Getting batters out with fastballs is, by far, the best skill a pitcher can have at this level.

2. When batters put the ball in play, they generally do so earlier rather than later. This makes sense. If you have a strike thrower on the mound, the batters that can hit at the velocity will do so, those that won't ... generally won't.

3. 10 reached on errors out of 72 BIP stinks. That leads to quite a few extra pitches, and not "low stress" pitches.

Pitches per IP = 20.3, Pitchers per BF = 3.9.

I always get a hoot out of it when people run numbers like that for the 1st time, or for the 1st time for a team, because there is always at least some surprise. I think a lot of that surprise is that people realize their perception and reality don’t very often match. None-the-less, I think it’s a good thing to at least look.

I don’t know about #2. There’s a lot of things about it that people don’t consider, and that makes it dangerous to draw many conclusions about. For sure it gets into what happens in certain counts, but one has to be careful to make sure they’re talking about the REAL count or the UMPIRE’S counts. They’re two very different things. I could easily do 10,000 words on that alone and never get all my thoughts down on paper. It’s a great discussion topic.

Some of this is a little deflating as it has been my experience that "high pitch count" pitchers will very often continue to be "high pitch count" pitchers. I used to tell my HS pitchers that their PC should go down in college due to better hitters and defenders. It didn't happen. They continued to be about the same pitcher, as they found that there were still plenty of batters at the next level that couldn't hit them even if the batter wanted to.

If it happens, there’s a good reason for it. Pitchers don’t care about pitch counts. They’re trying desperately to “succeed”, and success is getting batters out while giving up the fewest runs possible. If a pitcher is getting batters out, why should he change? Also, a lot of how that’s perceived depends on the coach. I happen to score for a coach who is pretty anal about pitchers throwing strikes. Other coaches get crazy about getting ground balls, or something else.

The positive might be that as we develop and age, adding pitches with movement will increase the K's and not have a lot of "deep counts". At the 10U level, there really aren't many "put away pitches", and as I've said before the guys that throw "real changeups" don't have the disparity in velocity that they will at the older ages (10-12mph), and the best changeups (best = most effective) appear to be nothing more than "lobs".

I’ve never tracked players, other than my son, from the 10YO level through college, so I can’t say what would be “normal”. I will say this though. His strikeout “rate” didn’t change very much during that time, but it did trend “down” as he learned how to “pitch”. Of course he was throwing strikes at over 65% even as a 10YO, and got up to as high as 68%. His 1st pitch strike percentage was always well over 60% as well.

SK, I'll check around and see if I still have my old HS pitching charts around. We had a kid that was incredibly hard to hit. Went on to throw a CG SHO in D2 CWS as an AA. I'd love to look at his numbers. He had the incredible ability to walk the 8 hitter every time. It was uncanny. He'd text me from college sometimes. "Hey coach, I got the 8 hitter out today."

Its sometimes surprising what can be seen when you hard enough at the numbers. With my kid, all through HS, his pitches per K during the HS regular season was almost a half pitch more and his K rate lower than when he was playing tournament ball, or really when he was allowed to call pitches himself. He’d argue continuously with his HS coach because the guy believed a pitcher HAD to throw a waste pitch on 0-2 and 1-2, and he was in the situation a lot. It wasn’t unusual to throw as many as 10 pitches extra per game because of that.

[Zinger]

I think this is a great analysis and discussion and I'm eager to have it break new ground, but...

Further analyzing the stats above:

E 10 30 3
O 32 95 3
H 30 97 3.2
Total 72 222 3.1
Outs per BIP= 32/72 = 44%
In other words, a ball in play is worth .44 outs
For balls in play, pitches per out = 3.1/0.44 = 7.0

Compared to the strikeout stat of 4.6 pitches per out, pitching to contact seems inferior (for this pitcher, at this level, ...)

This seems to be true of the pitchers in the PDFs as well.

Thoughts?

[mudvnine]

Your software is much more advanced than what I’m using, but how it presents the data it has is extremely inferior.

Prolly....or the more than likely the "operator" is what's really inferior when it comes to gathering the data.

Depends on what you’re looking for and how you look at the numbers. In the largest view, a strike is a strike is a strike, and if you’re looking for the gross number of strikes and how they relate to the gross number of pitches, that’s precisely what strike percentage is. If then you’re personal definition of what meets the pitch to contact criteria is any strike, you’re done and need look no deeper.

Yep, that's pretty much it.

I've found that as long a pitcher throws a pitch that is "a strike is a strike is a strike", than he's not going to give up "a walk is a walk is a walk".

Personally, I tend to look a bit more deeply than that. I’ll try to come up with an analogy you might be more familiar with. A gross percentage of all fires are caused by arson. If you happen to be charged with planning prison space, all you care about is the number of arsonists that might be sentenced out of that gross number, so you can add it to the space necessary for all the other types of crimes that require incarceration. But, if you’re charged with trying to break down all the different kinds of arson, you need a lot more in depth information. Hope that makes sense.

