Is Baseball Easy? A Look at the Stats

Is baseball easy? A look at the stats of some of the game’s best players reveals that it may be harder than it looks.

Introduction

Though baseball is often considered a very challenging sport, the statistics tell a different story. In reality, baseball is not as difficult as people make it out to be. In fact, it is one of the easier sports to understand and follow. The object of the game is simple: score more runs than your opponent. That’s it. And yet, for some reason, baseball has been labeled as a “thinking man’s game” or a “slow game.”

Hitting

To the casual observer, it might appear that hitting a baseball is simple. A 90 mph fastball comes toward the batter, he swings, and (hopefully) makes contact. In reality, however, hitting a round object with a round object is one of the most difficult tasks in sports.

Consider this: the average major league hitter only gets a hit 30% of the time he steps up to the plate! That means that 7 out of 10 times he fails to get a hit. And yet, we still consider .300 to be a good batting average.

So what makes hitting so difficult? For one thing, a major league pitcher can throw a baseball up to 100 mph. Add in the fact that the ball is only about 3 inches in diameter, and it becomes clear that hitters have very little time to react. In addition, pitchers use a variety of different pitches—fastballs, curveballs, sliders, etc.—which makes it even more difficult for hitters to anticipate what’s coming.

The bottom line is that hitting is hard. But it’s also one of the most exciting parts of baseball. There’s nothing like seeing a hitter square up on a pitch and drive it into the gaps for a base hit. Or watching him connect on an 0-2 pitch and send it over the fence for a home run. Hitting may be hard, but when done right, it’s also very rewarding.

Pitching

In baseball, pitching is the act of throwing a baseball toward home plate to start a play. The pitcher is the player who throws the ball and is the one who pitches. There are different types of pitches that a pitcher can throw, such as a fastball, curveball, cutter, slider, and knuckleball.

The goal of pitching is to get the batter out or to get them to hit the ball weakly so that it can be easily fielded by one of the defensive players. pitchers try to “paint the black” or throw pitches that appear to be close to the edges of the strike zone but are actually just off enough so that they will be called balls. This can be difficult to do consistently and takes a great deal of practice.

Pitching is one of the most important aspects of baseball and can be very difficult to master. It is important for pitchers to have a wide variety of pitches that they can throw for strikes and to have good control over where their pitches end up.

Fielding

Fielding is often considered one of the more difficult aspects of baseball. Players have to have good hand-eye coordination and be able to track a ball in the air while running to their position. In addition, they need to be able to make quick decisions on whether to catch a ball or let it drop.

There are a few stats that are used to measure fielding ability. The most common is fielding percentage, which is the number of putouts and assists a player has divided by the number of chances they had. However, this stat doesn’t take into account errors, so another stat that is sometimes used is fielding percentage plus (fp+). This stat adjusts for the quality of a player’s team and the parks they play in, and tries to isolate the fielder’s individual contribution.

So, what do the numbers say? The best fielders in baseball history have had fp+ numbers around 150 (meaning they were 50% better than an average fielder). The average fielder has an fp+ around 100. So, if you’re looking at a player with an fp+ below 100, they’re probably not going to be considered “great” fielders.

Conclusion

As we can see from the data, baseball is not an easy game. The average player only hits the ball 30% of the time, and even the best players only hit the ball 40-50% of the time. pitchers throw fastballs that are difficult to hit, and they often throw breaking balls that are even harder to hit. So, while baseball may look easy when you’re watching it on TV, the reality is that it’s a very difficult game.