Diamondbacks: Catching up with Arizona Diamondbacks prospect Trevor Bauer

Artist formerly known as Levski, points us to…”...a great interview that Nick Piecoro has done with Trevor Bauer, it’d a sin not to link it on BTF. Awesome conversation.”

If I’m not mistaken that was the night you went on Twitter and said something about not liking ground balls. It sort of seemed like a lot of people were like, ‘Wait, what?’

“Yeah. It was controversial. I knew that when I posted it. It was part of the reason I posted it. I like to post things that make people think. The initial reaction to ‘I hate ground balls’ is, ‘Oh my God, the sky is falling! How could anyone…’ But when you actually look at it and think about the statistics behind it, it makes a lot of sense. Hitters are trained to hit the ball hard on the ground. Fly balls are bad. You don’t want to hit the ball in the air. Hit the ball on the ground. Pitchers are taught to get them to hit the ball on the ground. Something’s got to give. Hitters and pitchers can’t both want the same thing. And ground balls have a much higher chance of producing a base runner. You’ve got to field the ball, throw the ball and field the ball again. That’s three things you have to do. A fly ball you just have to catch it. A strikeout you don’t have to do anything. Ground balls statistically go for hits a lot more than fly balls.

“Sure, fly balls produce more power numbers and stuff like that. But everyone gets so scared of the home run and the double, but if you actually have a plan on how to disrupt hitters’ timing and you’re not just guessing, ‘Oh, I think this pitch here’ ‘I think that pitch there.’ With Effective Velocity and understanding the physics behind a swing and hitters’ timing and stuff like that—I’m not scared of giving up fly balls. If I do a good job of disrupting a hitter’s timing, they’re not going to be able to hit it out of the park. So, to me, strikeouts and fly balls are key. The more of those I can get the better off I’m going to do.