Tuesday, June 16, 2015

Guess hitters and no-hitters

Guess hitters try to anticipate what the pitcher will throw and take advantage of it. They "sit on a pitch." As a result, they have a lot of spectacular successes and spectacular failures (counting on the tendency of fans to remember home runs and forget strikeouts with the bases loaded).

I love to watch a pitcher when his stuff is really working, and has the batters baffled - when a no-hitter is on the way, for example. But one thing that makes it really difficult to throw a no-hitter is the fact that there are guess hitters out there. The pitcher may throw the right pitch in the right place, but that was what the hitter was waiting for, and a fluke hit results - "fluke" because the batter would not have hit it nine times out of ten under those circumstances. Baseball really is a game of inches, and that is what makes it really tough to throw a no-hitter, even when a pitcher's stuff is really good.

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