TRAINING ROOM
8
HIGH-SCORING BASEBALL
Establishing Fundamental
Offensive Goals
by
Todd Guilliams
O
ffense is more than a player’s batting average or
a team’s ability to hit the long ball. It’s all about
run production. It’s a player’s ability to achieve a
high-quality at-bat and a team’s ability to create a
big inning. High-Scoring Baseball (Human Kinetics,
2013), the most comprehensive resource available
about the offensive side of the ball, will change the
way you see and play the game. Written by renowned Valdosta State
University hitting coach Todd Guilliams—and applicable to all levels of
play—it provides expert advice on the four offensive team goals and the
six ways to create offensive pressure that gives every team a chance to
be high scorers.
In this exclusive excerpt from Chapter Three of High-Scoring Baseball,
“Setting Realistic Goals,” Guilliams shows how establishing goals is
important, “not only because they provide direction for the offense but
also because they help players adjust their focus from playing against
an opponent to playing against the game.”
Measuring goals that affect run scoring will reveal whether you win or
lose the game. After countless hours of research we have established
four offensive goals. These building blocks of a high-scoring baseball
team are (1) score seven runs, (2) produce one big inning, (3) accumulate nine freebies, and (4) tally 50% quality at-bats.
Research with our teams over the past two decades has shown that
achieving one of these goals on offense and achieving one of our four
goals on defense has resulted in victory in 90% of our games. But when
we get shut out, achieving zero goals on either the offensive or the defensive side of the ledger, our winning percentage slips under 50%.
Zero Sum
The game of baseball has been called a zero-sum
game. Scoring runs is not enough; you also have to
prevent runs from scoring. The bottom line is that teams
can’t win 90% of their games on offense alone. With
that in mind, we also have four defensive goals that are
opposites of the offensive goals. We mention this briefly
to explain that defense is an important component to a
successful team, although we will not cover it in detail
in this book. Those defensive goals are (1) allow four
or fewer runs, (2) surrender four or fewer freebies, (3)
throw 150 or fewer pitches, and (4) prevent the big inning in a nine-inning game.
Displaying your game goals in your locker room is a
useful approach. Players need to understand that these
goals are the building blocks of a high-scoring baseball
team. They provide direction before the game and serve
as the criteria on which the offense will be evaluated
after each game as the season moves along.
Seven Runs
In a nine-inning ballgame, our goal is to score seven
runs. As previously stated, achieving the goal of seven
runs has historically resulted in our ballclub winning 93%
of our games. Seven runs is the goal that worked for
These building blocks of a high-scoring baseball team are
(1) score seven runs, (2) produce one big inning,
(3) accumulate nine freebies, and (4) tally 50% quality at-bats.
Page 88 • www.batwars.com • www.baseballthemag.com
our team, in our situation, but when striving to set a realistic goal
for runs, each program needs to assess many factors, such as
personnel, competition, field conditions, weather, and players’
age and skill level. The bottom line is that each team must have
a benchmark that they are striving for every game.
Some may argue that seven runs is an unrealistic goal, especially in certain situations such as when your team is facing an
opponent’s staff ace. Friday night in the SEC provides evidence
to the contrary, however, showing that even at the highest levels
of the college game seven runs is a realistic goal. In 2006, en
route to winning its first Southeastern Conference regular-season
title in over 100 years, the University of Kentucky baseball team
averaged well over seven runs per game on Friday nights versus
SEC pitching. Typically, on a Friday night when two SEC teams
face each other, both teams feature their staff ace in hopes of
winning the first game of a three-game series. Most baseball
observers would likely presume that a game featuring the teams’
top pitchers would be a low-scoring affair, but the Kentucky
Wildcats proved that theory wrong by scoring an average of nine
runs in their Friday night matchups. The SEC average that year
on Friday nights was 5.8.