It does, but unlike the various magnitudes of arson fires and their related costs....for my "wants" of a HS pitcher, all strikes are considered equal regardless of how he gets them. After that, it's up to the hitter to do something with them, and then the defense if so called upon.

If that’s what you find is true and meets your requirements for choosing pitchers, that’s fine. Now me, I believe there’s a bit more to it than gross percentage, so naturially I look deeper to see if I can prove that.

So what have you come up with?

Looking at the pitchers you scored for this past season, and the charts you supplied, I thought is was pretty easy to see that the higher Stk% guys had more "success" (W/L and ERA) than the guys with less Stk%, but better "non-contact" numbers.

I’m not so sure ALL would be the answer, but let’s say the vast vast majority at minimum.

Who would be of the "minority" that would want their pitcher to throw more pitches in our theoretical "perfect" games? :noidea

I guess in the wildest stretch of the imagination all strikes allow the batter to make contact because he always has the capability to throw the bat at a ball, but I wouldn’t say ALL strikes “allowed” the batter to make contact. I would say that all pitches in the strike zone certainly did that, and I would say that all pitches the batter swung at out of the strike zone and made contact with would also fall into that category. But a pitch the batter INTERPRETED as one he could hit solidly and started swinging at, but realized too late that it wasn’t in the zone, wouldn’t be in that category. Again, its all in what you’re looking for.

We're on the same page here, I just wrote my previous post poorly. I should have probably said, "by definition of the strike zone.....all "strikes" within it should allow the batter to make "contact"."

I don’t even believe they’re useful for that at levels below the pros. I don’t know what the real numbers would show, but I suspect IBBs are virtually indistinguishable from all other walks at say the HS level.

Oh I disagree. Bottom half of the last inning of a tied game with a runner on 2nd....IBB is a very low risk, high reward tactic.

Runner on 1st means nothing, and we have now set up for a force play at 3rd (and possible 5-4 or 5-3 DP, or an outside chance of a 5-4-3 TP), or there's the IF (6-4-3, 4-6-3, or 3-6-3) DP.

The nice thing about the IBB in HS, no pitches need be thrown, so the pitcher does not have to "refind" the strike zone, that can sometimes be a problem after throwing four pitches well outside the zone.

No real downside to it in that situation....unless you can think of one.

[CircleChange11]

Oh I disagree. Bottom half of the last inning of a tied game with a runner on 2nd....IBB is a very low risk, high reward tactic.

Runner on 1st means nothing, and we have now set up for a force play at 3rd (and possible 5-4 or 5-3 DP, or an outside chance of a 5-4-3 TP), or there's the IF (6-4-3, 4-6-3, or 3-6-3) DP.

The nice thing about the IBB in HS, no pitches need be thrown, so the pitcher does not have to "refind" the strike zone, that can sometimes be a problem after throwing four pitches well outside the zone.

No real downside to it in that situation....unless you can think of one.

Not just that, but in HS and below, there can be HUGE disparities between consecutive batters in terms of performance and talent. With teams like SFG and Bonds, DET and Cabrera, and STL and Pujols (pre-Holliday), there have been plenty of instances where the disparity between superstar hitter and "the next guy up" has been so great that even at the MLB level, walking them with a base open was often better than "pitching to them."

Now, I know I just used MLB players as examples and we're talking HS and below. But, that's just my point. The disparity of consecutive hitters at the MLB should be less than the disparity of hitters at a lower level (smaller pool). So, there are likely even more instances at the youth level where walking a batter is "not bad" and may even be "a good thing".

Think of it this way, how many times has your stud been walked and you thought "Dang, we really needed him to get a pitch to hit in that situation"?

Obviously, in the better programs the disparity between hitters is not as large. But the teams that have good hitters stacked 2-7 are rare.

[mudvnine]

Think of it this way, how many times has your stud been walked and you thought "Dang, we really needed him to get a pitch to hit in that situation"?

Oh yeah....another very good example.

[scorekeeper]

Zinger,

You’re gonna have to explain a bit more for this old brain.

[scorekeeper]

Prolly....or the more than likely the "operator" is what's really inferior when it comes to gathering the data.

I’m not sure how IScore works, but if you put in what each pitch is, ball, fouled, missed, or called, the BIPs are already there, the software has every bit of data I have. Now if you only do balls or strikes, then your at a huge data disadvantage like I was until this past year.

Yep, that's pretty much it.

Like I said, if its all you THINK you need, then its all you need.

I've found that as long a pitcher throws a pitch that is "a strike is a strike is a strike", than he's not going to give up "a walk is a walk is a walk".

True, again, if that’s all you care about.

