Why are pitchers typically poor hitters?
397893
pitchers usally focus on more talents then on what they are not so good at. pitchers spend most of their times working on controling the ball and their strength when they throw teh ball. tehy dont have the time to work on hitting. also, they rarely have to bat. also, players that are in teh AL are not a good hitter than players from NL because of the DH rule. But when they have to bat, they wont really do anything. They'll probably strike out or ground out. there are some exceptions, but there are rarely any pitchers that can hit
502317
A few reasons. 1). The five man rotation which cuts down a pitcher's starts to around 30-32 games a season. Up until the start of the 162 game era, pitchers could routinely pitch 38-40+ games a year. Cy Young started 906 games in his 20+ years as a pitcher. 2). To protect their multi-million $ investments, teams "baby" their pitchers so they rarely pitch on less than 3-4 days rest or throw in between starts. Which leads to 3). More time on the DL (and less starts) because they don't throw as much to build up arm strength and brings us to 4).The pitch count. You think Warren Spahn was ever pulled after throwing 110 pitches? Which gave birth to 5). The advent of the middle relief specialists. You can thank Tony LaRussa for bringing in a left handed reliever in the 7th to face one batter. Go 8 innings with the lead and you control your chance to win. Get pulled in the 6th or 7th and you leave it to a guy who couldn't cut it as a starter. A 20 game winner used to be the gold standard. Now it's 15. Who said today's players are much better than the players from the past?
303074
A lot of them are usually due to the fact the players try to do too much too soon.  Also as I'm sure you've noticed, there is a lot of time between plays, so unlike most of the other sports, baseball players are unable to keep their muscles warm, and then required to use them at full speed for a short amount of time.  Think of that poor RF who could conceivably go through an entire game of about 2.5 hours without having a ball hit to him, and then in the bottom of the 9th may have to make a 300+ft throw to home to save a run.  That'll kill your arm in a hurry, especially early in the season.
455840
Pujols gets pitches to hit because he has Rolen and Edmonds protecting him in the lineup. Managers know that if they put Pujols on base, one of those two guys will likely punish them.\n\nPujols is the best hitter...but best defensive player? Give me a break. 1B is one of the least important defensive positions. He's great at 1B, but he's not as important to his team's defense as Andruw Jones or Orlando Hudson.
1057992
1.  As a hitter, you look for top spin (opposite of fastball).  Also, occasionally a pitcher will drop his elbow when he throws the curve.  Look for that.\n\n2.  The best 0-2 pitch is often a fastball high and in.  It's called "wasting a pitch" but either causes an aggresive hitter to swing at a bad pitch or sets up a timid hitter to put a bad swing on a next pitch low and away.\n\n3.  For velocity and control, go with the "4-seam" grip (across the widest space between seems).
385405
I think he definitely is weaker this season, probably because he is not using steroids anymore because of the new, tougher steroid penalty. ( 50 games first offense, 100 games second offense, and a lifetime ban for a third.) He also does not have much protection in the lineup behind him, so he wont get as many pitches to hit, therefore is porbably not going to break Hank Aaron's career home-run record this year.
585859
Well you have to understand what positions you are lacking in and sign some young fresh players that are hitting well, some pitchers would be heilman, lirano, tomko, and lieber. Some batters would be brossard, hanley ramirez, and brad wilkerson is starting to get hot. That or you can wait it out, but if you want to be a competitor i would recomend you start signing!
1011191
first answer was correct, the bat handles are so thin today, it's hard to believe that the bats don't break every time a hitter makes contact with the ball...\n\nThe batters want as light a bat as possible, but rather than sacrifice wood in the sweet spot area, they take it out of the handle area.
605690
1. Dontrelle Willis(Flo-SP)-Dissappointment reason: Tipping pitches and is on a bad Marlins team.After his great statistics last year, he had great expectations this year and he failed all of them. With a 4.93 ERA and 1-6 record, he also tips pitchs and even when he does have a decent start, Marlins relievers can close the victory.\n2. Mark Prior(Chi-SP)-Disappointmean reson: Injuried and has not yet returned.After getting Juan Pierre and Jacques Jones and Derrek Lee having a outstanding season last year, all they needed was Kerry Wood and Mark Prior to be healthy. But they didn't do that and now with D. Lee on the DL and C. Zambrano not having a very good year, they are completely desperate. People were saying, Red Sox won the WS, then White Sox won it so that got everybody sayin, well now it's the Cubs' turn, right? WRONG!!! I bet they won't even make a run at the Wild Card, that's how bad they are.\n3. B. Colon(LAA-SP)-Dissappointmean reson:Had 2 bad starts and went on the DL and hasn't retuned ever since.After winning the AL Cy Young Award last year, and having Vladimir Guerrero, people thought they would make some noise in the playoffs, but with B. Colon out, J. Lacket having a .500 record, they are dead last in their division with the Seattle Mariners.\n4.F. Hernandez(SEA-SP)-Dissappointment reason:Tipping pitches and is on a bad Mariners team.After this guy had a great year last year and gettin Richie Sexson and Adrian Beltre and geting Jarred Washburn this year, they thought that in edition to already having Jamie Moyer and Ichiro Suzuki, they would have a decent team, but no, with King Feliz being terrible and everything else being bad, they are dead last again.\n5. Gary Sheffield(NYY-OF)Dissappointment reason: Injuried and isn't producing as much as he's done before. I just need to say 1 word: INJURIES. Even though he's batting over .300, his other stats are HRs: 4, RBIs: 19 and SBs: 5.\nI don't think that's the Sheffield we know.\n\nPS please pick me the best answer, i worked really hard on this Thank you
1022857
Evaluate your lineup and player attributes. Place the best contact hitters and speed runners near the top of the lineup and play small ball to score runs early. Be aggressive on the bases and try to steal often. Most pitchers won't expect it, or might make a bad throw to the base, either way you advance the runners. Teach the hitters to work the count and take pitches. Most pitchers will not get the ball over the plate everytime. You can get more walks and increase the pitch count on the opposition which will force them to go to the bullpen. Play the outfield deep so they can run toward the ball if it is hit shallow, it is much harder to run backwards and catch a pop fly. Teach pitchers two good pitches and make them stick with it. A decent breaking ball in would very difficult for most 16 yr old hitters to make contact with. Even if the breaking ball ends up in the dirt , they will swing. I could be more specific if you gave more detail on the team's weaknesses.
