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CaCO3Girl
1989 Posts |
 Posted - 04/07/2017 : 06:58:06
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There seems to be two schools of thought out there:
1. Hit the ball on the ground, it's your best chance at getting on base.
2. Ground balls are OUTS, hit it in the air.
What are your thoughts on the matter? |
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bfriendly
376 Posts |
Posted - 04/07/2017 : 08:50:25
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| Ground balls are usually outs......your swing should have an Upward path in order to make the best contact on a ball with a downward path. Line drives are less often outs than groundballs. Pop ups are another matter altogether. Thats my .02 |
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Crazyforbball
391 Posts |
Posted - 04/07/2017 : 10:22:34
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| In the air..a good infield will always field a ground ball..in the air (out of the infield obviously) always a better chance of finding a hole. If by "in the air" you are referring to a line drive that is. |
Edited by - Crazyforbball on 04/07/2017 11:45:45 |
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RUSemiPro
95 Posts |
Posted - 04/07/2017 : 19:50:49
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Goal should be a line drive in each at bat.
Groundballs at older levels are outs, fly balls should be outs as well.
Younger level coaches will prefer groundballs as other teams make errors and they seem to find holes, but they are shortsided and rather win than develop hitters.
Unless you get into situational hitting with hit and runs, or tie game late in the game, runner at 2nd nobody out, then a ground ball to the right side to move the runner or score a runner at third, then maybe, but in general go up there with the goal of trying to hit line drives and drive the ball somewhere.
Never seen a groundball hitter get a college scholarship or make it to the bigs. They are looking for line drives and deep HR balls.
quote:
Originally posted by CaCO3Girl
There seems to be two schools of thought out there:
1. Hit the ball on the ground, it's your best chance at getting on base.
2. Ground balls are OUTS, hit it in the air.
What are your thoughts on the matter?
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Punishers
688 Posts |
Posted - 04/08/2017 : 00:08:19
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| Keep the ball airborne. Ground balls are outs! |
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ABC_Baseball
90 Posts |
Posted - 04/11/2017 : 12:02:46
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| Put the ball in play and see what happens. Either can be a hit. I personally think my kid is dialed in when he is lining it from left center gap to right center gap |
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oneZone
117 Posts |
Posted - 04/11/2017 : 15:31:17
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Interesting stuff from http://www.fangraphs.com/library/pitching/batted-ball/ ...
A line drive produces 1.26 runs per out, while fly balls produce 0.13 runs per out and ground balls produce 0.05 runs per out. In other words, batters want to hit lots of line drives and fly balls, while pitchers generally want to cause batters to hit ground balls.
And http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-importance-of-fly-balls-for-hitters/ ...
Of course, there are benefits to high-contact, high-average hitters. None of this is to say that there’s no use to those kinds of players; any team would be happy to have an Altuve or Bogaerts in their lineup. And, of course, a hitter can be good on ground balls and good on fly balls at the same time. But in order to be an elite hitter, the ability to get hits on grounders simply isn’t necessary. That same ability for fly balls, though, is crucial.
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aj94
182 Posts |
Posted - 04/11/2017 : 17:39:05
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quote:
Originally posted by CaCO3Girl
There seems to be two schools of thought out there:
1. Hit the ball on the ground, it's your best chance at getting on base.
2. Ground balls are OUTS, hit it in the air.
What are your thoughts on the matter?
I see some of the nwba forum "experts" are saying hit in the air, but I've heard real life experts say #1.
Hit Ground balls that accelerate through the infield find gaps and move runners to the next base and line drives over hitting the ball in the air.