One Big Inning
The next building block in our high-scoring goal pyramid, after
scoring seven runs, is the goal of producing one big inning in a
nine-inning ballgame. The single most significant contributor to
the ability of an offense to score seven runs is producing one
big inning in a game. Scoring one run every inning for the entire
contest is extremely difficult, and we have already seen in Major
League Baseball that most of the time, the winning team scores
more runs in a single inning than the losing team does in the
entire game. Playing for the big inning in the first two-thirds of the
game makes sense for this reason. For every big inning surrendered while on defense, a team must produce two big innings to
regain the advantage. In simpler terms, a team that accumulates
a big inning will typically win the game as long as the defense
does not yield a big inning to their opponent.
Nine Freebies
Seventy-five percent of the time, a big inning contains a free
base in the form of a walk, hit-by-pitch, error, or stolen base.
Hence, the third building block in the goal pyramid is the accumulation of freebies because they in turn feed the big inning. An
offense needs to find a way to accumulate a minimum of nine
free bases in a nine-inning ballgame. Simple math says that
teams need to average one free base per inning or that each
offensive player needs to be responsible for achieving one free
base. Free bases are critical to high-scoring baseball: Freebies
feed the big inning, and the big inning has a profound effect on
the chances of winning. Remember, the odds of getting three
consecutive hits in any one single inning are 27:1. Because the
odds do not favor the offense in terms of consecutive hits in a
single inning, accumulating at least one free base in the inning
will help produce the big inning and ultimately assist the offense
in arriving at seven runs.
While the offense is trying to accumulate nine freebies, when
on defense the same team must work to yield no more than four
freebies to their opponent. These goals are challenging on both
sides of the ball, and the offensive and defensive components
cannot work independently of one another. Teams
should strive to have their offense on the positive side
of the freebie war by a margin of five. Some may ask,
“Why make an allowance for the defense to yield four
free bases?” It comes back to establishing realistic
goals. For example, in MLB the average pitching staff
allows just over three bases on balls per game and the
defense makes less than one error per game. Holding
opponents to four free bases per game in all four categories is challenging. Freebies are similar to turnovers
in football: Whoever collects the most generally wins
the game.
Fifty Percent Quality At-Bats
For the past 16 years we have kept track of our team’s
ability to accumulate quality at-bats. We have found
that accumulating 50% quality at-bats (QABs) is a realistic goal and a critical step necessary for the offense
to score seven runs per game. A typical game in which
the offense is in position to score seven runs would
consist of approximately 40 plate appearances. For the
offensive team to hit the benchmark of 50% QABs, they
would need to have 20 quality at-bats. For example,
each individual player, if he has four at-bats during the
game, would have to achieve quality at-bats in two of
his four plate appearances. Although all QABs help
produce runs, not all of them produce immediate runs,
like a home run does. Therefore, an offense could have
four QABs in an inning and not record a run. Every
spectator has seen a potential rally end when a batter
uses a poor approach and hits into an inning-ending
double play. Although accumulating quality at-bats is
important, equally important is stringing them together,
particularly five in a row, because a sequence of that
length can lead to a big inning.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Todd Guilliams joined the staff of the Valdosta State University baseball team in 2008 and helped orchestrate one of
the top 10 turnarounds in the country in Division II, taking the
Blazers to a 36-18-1 record in 2008 and following up with a
43-21 mark in 2009 and a 43-17 record in 2010. As the team’s
hitting and catching coach, Guilliams has put together one of
the most prolific offenses in Valdosta State history, breaking the school record for batting average in 2010 with a .351
mark. In 2009 the squad led the nation and set a Valdosta
State record with 113 home runs, ranking fourth in NCAA Division II history while finishing eighth nationally for the season
with 578 runs scored.
High-Scoring Baseball is now available in bookstores everywhere, as
well as online at www.HumanKinetics.com. It is also available as an
enhanced e-book edition with video,
compatible with the iPad, iPhone,
iPod Touch, NOOK Color, and
NOOK Tablet.
Baseball The Magazine
Issue 4 • 2013
Page 89