Dragging it out

The art of working the count through patience and bat control is an often overlooked but essential skill, with a handful of masters.

By DAVE SCHEIBER
Published April 12, 2006

Few have ever kept an at-bat alive as remarkably as Alex Cora on May 12, 2004.

The night of May 12, 2004, in a span that began as routine and ended as epic, Alex Cora put his opponent down for the count.

The journeyman shortstop stepped to the plate for the Dodgers, digging in against then-Cubs starter Matt Clement in the bottom of the seventh, about to embark on what he would soon call "the most memorable at-bat of my life."

With his team winning 2-0 and the leadoff man reaching first on a walk, the former University of Miami standout got ahead of Clement 2-and-1, then fouled off his next offering.

No one could have imagined what was to follow: Cora fouled off the next 13 pitches from Clement, while fans in Dodger Stadium began to cheer as if it were a playoff game, not an early-season tilt.

But what made the at-bat, easily one of the longest in major-league baseball, especially remarkable is that Cora drilled the 18th pitch for a two-run homer to seal the 4-0 win.

Talk about working the count.

Most times, it hardly rates as a glamor part of the game or gets the attention it did with Cora, coincidentally now a teammate of Clement's on the Red Sox. But the art is integral to baseball, a battle both psychological and physical. And the masters - those hitters who understand the nuances of an opponent's style and have the patience to force him to throw more pitches - are highly valued members of a lineup.

They can help dictate the flow of a contest, disrupt the pitcher's rhythm, allow teammates on the bench to study his stuff and often help determine who wins or loses.

Doing it effectively takes focus, confidence and good vision, and is not a skill that every hitter possesses. Hanging tough at the plate, in fact, gets progressively harder if pitchers get ahead in the count, according to Illinois-based STATS LLC, which calculates all manner of sports statistics.

Last season, for example, major-leaguers hit .331 when swinging at the first pitch, .314 at 0-and-1 but .164 at 0-and-2. The overall '05 batting average on a 1-and-0 count? An impressive .332. But when the count was 2-and-2, the average plummeted to .194.

"It's the same story for both sides," former pitching star Jack Morris said. "When you're ahead in the count, you're winning. When you're behind, hitters have a huge advantage. It's just that simple."

Wade, Ted and Jason

Of course, it's not that simple for a lot of hitters.

"I can talk about it, but I couldn't do it," Devil Rays senior adviser Don Zimmer said.

"I swung at everything they threw up there. But I would say that for seven or eight years when I was (bench coach) with the Yankees, they probably got more publicity for how they worked the count. And managers on the other teams would all say, "They make us throw too many pitches."'

Nobody was better during that span in the 1990s than Red Sox-turned-Yankees star Wade Boggs, whose 20/12 vision helped him set the tone when it came to waiting on a good pitch. One of Boggs' hallmarks was his composure after he had two strikes.

"One year, I think it was '87 or '88, I hit about .429 after I had two strikes," the Hall of Famer told the Times last year. "I wasn't scared of striking out 'cause I knew if I swung, I was making contact."

Zimmer recalls another player who worked the count expertly. "Probably the best I saw was a guy they said took pitches too much, that he should have tried to hit a ball even if it was a little outside: It was Ted Williams," he said. "They say he would tell the umpire whether it was a ball or strike."

Working the count well has even more benefits today than in Williams' era, given the focus on pitch counts. A team that forces an opponent to throw a set number by a certain inning may chase him from the mound and force the bullpen into action.

"That was our big theory when I was with Oakland," Yankees first baseman Jason Giambi said. "Run up the guy's pitch counts, 'cause then you get the starting pitcher out of the game in the fifth inning. You're making him throw 100 pitches and he's gone."

Giambi, according to Yankees hitting coach Don Mattingly, "is as good as I've seen" at taking a pitcher deep into the count. How did he learn the fine points?

As a child, Giambi remembers all the batting practice balls his father threw to him. "He would say, "Well, that was a ball, that one's a strike,' and it just kind of put it in my head," he said. "The biggest thing is when I got to the Oakland A's. Mark McGwire took me under his wing. I had always taken a lot of walks, but he showed me that you can be just as valuable to your team taking a walk as you can getting a hit."

Giambi, like Boggs, grew comfortable at the plate with two strikes. And because he wasn't fast enough to beat out grounders, he was forced to wait for a pitch he could drill for a hit.

"The more pitches I saw, the more mistakes I would get from the pitcher," he said. "Sometimes, the first pitch you get may be your best. So if you foul it off, you have to stay in and swing at bad pitches and hopefully get that next pitch where he makes a mistake."

Get 'em while

they're young

During spring training, the Devil Rays worked hard on their two-strike approach, hoping to get more baserunners and score more runs.

That has meant choking up, having more control of the bat head and fouling off the tough pitches. "You have to be very patient up there," Rays hitting coach Steve Henderson said. "And you have to believe you can hit with two strikes."

Rays manager Joe Maddon says one of the keys to success is teaching players when they're young.

"From my experience as a minor-league hitting coach is that it's a mental thing more than a physical thing," he said. "You have to put some thoughts out there to young hitters. For example, I used a phrase: "hunting your pitch' early in the count. If you're looking in a certain area and it's not there, just take it. Don't make an out on a pitch you're not looking for early in the count."

To nurture that, Maddon will sometimes ask younger hitters to plan what they'll do at the plate. For instance, "first at-bat take a strike, second at-bat take a pitch, third at-bat you're on your own." The only exceptions would be if runners are in scoring position for the first two pitches.

"When you're trying to teach somebody something," he said, "you have to teach them patience, in a sense. And when you give them a plan, such as the one I described, they can find out for themselves that, "Hey, I can take a strike and still have a good at-bat and get a hit."'

Hitting styles vary, and working the count isn't for everyone. "I don't have time for that," Twins centerfielder Torii Hunter said. "I'm more aggressive. I just hack. If I went up there and was patient, I wouldn't be the guy I am."

But his teammate, leadoff man and leftfielder Shannon Stewart, gets plenty of kudos for his knack at running up the count.

"I can't get a hit every time," said Stewart, a career .300 hitter in 11 seasons. "So the next best thing for me is to walk. I try to work a pitcher. You go up there and take a couple of pitches and go deep in the count and it helps the other hitters out, too. They're all watching to see what the guy's got."

What can a pitcher do to counter a guy working the count? "You gotta get ahead and stay ahead," Rays starter Casey Fossum said. "But if they do start fouling stuff off, change the speed. For me, that's when I put my slow one in there, something to get them off what they've been doing."

Morris remembers an early lesson as a pitcher.

"As a young player, the most important thing I learned is that the greatest pitch in baseball is strike one," he said. "So it's all about the count."

You can count on it.

[Last modified April 12, 2006, 22:59:14]