Wow ? excellent viewpoints and questions. I guess some of what I said was not thought out real well . My bad ?
No doubt where the pitcher intends to locate the pitch has some influence on where the ball will be hit. I occasionally used that as a factor in positioning myself on a given batter. But, really, it was such a small factor compared to things like pitch speed, pitch sequence, nature of the batter, game situation, pitcher?s control, etc. that it?s hard for me to imagine it being used as a staff wide strategy due to the defensive ability of a CF. I know pitch location has a big influence on whether it will be hit on the ground or in the air ? and maybe on the ground to a particular side of the infield, but I?m skeptical about it?s effectiveness at getting a batter to hit the ball in the air to the center of the field. Perhaps my problem with the concept is that I did not reach levels of baseball where pitchers were able to do that with enough consistency to use it as a staff wide strategy. True: I have absolutely no idea whether Clemens, Petite, Oswalt, Backe, et al in fact do this. My experience has been in positioning the defense to the pitcher?s strength rather than pitching to the defense?s strength. Also, I think pitching to prevent a batter from pulling the ball is probably quite a bit easier, more effective and more necessary than pitching to induce a fly ball to the center of the field.
My question to you guys. If you had SuperCF, who could guarantee that he would run down anything hit in the air to CF, and the CF fence was 500 ft away, and only balls hit to CF counted as outs, how would you pitch him? (In other words what kind of pitch ? or even pitch sequence ? is most likely to induce a fly to CF, regardless of the consequences?)
I would pitch him up and right down the middle of the plate. I might want to change speeds, but am not sure about that.
