How To Win-Pitching Follow Up”
I treated my time on the mound with a mentality that a team arrives at the ballpark with a finite number of hits, like bullets left in a chamber. So from there, you simply do the math-noticing that it is in your favor. For a nine inning, non-rain-shortened game, even the winning team records 24 outs. So you know that in the ebb and flow of the game, ten hits might be scattered intermittently with 24 outs. Those are odds I would take every time. I felt it was a victory for me if one of those hits was a two-out single, with a weak groundout to follow. It was one of their bullets now “wasted” as it did not lead to the start of a rally. This is the trouble with walks. If you add a base on balls to this two-out scenario, suddenly guys are in scoring position and the other team used up only one out of their complement of bullets. You gift-wrapped the other team a precarious situation for yourself. You are now an extra base hit away from giving up two runs. It really makes you want to have a do-over with the previous hitter; go back, throw him strikes, and take your chances.
In my head, I thought with confidence about how hard it is for offensive players to even record a two-hit day. If a player just “got his lone hit out of the way,” I felt free and clear. Sure, that guy could have come back in his next at-bat and hit a double off the wall. It was false bravado and irrational logic, but it gave me assurance to pitch in a way that was hit-oriented and not nibbling on the corners.
I am not a believer that a person can be “too much in the strike zone.” Even the most accurate pitchers miss the zone with enough regularity to keep a hitter honest. A guy who gives up four consecutive doubles probably needs to exit the game, but not because he was throwing too many strikes. On that day, for whatever reason, his stuff was more like batting practice to the other team. That happens. Asking him to throw more balls would not solve anything. In fact, it would add fuel to the fire; as a few extra base runners (via walks) would have been aboard for those gap shots.
Pitchers do control their walk rates, but their hit rates reside largely outside their control and are prone to fluctuations and luck. Might as well pitch to contact and allow the Law of Averages to take it from there. Meaning, if a great hitter gets himself out 7 out of 10 tries, you should probably oblige him that opportunity. Stay around the strike zone with every hitter.