Let's have a thread about strike zones!

[SAump]

Originally Posted by cc6

I've never heard the left arm analogy before. With a left handed batter at the plate, would it be the right arm across the body?

I do set up in the same place each pitch, except for if the catcher covers up the entire plate or the batter puts his hands in my line of vision. Then I am forced to improvise, and I find back and up doesn't work well unless I stand straight up.

I agree with Bob's statement that it is important to call the strikezone that gets the fewest complaints.

A swinger looks to pull everything he sees. A hitter goes with the pitch, including taking the outside pitch to the opposite field. If I'm doing a league full of swingers, meaning guys who are not willing to adjust to anything remotely outside, then I am going to call nothing off the black so that I avoid complaints and ejections.

The batter and his coach are not trying to help you. You cannot improve when you rely so much on what other people say they saw. Develop a reference zone for the outside pitch.

The left hand analogy applies to people who place their glove on their left hand and catch a baseball thrown on their right side backhanded {thumb down}. With an outside pitch thrown at a right handed batter, a lefthanded person would turn the glove over and reach out to the left to catch it forehanded {thumb up}.

You want to feel comfortable calling that outside pitch. It is all about a sense of location in or out of the zone. That is something the mind can handle much more quickly, and with a lot of confidence. IOW, as Evans says, proper use of the eyes provides the visual cues to the brain that result in the right call. Trying to measure the distance {brainwork} just makes the call that much harder.