As a fan, batting practice is probably one of the best times to be in the ballpark.
The players are loose, for the most part they’re having fun, you can see some genuine interactions between the players, and guys are out there hitting the ball as hard and as far as they can.
It’s a good time, and if you’ve never done it, this author recommends it. Even though I’m usually obscenely busy while I’m at the ballpark, I try to go down on the field to watch batting practice at least once a series.
But is there a lot of value in it for the participants? Batting practice attendance has been on the decline for several seasons, with some players, typically veterans, deciding to skip it in favor of getting some extra work in the cage.
A 162-game season is the ultimate grind, and the more teams have invested into tracking the performance of their players over the course of a season with wearable fitness monitoring devices, the more they’ve come to realize that less can be more.
As a result, norms regarding the amount of work ballplayers do before the game have been relaxed. Just about any day the weather isn’t looking so hot, teams cancel batting practice and the same typically goes for day games after night games. Last year, the Chicago Cubs had a home series after a West Coast trip where they told players not to arrive more than an hour before the game. Even when teams do have on-field work, it’s been pared down, with very little infield work.
There’s also more to work on for hitters outside of the confines of normal batting practice. When a hitter is working on a flaw in their swing or trying to make an adjustment, hitting coach Jeff Branson will typically have them start that work on a tee in order to replicate the muscle memory. The next best thing is facing a pitching machine that’s going to put the ball into a repeatable position.
When a player is trying to get a change hammered down, it doesn’t help to be chasing pitches all over the zone. The thing that’s required is to make the change feel completely natural for a dead-center fastball first and then adjust outward. So if a player is making changes — and over the course of the seasons, that’s almost everyone at some point — you might not seem them on the field before a game.
With so many guys taking advantage of cage time, some have taken a preference toward that kind of work pregame. Even between batting practice and the game, many will still hop into the cage for a few swings. With the development of pitching machines that can throw major-league velocity and breaking balls, it’s sometimes even more beneficial to a player than a coach lobbing balls at 50 MPH from behind an L-screen.
“Sometimes you go in the cage and you have a really good cage session and you go out in the game and have a really good game and you get a routine there,” Pirates outfielder Corey Dickerson said. “You want to keep that. It depends on who you are. If you want to see how the ball flies and you’re able to stay within yourself and you’re able to work on stuff, then the field is beneficial.”
Dickerson said more of his work happens in the cage than he does on the field in batting practice, but he doesn’t want to eliminate it from his routine.
“This year, (the weather) has been so crazy, it’s fun to move around and get out there because we’ve been limited to so few opportunities,” he said. “It’s been different so far. I think as the season goes, I might adjust and take my days every now and again and not take BP outside. You save your swings. Over a period of time, it wears you down.”
The concept of rest in baseball is fairly controversial, with some teams like the Pirates taking more a pro-active approach when it comes to player days off during the season. It’s a stance many fans, and privately, a few players, have taken issue with.
There’s no doubt that the baseball season can be exhausting. Speaking personally, there are days when I get to the ballpark exhausted from the schedule and I don’t even play. In cutting out mandatory on-field work, there’s more of a balance to the energy the players are expending throughout the course of a season.
Of course, there are downsides. The lack of a workload makes it harder for players that aren’t every-day guys to get extra work in. The cages are basically always open, but for a player like Adam Frazier, the beginning part of the season was a struggle as he moved his primary focus from being the team’s fourth outfielder to starting second baseman without the benefit of very much infield practice.
It doesn’t necessarily have the same effect for bench players offensively. Players that aren’t in the starting lineup frequently go back into the cage during the early part of the game to be ready for as a pinch-hitter.
“I treat (batting practice) the same, no matter if I’m in a bench role or a starting role, but I think the most realistic thing is the machine that’s in there,” Max Moroff said.
Of course, there is more than one way to have batting practice. In many Asian leagues, there are specialized batting practice pitchers that throw game velocity and breaking balls to replicate an exact in-game situation during batting practice.
Might that be an option in the majors?
“Maybe in Spring Training or at the beginning (of the season),” Dickerson said. “During the season, you don’t want to battle before you have to battle in the game.”
The leagues of Nippon Professional Baseball play a 146-game schedule with one off day every week. The KBO League plays 144 games. So there is a rest aspect in play there for MLB players that doesn’t exist for the Asian leagues.
There’s also the culture factor, as well. At the end of the day, spectator sports are profitable because fans pay money to attend games, buy merchandise and watch on TV. No one has ever captured a fan’s imagination by striking out in batting practice. For that reason alone, the tradition will undoubtedly persist, but for those within the game, it will more than likely continue to carry less and less meaning.
