” Putting It All Together Follow Up”
When asking somebody about their game, they will usually give you a score and then one or two things that caused that score. “Johnny had a huge hit,” or “Tim made three errors.” While these individual events might have a huge part in the outcome of the game, they weren’t the only thing or things that caused the win or loss.
In most cases, the team that wins three out of seven innings, limits their walks and errors to under five, and has 15 quality at-bats will win the game. When you win three out of seven innings, you are forcing the opposition to have a big inning. I tell my players to limit damage. Hits against are going to happen and your team WILL make errors. If you can limit the damage and limit the big inning, you are forcing the opposition to win individual innings.
If you can limit your own mistakes, your chance of winning goes way up. Baseball consists of three outs in an inning. When you give the opposition free bases or extra outs, you increase your chances of succumbing to a big inning. I tell my players hitting .300 in MLB will get you into the Hall of Fame. That means, 70% of the time, a hitter should get out. Those odds favor defense. If you can limit the walks and errors to under five, your chances of winning the inning goes up; as does your chance at winning the game.
If you’re around my dugout, you hear me say, “grind out the at-bats!” This means to make life on the pitcher as tough as possible. I love hearing the opposition mention how tough our outs are to get. I also tell hitters they don’t have to get a hit to have a QAB. One of my favorite offensive days came a few weeks ago. We faced a pitcher who threw the ball well, and it looked like it would be a long day for the hitters. Our first two hitters set the tone for the entire game, however, when they made the guy throw 17 pitches in the first inning. By the third inning, we only had 5 hits, but their pitcher had thrown 90 pitches and was out of the game. Because we grinded out AB’s, we got into their bullpen and ended up winning the game. You will never win a game with one AB, but you can make a huge difference, even without getting a hit.
There is a lot more to winning a game than one or two plays. Very rarely does a team win a game simply by having a big inning or out-hitting the other team. If you focus on winning three innings, not giving away 5 walks/errors, and having 15 QAB’s, your chances of winning will increase. This allows you to control what you can control, focus on the little things, and play the game fundamentally correct, and ultimately control the outcome.