It does, but unlike the various magnitudes of arson fires and their related costs....for my "wants" of a HS pitcher, all strikes are considered equal regardless of how he gets them. After that, it's up to the hitter to do something with them, and then the defense if so called upon.

That’s pretty much the attitude of coaches who either don’t have the knowledge, capacity, or time to analyze the numbers any more deeply. I suspect that anyone who doesn’t get paid to be the guy who does that, prolly doesn’t have at least 2 of those things, and in many cases all 3. That doesn’t make THEM inferior, it makes their SITUATION inferior.

So what have you come up with?

Looking at the pitchers you scored for this past season, and the charts you supplied, I thought is was pretty easy to see that the higher Stk% guys had more "success" (W/L and ERA) than the guys with less Stk%, but better "non-contact" numbers.

Well, you’d be partially correct. Me, I’m waiting until next season when I have more data to look at because this past year was such a fluke compared to all other years I’ve scored HS ball.

Who would be of the "minority" that would want their pitcher to throw more pitches in our theoretical "perfect" games? :noidea

Crazy old dinos who’d rather see 63 pitch perfect games than 21 pitch perfect games because Ks are prppf of manhood. They’re the same guys who’d rather lose a game 8-7 their offense hit 7 home runs in.

We're on the same page here, I just wrote my previous post poorly. I should have probably said, "by definition of the strike zone.....all "strikes" within it should allow the batter to make "contact"."

And that’s where the Devil is in the details.

Oh I disagree. Bottom half of the last inning of a tied game with a runner on 2nd....IBB is a very low risk, high reward tactic.

I can’t say for sure one way or the other because I’ve never bothered tracking IBBs until this season. If you have numbers to support your hypothesis, I’d love to see them.

What I have is this. Just a bit more than 31% of all walks and HBPs in all the HS games I’ve scored since 2007, scored. Depending on one’s perspective, walking or hitting batters is a pretty low risk high reward tactic.

Runner on 1st means nothing, and we have now set up for a force play at 3rd (and possible 5-4 or 5-3 DP, or an outside chance of a 5-4-3 TP), or there's the IF (6-4-3, 4-6-3, or 3-6-3) DP.

And what percentage of times has a DP been turned after an IBB? Again, I don’t know, but I do know its not something I would bet on.

The nice thing about the IBB in HS, no pitches need be thrown, so the pitcher does not have to "refind" the strike zone, that can sometimes be a problem after throwing four pitches well outside the zone.

To tell the truth, I’ve always disliked the not throwing of the pitches because it screws up the numbers.

No real downside to it in that situation....unless you can think of one.

See above.

[scorekeeper]

You can’t help dragging in MLB and trying to somehow extrapolate what happens there into lower level situations, and no matter how much anyone tries, its just impossible to do and get any kind of valid results.

Here’s what you need to do. You keep good enough records so that you can run the numbers for whatever level you’re at for at least 5 or 6 years. Then compare what you see in your records with ML records and you’ll see what I mean. Here’s a simple example I’m very familiar with.

The 2011 Yankees got RBIs on 96.4 of the runs that scored. Our HS team in 6 years of play got an RBI on 81.7% of all the runs they scored. There’s something that very very different taking place. I know there are many HS teams who SHOW RBIs at a much higher rate, but if you check closely, I believe you’d find that their scorer didn’t mark many of them correctly.

[CircleChange11]

Crazy old dinos who’d rather see 63 pitch perfect games than 21 pitch perfect games because Ks are prppf of manhood. They’re the same guys who’d rather lose a game 8-7 their offense hit 7 home runs in.

Is that really a fair characterization?

We all know that strikeouts are fascist and boring, but they're also the only outcome that offers a near zero chance of the batter reaching base and other runners advancing.

I'm not a "strikeout only" type of fan/coach/dad, but to act like strikeouts aren't very important is to ignore the quality of pitchers on any strikeout leaderboard. They're very often the "best" pitchers, not just the most macho. In that regard, I would be referring to multiple seasons, and not just a single season where a pitcher could get a very flukey BABIP or HR/FB ratio.

To not get a lot of K's and be successful general requires [1] a tremendously low amount of walks, [2] an uncanny ability to control the batted ball velocity or trajectory of BIP. How many of these guys are even out there?

[CircleChange11]

You can’t help dragging in MLB and trying to somehow extrapolate what happens there into lower level situations, and no matter how much anyone tries, its just impossible to do and get any kind of valid results.

In this case, it's referring to disparity of talent between batters. On a HS team you might see one player batting .560 and the next guy batting .370. There's very few disparity situations in MLB to rival occurrences like that.

In this case, I used MLB as an example because it's one that we're most familiar with. There have been very few cases of "we'd be better off walking this guy than pitching to him", even with all of the good hitters. In HS, I don;t think that's the case. I think there are far more "we can walk this guy, and get the next one", due to the disparity of batters in HS lineups.