Swinging at the First Pitch Breaking Ball

It’s one of the first things we’re taught as hitters as we begin to move up the ranks. Never swing at a first pitch breaking ball. God forbid you pop it up, or ground out when you could have waited around and hit the fastball. In fact not much seems to send coaches into a frenzy as much as when one of their hitters makes an out on a first pitch breaking ball. “What are you swinging at!” you’ll here them say, as they jump around in the third base coaching box, “What kind of a hitter gets out on a first pitch breaking ball!!?”

But, is it really as bad as everyone thinks? Could it possibly be beneficial to swing at a first pitch breaking ball? While it’s pretty well known that pitchers aren’t the sharpest knives in the drawer they are smart enough to have figured out that hitters don’t generally like to swing at first pitch breaking balls. So they view it as an opportunity to get an easy strike especially on the more accomplished hitters. I tend to see this in my hitters every year. They start out at a certain level of performance. Usually pretty good hitters but are still getting a good number of fastballs. As they grow and develop and ultimately begin to produce better and better results they start to get a good diet of breaking balls. Usually they get in a hole early with the first pitch breaking ball then tend to chase the only fastball they see which is usually intentionally thrown out of the strike zone and are then finished off with a number of breaking balls. Unfortunately this is the price of success. This is what happens when you become a great hitter. So for hitters who have reached this level of performance I recommend looking for and swinging at the first pitch breaking ball.

Remember that there is a distinct difference between an 0-0 breaking ball and a 2 strike breaking ball. Since the pitcher views it as an opportunity to get an easy strike he’s not going to risk throwing that pitch out of the zone (pitchers get in trouble for throwing first pitch breaking balls for balls just like we get in trouble for popping them up). As a result that first pitch breaking ball is going to be a looper. Something with a little bend in it that is going to drop right down the heart of the plate. It’s not going to have nearly the bite that the two strike breaking ball will have and the pitcher usually feels pretty comfortable throwing this pitch since he knows that the hitter will read breaking ball out of the hand and since the count is 0-0 will immediately give up on this pitch because we’ve been taught to never swing at a breaking ball 0-0. Now the count is 0-1 and we are pretty much at the mercy of the pitcher. 0-1 and 1-0 are very different counts. The first pitch doesn’t just buy you one pitch but it buys you two since if you are up 1-0 you know that he’s not going to want to go 2-0 and will give you something to hit. If he doesn’t and you get back to 1-1 you are still feeling pretty good since 2-1 is not a count a pitcher wants to be in either. On the flip side is the pitcher gets you to 0-1 he has two pitches to work with. He can afford at that point to get a little nastier and take more risks as a 1-1 count for him can easily go to 1-2. If he starts 0-1 it gives him the feeling that he’s in charge just like a 1-0 count does for us. So if you are consistently taking a first pitch breaking ball you are most likely always starting your at bat down 0-1.

Remember that the first pitch breaking ball is just a slow looping pitch so it is usually screaming “hit me, hit me”. If you begin to see the pattern that pitchers are trying to start you off with a first pitch breaking ball feel free to go up there looking for it and swing at it. Eliminate any idea of the fastball from your mind and once you read breaking ball hit that thing hard. You will only have to prove your willingness to hit this pitch once as once you do pitchers won’t want to loop one in there first pitch and you will go back to getting more fastballs. Don’t allow the pitcher to get the upper hand simply because your stuck in old patterns of thinking. It’s okay to swing first pitch breaking ball as long as you were looking for it and as long as that’s what your approach was.