A game of opportunity

Watching the Mariners so closely this season has given me a fresh perspective on a game I've loved since childhood.  I think I'm a fairly knowledgeable fan, even acquainted with the fundamentals of analytics, but lately I've started to look at the game in a different way.

Witnessing another bullpen failure in the top of the ninth inning of last night's loss to the Rays, seeing a bases-loaded walk give Tampa the lead in a tight 2-2, suffering through 8 runners left on base and a woeful 2 for 12 hitting with runners in scoring position prompts these thoughts.

As I've written before, this season has sensitized me to the damage walks can do.  I'm going further today, from a pitching perspective I've come to hate balls.  Balls are nothing but trouble and except in very extreme circumstances, a ball is a problem on any time unless it is tempting waste pitch in a 0-2 or 1-2 count.

Here's what I've come to realize.  At its most basic level, baseball is a game of opportunities.  Before the contest starts, a team is given 27 chances, three per inning, to win the game.  And any at-bat provides, at minimum three more opportunities (strikes).  In that sense, any given inning is, fundamentally, like a carnival game where you are handed three balls and given a chance to knock over a small pyramid of milk bottles.  Each throw is an opportunity. You get three and that's it.

In baseball the game boils down, offensively, to adding opportunities to the three given chances to swing, defensively, to taking away the batter's opportunities.  A pitcher should always avoid giving his opponent an additional opportunity... stop them from getting another at bat or swing.  A ball to any batter or a walk, hit, error or batsman hit gives an additional opportunity beyond the allotted three strikes and outs.  As I see it, the whole idea of any pitch is to eliminate offensive opportunities (likewise, getting a hit, taking a walk, even fouling off a pitch is the offense's way of adding opportunities).

Applying this logic I understand better why I hate balls and their legacy, walks.  Balls and walks literally give away the game, handing over to an  opponent just that many more opportunities to get hits that guarantee the scoring of runs that will beat you.

Pitchers throw balls for two reasons, either technical incompetence or trying to fool the batter into swinging at bad pitches, known in the game as being "cute."  If walking batters and falling behind in the count is a matter of competence, a pitcher shouldn't be in the bigs.  If it's a matter of being cute I think a pitcher might want to weigh carefully the risks in giving batters more opportunities.