Last week Gregg Ritchie, head baseball coach at George Washington University, was talking about what happens when a baseball team strikes out more than seven times in a game. The more you whiff the less chance you have of winning, explained Ritchie. Sunday night’s game showed just how accurate that theory is: The Royals struck out eight times against Giants’ ace Madison Bumgarner, meaning that for nearly three full innings the Royals failed to put the ball in play and force the Giants to make plays. “You have to make your own chances against a front-line pitcher like Bumgarner,” says Ritchie. And when you don’t, chances are that you’ll lose.
As the San Francisco Giants northeast director of scouting John Castleberry told me, this World Series is an example of pre-steroid baseball—grinding baseball, with lots of defense and solid team fundamentals, which on offense means putting the ball in play. However, the reality is that these two clubs are exceptional, especially when it comes to making the other side catch and throw the ball, because strike out rates are hitting historical, and absurd, highs. Consider the fact that hitters were striking out more than 20 percent of the time this year, compared to a little less than 15 percent in 1990 and 8.2 percent in 1930.
Once baseball started to emphasize power production, explains Ritchie, strikeouts became more acceptable. Still, he sees that with home run totals the trend is starting to shift back the other way. In the 90s, he notes, lots of guys were hitting 40 home runs a year. Brady Anderson, a nice player but hardly Babe Ruth, hit 50 homers in 1996. This year Nelson Cruz was the only player to hit 40 home runs. “With home run totals going down,” says Ritchie, “there’s a premium on putting the ball in play.” The clubs that implement it, like the Giants and Royals, will succeed, and other big league teams will spend October watching baseball rather than playing it.
Still, Ritchie acknowledges, strikeouts are going to happen, it’s a part of the game. The issue for him, whether he was a batting instructor with the White Sox organization, a batting coach for the big league club in Pittsburgh, or now directing a NCAA Division I program, is the character of a hitter’s at-bat.
“The answer to ‘what is a good at-bat?’ is simple,” says Ritchie. “Did you make it easier for the guy after you or did you make it harder? If you made it harder, you didn’t not have a quality a bat. If you go 0-2 and then strike out, you made it harder for the guy coming to the plate. But if you go 0-2, then choke up and make the pitcher throw seven pitches, there’s still some quality to the at-bat. Just ask a guy, ‘what would you like to see when you are on deck?’ Do you want to see the hitter at the plate take a fastball over the middle? Do you want to see him pull off the ball and take a hero swing? Do you want to see him fail to get a bunt down, stranding a guy at 2nd and now with another out, making it harder for you? Your at-bat affects the next guy—it’s not just about you, but about the team.”
Of course, what makes it baseball is that the game is also about individual performance. Hence, Ritchie argues that match-ups, or arranging to pit one player against another against whom he has a good chance of success, is a central part of what any coaching staff does. Ritchie says that as early as spring training, front office executives, managers and coaches are preparing for the season ahead by developing the skill sets of their players and team depth—in other words, the raw material that allows them to strategize and plot out match-ups against opposing teams. “You want to get the right hitters going against the right pitchers, you want to match up catchers against the opposing team’s base-stealers,” says Ritchie. “The quality of talent in the big leagues is so high that you’re always looking for even the smallest margin, anything that gives you an edge. And it starts even before big league clubs leave spring training,” says Ritchie. “They’re already preparing for the first series. By the time they’re there, they’re getting ready for the next series and it goes all year like that.”
That preparation lasts even through the postseason. When he was the Pirates hitting instructor, Ritchie kept detailed books on every pitching staff in the big leagues. Every organization does something similar, he says. “It’s your game plan, so if you’re watching on TV, you’ll often see managers and coaches and hitters actually flip open a book.”
During Sunday night’s game, Ritchie watched a few of the Giants’ hitters consulting with batting coach Hensley Meulens. “Shields had a good change-up working Sunday,” says Ritchie, “and Meulens was making the hand signals for a change-up so he was alerting his hitters. When Shields came out and the Royals brought out relievers, the hitter and the on-deck hitter came over to talk to Meuelens and they looked into their book.”
Of course it’s not always obvious what makes for the most advantageous match-ups. Ritchie remembers a minor league championship game several years ago when to the consternation of his colleagues he sent a left-handed pinch-hitter to the plate against a hard-throwing left-handed closer. There are southpaw relievers whose long careers, like the Cardinals’ Randy Choate, are premised largely on their ability to baffle left-handed hitters. When Ritchie sent his left-handed bat to the plate he wasn’t playing a hunch, but numbers. “My guy was hitting something like .220 against all left-handers he faced, but his record against this left-hander showed a history of success.” Ritchie was hardly surprised then when his pinch-hitter drilled a home run to win the game.
Winning baseball is about preparation, which entails an understanding of history and what is likely to occur again. Maybe 70 percent of baseball, Ritchie suggests, takes place before a pitch is even made.
“An average fan sees a ball pitched and then hit. He jumps up and says, ‘wow, a double!’ And maybe he doesn’t understand how the outfielder got a bad jump on the ball, or took the wrong angle to the ball and played it into a double. Or he doesn’t understand that by falling behind in the count 2-1, the pitcher made himself more likely to throw a more hittable pitch. Or maybe the regular fan doesn’t know how the previous batter’s quality at-bat put his teammate in a better position to drive the runner home.”
So, I ask Ritchie, what makes a better fan? “Don’t look at the ball,” he says. “Or look at everything else and keep the ball in your peripheral vision. It’s not easy! Learning to coach, sometimes I had to shield my eyes and cover a half of my face, like this,” he says, laughing. “Just so I’d learn to watch the whole game unfold. If my outfielder missed a ball he should have caught, how do I know if I didn’t see he was out of position in the first place? The thing about baseball is—if you just watch the ball, how much do you miss?”
