They say that good pitching stops good hitting. But what makes a good pitcher besides how hard he throws. If you ask Tom Glavin, who doesn't throw hard enough to knock a tin can off of a shaky bar stool, he'll tell you that it's all in the approach. And a lot of that has to do with knowing your hitter.

In a situation where there is nobody on base, the pitcher deals with each batter one on one with very little regard to anything else, with some exceptions which we'll get to later. In a normal situation the pitcher has to go over the batter's strengths and weaknesses, which he will get from the team scouting reports that they go over before the game. There is no such thing as the perfect hitter. Everyone has at least one weakness. It is the pitcher's job to try to exploit that weakness.

For example and let's make this a simple one, let's say a batter is a dead fastball hitter. In other words it is very difficult to get him out by throwing a fastball by him. However, he has a lot of trouble with a curveball. In this case, the pitcher will use mostly his curveball to throw strikes and when he does throw a fastball he will only throw it to "show" the batter the pitch, meaning that he will throw it out of the strike zone so the batter can't hit it.

In another example, let's say a batter is a dead pull hitter. When pitching to someone like this a pitcher can try two approaches. One of them involves throwing pitches on the outside of the plate. This way, if the batter tries to pull the pitch he's only going to manage to hit the ball to the shortstop all day long. He'll almost never get a hit because he's not going with the pitch the other way. Another approach is to jam the batter or throw the ball inside. If the batter pulls these pitches he's only going to end up hitting them foul.

Let's say a batter is a great low ball hitter, regardless of whether the pitch is a slow curve, split finger or even hard fastball. Against these type of hitters the pitcher will want to keep the ball up, which is usually not a good thing. In this case, it probably is. Most likely low ball hitters have an uppercut swing to get the ball into the air, like Jeremy Burnitz. If you throw these batter balls up in the strike zone, most likely they will swing under the ball and either pop it up or swing and miss it completely.

These are just a few of the many different situations and batters that a pitcher is going to have to deal with not only day to day but batter to batter. It is a constant psychological war against the opposing hitter. The pitchers who are able to adjust to this war of nerves are the ones who go on to have hall of fame careers.

Michael Russell

Your Independent guide to Baseball