Why intentionally walk a batter

I responded with two such incidents I had happened on during my research. Later, having found notes I had made about three more surprise swings, I thought it was time to collect all these occurrences together.

I decided to eliminate instances of players taking half-hearted, empty swings at intentional balls. In May , Rod Carew took a couple of insincere swings at deliberate balls, hoping to encourage the pitcher to pitch to him with two strikes, but wound up walking anyway. A similar thing reportedly happened to Mel Ott on the last day of the season, as Phillies pitchers denied him the opportunity to catch their teammate, Chuck Klein, in the NL home run race.

To date, we have uncovered only eleven instances in which a batter, in the process of being intentionally walked, swung and actually put the ball in play:. Plank apparently intended to follow instructions, but did not keep them away far enough. The third ball that he tried to waste went just inside the plate [Italics mine]. Ordinarily a batter would take a ball on it, but it was just the right hight sic and Cobb smashed it.

Interestingly, of the 11 documented instances, nine resulted in positive results: five in hits, two in errors by the caught-off-guard defense, and two in game-winning RBI. Of course, it could simply be that successful results are more likely to be reported. This is presented as a work in progress rather than a definitive list. Should anyone know other instances which belong on this list, please contact the author at billdeane14 gmail. So I decided to do some research.

There is no set rule for how many times a batter can be intentionally walked in a single game. As a general rule, batters can be intentionally walked every time they come up to bat.

The number of times a batter can be intentionally walked is the same across all levels of baseball. There may be some baseball leagues that limit the number of intentional walks allowed per game, but overall, most baseball leagues do not have a limit to how many intentional walks are allowed per game. An intentional walk is when the defense chooses to walk a batter. The intentional walk can be accomplished by the pitcher throwing four obvious balls to the catcher, or by a team automatically placing a batter on first base by announcing to the umpire they are intentionally walking a batter.

Different leagues have different rules for how they allow an intentional walk to happen. When it comes to looking up rules in baseball, one of the best places to start is by looking at the official rules of the MLB.

I did some searching around the topic of intentional walks and intentional base on balls, and there was not too much information listed in the official rules.

When it comes to the intentional walk in the MLB, there is no ruling that states how many times a batter can intentionally walk in a single game.

Because there is no ruling that states how many times a hitter can be intentionally walked in a single game, hitters could end up being intentionally walked every single time they come up to bat. This means that hitters who are very good can get on base a lot easier with more intentional walks. When people talk about intentional walks, they also tend to talk about Barry Bonds. By this I mean even though we do not really want to pitch to the hitter, we are willing to let him hit bad pitches.

Usually we throw him curve balls slightly out of the strike zone, hoping he will make an out on a bad pitch to hit. On an intentional pass, all infielders and outfielders should cover their normal defensive area because the pitch could still be hit.

One of the big misconceptions in baseball is that playing the game keeps you in shape to pitch. I wish that was true.