Since a lot of the U.S. has either gone back to school or is about to, I thought it would be a good time to talk about math. Specifically, the math of hitting in a game and why letting a good pitch go by early may not be such a good idea.

At its most basic, hitters are given a maximum of 5 pitches that count in each at bat. (Yes, you can get more if you’re fouling off pitches, but for the most part the goal is to hit the ball fair rather than foul it off so let’s stick with that.)

If you just stand there and get to a 3-2 count, that means 3 of the pitches were judged not good pitches to hit by the umpire and 2 were determined to be good. Again, you can debate umpire strike zones all day but for this argument we’ll assume the blue has a good zone.

So that means you had 2 out of 5 opportunities to get a good hit by swinging at a good pitch. Put another way, less than half the pitches were good ones.

Now let’s bring in those foul balls. Maybe they were good pitches you missed, or maybe they actually weren’t good pitches but they were close enough that you (rightfully) felt compelled to swig.

If you had 5 foul balls and 3 of them were borderline. you now had a total of 10 pitches, of which 4 were good and 6 were not. You’re still at the same 40% mark as before.

On the other hand, if one more of those pitches was borderline, you now had 3 good and 7 not-so-good pitches and your percentage of good pitches to hit dropped from 40% to 30%.

Ah, but we’re not done yet.

It’s pretty rare for hitters to hit pitches in all zones equally well. Most have zones where they hit better – say up and in and up and out – and zones where they don’t hit the ball well at all, even though they are legitimate strikes.

So now, of those 3 or 4 good pitches we outlined earlier, maybe only one was in a zone you liked. Which means out of the 10 pitches in that at bat, you only got 1 truly good pitch to hit.

No wonder hitting is so difficult.

Now stretch that across an entire game. If you get 3 at bats, you may only have gotten 3-6 pitches out of 30 that were where you can be confident you could hit the ball hard somewhere.

Pretty low odds, wouldn’t you say? Add in that a hard-hit ball could still be fielded for an out by a fielder and it is amazing anyone has a decent batting average.

The point of all of this is, as a hitter, there is a pretty good chance you’re only going to see 1 truly good pitch per at bat, so you’d better be ready when it comes.

Keep in mind the pitcher’s goal is to not throw you ANY good pitches to hit. At the college level and even high school or higher travel ball levels the opposing team may have a book on your that shows where you like the ball and where you don’t. Guess where they’re going to try to throw it?

At the younger levels, many of the pitchers don’t have full command of their pitches yet so their locations may be a little to a lot erratic. The forgiving term for that is “effectively wild,” i.e., they can’t hit a location reliably, but even if they’re off they’re close enough to the strike zone that it works for them anyway.

We’ve all known pitches like that.

Whatever the case with the pitcher, again, when she does throw a pitch you can hit well you have to be ready to hit it. For me, that means you have to assume EVERY pitch is going to be that pitch, load up and start your swing as if that’s true, and then hold up if you see it’s not.

After all, you don’t want to waste the very few really good pitches you’re going to see by realizing too late that you should be swinging. If you’re only going to see 2 or 3 hittable pitches in a game, you need to make the most of them when they come.

That includes the first pitch you see, by the way. I know some hitters don’t like swinging at the first pitch, and some coaches preach letting the first pitch go by so you can get a look at how the pitcher is throwing. I’m not a fan of either approach.

Keep in mind pitchers are coached to get ahead in the count. Many teams place a lot of emphasis on first pitch strikes and track that stat religiously.

It would be a shame to let the best pitch you’re going to see in that at bat go by automatically just because, don’t you think? At the very least, on that first pitch you should be looking for a particular pitch and your best location to hit, and if you see it go ahead and swing with enthusiasm.

It will take a lot of pressure off of you and keep you from having to go into survival mode later in that at bat. If your coach insists on no swinging at the first pitch you have to abide by that, of course, but hopefully he/she can be convinced to at least green light a pitch that’s in your happy place.

The math is the math. Hitters usually don’t get a lot of opportunities to hit good pitches, so you need to be ready when they do come along.

Take advantage of good pitches when they come and you can make the math work for you.

Teacher photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com