Work the Count?

Matt Schilling: From the Batting Cage

"Work the Count."
 "Take a Strike."

These two famous phrases that we always hear from hitting coaches have been around for a long time. While I partly agree with some of what "they" are saying, ultimately I believe that these are flawed, incomplete and misleading comments for hitting coaches to make.

For years I have been told as a hitter, "The more pitches you see, the better your chance to hit." I have also been told to, "work the count deep." So this would lead me to believe that batting averages on deeper counts SHOULD be better. These well accepted hitting philosophies must be right because I have been hearing them for as long as I can remember. In fact, they have become an unwritten rule in baseball. I personally have never bought into these ideas, mostly because I liked to swing at the first pitch. So I did some research and came up with some very interesting findings. The following numbers were obtained from http://www.baseball-reference.com/ and are based on the 2007 Major League Season.

Batting average by count for all MLB players in 2007:


Based on these numbers you can see that simply "working the count deep" and "taking a strike" is not necessarily effective. If it were, then the 3-2 count should be the best count to hit in and clearly it is not. The fact is, the less strikes you have and the more balls that you have the better off you are. Just another reason why it is so important to swing at strikes only. Also it appears that the first pitch of an at-bat is a GREAT pitch to hit! So why on earth would we want to take a strike? (unless of course the pitcher can't throw strikes)