Coaches: What should we be tracking/charting for our hitters during games?

As fall intersquad seasons get ramped up for high school and college programs, we get a lot of questions regarding what to chart and track in-game. If you ask 100 coaches at every level of baseball and softball what needs to be tracked on game day, you might get 100 different sets of answers. When we built Hitting Approach, this was the single most question that we revisited (and continue to revisit) over and over. Why do we track anything in the first place? Simply because, as coaches, we want to know why our hitters make outs.

First and foremost, the pitch type and location must be tracked. This is likely the biggest priority and least likely to be tracked because it’s hard to do without the use of in-game radar tracking systems or the Hitting Approach app. I tried to do it on paper and log it with Excel after a weekend series was completed. It took me over eight hours each weekend to do. Then I got smart and met with a software engineer about building an app (which eventually became Hitting Approach). The bottom line is that it is impossible to build a worthy approach for an individual hitter by informing them how they are making outs if we are not tracking pitch type and location for each pitch thrown in game.

Second, we should be tracking pitch type and location in correlation to the following:

 •Contact type—slow roller, chopper, ground ball, line drive, fly ball, pop up. This is super simple. Obviously, we want to know if our hitters are hitting enough line drives. But are they missing above or below the barrel more often? What about on certain types of pitches and locations?

•Contact quality—was it hit weak, soft, medium, hard, or was it a rocket? Hitting coaches don’t need exact in-game exit velocities to know whether or not their hitters are hitting the ball hard. Rather, we do need to know how often a hitter is hitting the ball hard in correlation to pitch type, and location.

•Whiffs—this is a pretty obvious one, as well. Simply put, when and why are our hitters swinging and missing? Is it related to count? Are our hitters chasing in two strike counts or with a man in scoring position? Is it related to the swing having holes—pitch type/location?  

•Vertical Barrel accuracy—did the hitter square it up, miss under it, or miss over it? We’ve assigned values for accuracy. Zero is squared up. A negative value is assigned when a hitter misses under the ball and a positive value is assigned to the swing when a hitter misses over the ball. In relation to velocity, pitch type, pitch movement, and location this data can tell you not only what a hitter should be swinging at/taking, it’s also helpful to compare to bat sensor data on attack angle, and more.

•Timing—was the hitter on time with their body? What about their barrel? We track this for two reasons. First, if a hitter’s body timing is off, they likey will not be very good hitters—especially if they are consistently late. Second, if they are the rare type that is not on time with their body (usually early) but are consistently on time with their barrel, the data point shows that the hitter has adjustability.  

•Situation—count, outs, runners on base, score, inning? Situations dictate a lot when it comes to in-game data. Are your hitters putting too much pressure on themselves in RBI situations? Is their two-strike approach one that is helping them make less outs with two strikes? Are they being aggressive enough in the middle of the plate with less than two strikes? Tracking pitching location and pitch type in regard to the situation completes the in-game story that we, as coaches, need to build a plan during practice for each hitter.

Coaches have been tracking a lot of things for a lot of years from their corner of the dugout (or having someone else do it in-game from the stands). But until recent history, we have not had the capability to track pitch type, location, and result in a way that provided us with quick feedback for our hitters. By tracking the data points listed above in this blog post, it will help you as a hitting coach, put the pieces together for each of your hitters on why they are making outs—and in turn, build programming for the them in the cage and during on-field hitting—that will help them make less outs on gameday.