In real baseball most balls hit in the air are outs. |
Edited by - aj94 on 04/11/2017 21:02:27 |
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Punishers
688 Posts |
Posted - 04/11/2017 : 21:30:55
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| I think hit the ball in the air means line drives, not fly balls. Ground balls on turf speed up. |
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DecaturDad
619 Posts |
Posted - 04/12/2017 : 09:08:03
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This post hits close to home for me. When my son was 13, he had a coach who insisted that my son did not have a good swing. He wanted him to hit the ball down into the ground. The coach decided my son was one of their weaker batters and batted him near the end of the order, if at all when they went to a PG event in Florida. Two weeks later, my son and I were back in Florida for the Team USA 14u championship series with another team. My son used the swing he had been using for years, put one out of the Marlins practice field in Jupiter and made the 14u USA team. Fast forward to today: My son still goes to the same batting coach he has been seeing all these years. He will be playing college ball next year and has been told they want his bat in their line up.
In short, hard line drives are what he tries for and it seems to be paying off. His successful at bats are when the ball does not touch the ground in the infield. |
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aj94
182 Posts |
Posted - 04/12/2017 : 13:57:33
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quote:
Originally posted by Punishers
I think hit the ball in the air means line drives, not fly balls. Ground balls on turf speed up.
From what she said in the post it seemed to me that she meant hitting the ball in the air like a fly ball. But yes the main objective should be to attempt to hit line drives.
But a ground ball generally will give better results than a fly out. |
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oneZone
117 Posts |
Posted - 04/12/2017 : 15:01:52
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I'm certainly no "expert," so I'll quote another article based on statistics and research (ie, real life). This one at http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/groundballs-and-you/ has to be about as definitive as you could find on this subject:
First, I looked at batted ball types in complete isolation. I believe it is widely accepted that a ground ball is better than a fly ball from a pitcher’s point of view on average. Arguing whether it is better to be a ground-ball pitcher or a fly-ball pitcher is not the scope in question here. A huge amount of complexity resides in studying such a question, some of which I explore below, but for this first initial look, I just wanted to know nothing more than the relative weight of a ground ball versus a ball in the air on average run scoring.
I need to make a quick note on the terminology here. A ground ball is any batted ball classified as a ground ball or a bunt. A ball in the air is any batted ball classified as a fly ball, a line drive or a pop up. These are my own distinctions. I used the batted ball classifications provided by MLBAM since that is what I had available to me in easy to use database form. I do not expect that the results would be vastly different using other sources since large samples are in play.
I have two sets of information that helped me determine this figure. The first is the average number of outs recorded on each batted ball type. The second is the average run value, derived from changes in score and the run expectancy matrix after each play per batted ball type. For this first isolated comparison I used totals from the American League in 2009. I looked at a couple other years and the National League as well and the numbers change only slightly.
The results were that the average ground ball generated 0.04 runs and caused 0.80 outs while the average ball in air generated 0.23 runs and caused just 0.62 outs. On a runs-per-out basis, balls hit into the air created almost 7.5 times as much offense as balls kept on the ground did.
What constitutes a line drive is somewhat fuzzy and open to subjective bias. However, even with ignoring line drives, fly balls and pop outs by themselves generate an average of about 0.1 runs and cause 0.79 outs. That rate is still about three times more offensive than the average ball hit on the ground. The additional risk of yielding a home run matters, a lot.
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IBABASEBALL
45 Posts |
Posted - 04/13/2017 : 15:52:28
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What does a good coach tell his pitchers, get them to hit ground balls.
If you want to play at a high level you want an upward trajectory on the ball and swing.
What separates each level of minor league baseball as you move up to the majors?
The defense. Tough outs in A ball are routine as you move up. The speed of the game is faster at each level. JMHO |
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Marlin
109 Posts |
Posted - 04/17/2017 : 11:28:42
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From Josh Donaldson when talking hitting on MLB central :
"If you're 10 years old and your coach tells you to get on top of the ball, tell him no," Donaldson said. "Because in the big leagues, these things that they call ground balls are outs. They don't pay you for ground balls. They pay you for doubles. They pay you for homers."
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whits23
596 Posts |
Posted - 04/20/2017 : 17:55:03
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chances are good your 10 yr old who your trying to get on base is not going to be josh donaldson or in the big leagues so just get his butt on base LOL
At 10 be glad they are playing baseball and can even hit the ball period..hell at 12 you may be glad they hit the ball. |
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Opinion? Hit the ball on the ground!
