It's not hard to start a reliever. It's not hard to move fielders around. It is very hard to have an at bat where a batter's stated intention is to foul off 10+ pitches. If a hitter is good enough to foul off 10 pitches, why stop there? Why not 20? 30? Get the starter out of the game every first inning.
While not nearly as hard as fouling off multiple pitches in a row intentionally, it has been a long, hard path for baseball culture to change such that the ideas like the opener would be accepted by a front office and coaching staff. I'm still not sure the opener really matters that much in an individual game. To me, it is more a gimmick to get players and coaches to accept that it is acceptable to use pitchers that aren't great in shorter outings.
That is awesome, love that it happens, glad I don't have to watch it... but I don't understand why his pitches per plate appearances aren't higher. Unless, didn't see it mentioned in the article, he gets a lot of intentional walks.
My point is the physical act of starting a reliever or positioning fielders is an easy thing to do. Whether or not it is accepted or works as a strategy is another story. Meanwhile the physical act of going to the plate with the intention and execution of a 15 pitch at bat is an extremely difficult thing to do.
The article is all about a player in Japan (Takuya Nakashima) whose main skill is fouling off pitches.
I don't think any player ever intentionally fouls off a ball. Some players are just better than others at getting a piece of balls that others would miss. At this level and especially in this age of pitching, there would be no margin for that sort of luxury. That's why everyone shifts nowadays: even the best batters can't intentionally hit against a shift with any reliability. It would be even harder to intentionally foul pitches. The one real, reliable way to lengthen at bats and wear down pitchers is to work on one's eye at the plate like Bregman. Swing or swing not. That's doable hand-eye coordination. Mostly because it takes out the hand part.
He's a career .245 hitter, with a .594 OPS. He's pretty much a textbook example of why you don't go up there looking to foul off pitches. There is a lot of value in spoiling tough pitches once you get to 2 strikes, but you have to get in the box looking to hit. Otheriwise they will just start pumping fastballs and getting ahead in the count. Major league pitchers are gonna strike you out with something before too long, I don't care how good your bat control is.
Put Harden in the batters box. And he would be there all day. And they would have to create a Harden rule, and then he would step back out of the box, a couple of times.
Oh I think a lot of them could, it they worked at it and chose to. Whether it's beneficial or not (as opposed to hitting it over the shift) is another situational thing.
Not sure why you’re being so bristly. This thread was about fouling off pitches as a strategy. I linked an article about the Mike Trout of fouling off pitches as a strategy. That’s all.
My guess is that the reaction time you have when a pitch is thrown means that it is probably really difficult to switch between 'hit' mode and 'foul off' mode. If we were to assume that fouling off pitches is easier than hitting pitches if you were locked in to do only 1 thing, then where I think this may make sense would be for pitchers batting in the National League. They aren't going to do much anyway, but if they can go up and get 10+ pitches added to the SP, then it might be useful. Of course if all of the new bullpenning strategies become the norm, then this strategy probably becomes much less useful.
