Pater Familias

Theories, observations, and articles, by Philip Schaefer · All posts · Categories

ARE SOME BATTERS BETTER AT FOULING OFF PITCHES?

March 22, 2010 at 10:02 PM · Baseball, Sports

ARE SOME BATTERS BETTER AT FOULING OFF PITCHES? I don’t read enough about baseball, so perhaps this question has been addressed somewhere. How helpful is it for a batter to be able to foul off a two-strike pitch—to “spoil” the pitcher’s attempt to strike him out? As I posted here on a Jean Shepherd riff, Luke Appling was supposed to be good at fouling off a pitch until he was able to get a pitch to his liking. A beginning on this question might be to find out which, if any, batters are most successful at fouling off pitches when there are two strikes on them.