Baseball Strategies - Which Ones Should You Follow

Baseball Strategies - Which Ones Should You Follow
By Jack D. Elliott

One of the most intriguing areas of baseball is the use of different baseball strategies. People seem to know intuitively that using the right baseball strategies can help your team win and make good teams great. But the problem is trying to figure out what strategies to follow and when to use them. Nothing can get so heated and controversial as a discussion about what is the best strategy to use in a given situation among so called"baseball experts". For this reason, we have put together a list of tips to help you sort through the various strategies and find the ones that will benefit your team the most.

1. Experience of the advice giver. This is important in determining how much credibility you should give to the proposed strategy. Has he been able to test out this strategy or is this more of mental exercise for him? If he isn't willing to test his strategy, I would be inclined to pass on it without further support.

2. Key on quantitative results when you can. When you hear a certain baseball strategy proposed, are numbers used to back it up? Also, do these numbers really key in on what is important? If the coach is pushing a strategy and does not have numbers to back it up, you have to wonder how solid a strategy it is. Also, it is important to make sure the numbers used are actually relevant. For instance, if he is using batting average to determine whether a batter should swing away on a 3 and 0 pitch, is this really the best number to use? Wouldn't slugging percentage be a better number to use because a single is essentially the equivalent of a walk?

3. Don't be afraid to challenge long standing assumptions. Many things in baseball are the way they are because of custom and tradition. This does not mean they are the best way of doing things. Be willing to challenge certain assumptions. If you can not find legitimate reasons why one should not do something, odds are there are not any.

4. Be willing to be a trailblazer. Don't be afraid to try out different strategies, especially if they challenge existing assumptions. Just because no one else has thought of it does not mean that it won't work. Instead, I recommend you test these strategies in situations where the stakes are low. For instance, why not test these strategies in summer league games, pre-season games and regular season games where their impact will be minimal. The idea here is to find strategies that will be successful in the playoffs or helping your team reach the playoffs. By testing your strategies, you get to see first hand how successful or unsuccessful they really are. This is great to know when wondering whether to use one when deep in the playoffs.

5. Strategies can have success rates at different baseball levels. If you are a youth or high school baseball coach, it is easy to become in awe of the major leagues and the baseball strategies their coaches espouse. However, just because a strategy works well at that level does not mean it will work well at yours. Also, there are plenty of strategies that will work far better at the youth and high school level that would not work well in the major leagues. For this reason, keep this in mind when looking at certain strategies. The real question is will this strategy work for my team based on our league? How you answer this will dictate whether you should move forward in testing it.

Stop wasting time and energy trying to learn new Baseball Strategies. Instead, try visiting http://www.baseballtrainingtechniques.com to get some solid baseball strategies to test out for your team.

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