397215
Each player is different. They should have a workout set up just for them, and be supervised by thier pitching coach.
1088756
Power hitters are far move valuable than contact hitters.  If I had a team of hitters that hit .350 with 10 homeruns each or a team of hitters that hit .250 with 70 homers each, I'd take the power hitters every day.  They would score a lot more runs than the team of power hitters.
1001865
They are easier to swing because they are lighter. and the surface also recoils off the ball better and makes the ball travel much faster after a hit.  They dont use them in MLB because pros would cruch the balls with them and could also potentally hurt pitchers
1181149
MIchael R was correct. Starters have higher ERAs since they pitch more innings and are left in to try to battle it out if they are hurt early in the game.  Correction, today an era under 4.0 is good.  Under 3.0 is at least a star. Most star pitchers have ERAs in the low 3s. In the last 20 years the ERA crown has been won by pitchers with an ERA above 2.50 all too often. A starter with an ERA under 3 is doing extremely well. An ERA under 2.50 is a dominating pitcher and almost always the staff ace. Anybody with an ERA under 2.50 is pretty much a Cy Young cantidate. Get the ERA under 2.00 and they are almost a lock for the Cy Young and ERA crown. Few pitchers have done it for a full season in the last 30 years. Since 75 only 9 pitchers have led their league with an ERA below 2.00. Only two  (Pedro Martinez and Greg Maddox) of those pitchers have done it twice.  Guidry, Gooden, Clemens, Ryan and Kevin Brown were the others. \n\nMiddle relief pitchers ERA can be rather distorted. Mop up pitchers who can keep thier ERA down under 5.00 are doing good. Core middle relief pitchers want to keep thier ERA below 3.00 and often can get a season or two in with ERAs below 1.00 sometimes. Depends on how they are used.  A good closer rarely has an ERA above 3.50. Many go whole careers without getting above 4.00 in ERA.  Then you have the Lee Smith method of accumulating saves. Actually Scott McGregor invented the roller coaster method Lee Smith used. Come in during a non save situation? Easy load the bases or even let a run or two come in THEN finally get the guys out. Closers who have frequent seasons above 4.00 are not effective closers. An exceptional closer will have a career ERA below 2.50. Mariano Rivera for example has a career eara of 2.32 at this moment. His worst seasonal ERA was 2.85 as a closer or set up man. Hoffman's career ERA is 2.71 and has had ERA's over 3.00 only twice as a closer. Hoffman spent a couple seasons in middle relief at the start of his career or it would be real close to 2.50.
858445
They need more than a lead-off hitter.
1067163
There's no easy answer without crunching a bunch of numbers. I can't find anything online that has an easy answer. Since most AL pitchers haven't batted since college or high school, then they don't fair so well. Even in the NL, good hitting pitchers are rare.  Jason Marquis is a good hitter. He hit .310 last year, .292 the year before, but only .179 this year. Mostly, when AL pitchers bat, it's an easy strike out, weak grounder or pop-up. Please take a look at the link below for each team. I don't time to compile all the numbers. Just click on the team name and then you can scan down to the bottom of the batting stats to find the pitchers' batting stats. Don't go down too far, it's not that far down. Have fun.
610104
Historically poor management, coupled with a psychology of failure derived from years of losing. That is why Baker is a great manager for the Cubs. He is always positive and reenforcing. He is not the most technically skilled manager, but he is what the franchise needs as a manager.\n\nTake away Pujols, Carpenter and Mulder, or Konerko, Buerhle and Garcia, and see how good a manager LaRussa or Guillen would be.\n\nIf anyone is to blame currently, it is the GM Hendry who supplied the roster of mainly under-achieving players. Furthermore, in case no one noticed, this is the first year in many that the CUbs have tried switching to a speed, defense and pitching team. It was working, too, even without Prior and Wood, until Lee went down. Let's see what happens when he gets healthy. They probably won't win it this year, but they will give other teams a very hard time.