Walk ratio for batters

This year in the NPF, batters walked 6.75% of the time (give or take - couldn't find HP stats, not sure if there were any CI, and not sure if they lump all types of Sacrifices into SH or not).

But walk percentage is going to depend greatly on the level of play. Last year, our varsity walks leader had 18 walks in 69 PA (our entire varsity team walked 23.6% of the time). For a summer rec 16u team, two girls walked 40% of the time (one of them cannot hit; the other is one of our best hitters).

There is no right answer. It's all about how she performs relative to her level of competition.

FP26 said:

A lot of it will be determined by the quality of the pitcher we are facing.

Click to expand...

And sometimes it can be determined by the quality (or lack thereof) of the guy behind the dish calling strikes or balls although hopefully over the course of a season that becomes less and less significant in the stats. Your mileage may vary.

DD used to never walk (way too aggressive at bat) and would also rarely walk a batter when pitching, which I think is a bad thing whether on offense or pitching. Once I pointed this out to her, she made a more conscious effort to be selective at the plate when batting, looking for her pitch to hit instead of going after marginal pitches. Unless you are a phenom batter, you should probably be walking at least 1 out of every 10 at-bats and striking out 2 out of 10 at-bats. If you are a pitcher, that's say 30 batters with 3 walks and 6 strikeouts per game and at least once a game you should be pitching inside enough to occasionally hit a batter (maybe 1 - 2 times be 7 inning game). My DD used to go 7 or 8 games! without hitting a batter which was not nearly enough hit batters. You can't be afraid to pluck the batter sometimes (of course not intentionally), but throw liberally inside (keep them honest).

FP26 said:

When a hitter gets a pitch that they can hit with authority, I want them to swing the bat.

Click to expand...

She tells me unless the head coach is saying otherwise she is always looking for the hit. She also just told me her batting coach has been teaching her how to foul off pitches she does not like until she gets one she does. Looks like the money is paying off, thankfully.

Bob516 said:

She tells me unless the head coach is saying otherwise she is always looking for the hit. She also just told me her batting coach has been teaching her how to foul off pitches she does not like until she gets one she does. Looks like the money is paying off, thankfully.

Click to expand...

I'm not really a fan of that philosophy, but I know some instructors that work on it. If it works for you, great... When analyzing walks, I like to look deeper than just some type of statistic. And this is coming from a guy that majored in statistics in college. There are a number of other factors that play into it, and I like to utilize all of it. Sorry if it seems like I am dodging your original question, but I junk think there is more to it. When DD was younger she had a very high walk rate. Unfortunately, much of it was because she was too passive in my opinion. She has become more aggressive, but will still take her walks in certain situations. High school ball was a great example. She batted .424 on the year, and no one else on her team was above .210. In close games, with a base open, the opposing team would either intentionally walk her or pitch around her.

PIAA had a new rule that I didn't really care for. A pitcher could simply tell the umpire "we want to walk her". Hitter would take her base without a pitch being thrown. Saw that happen to DD more times than I would like to remember...