As a 12U and now 14U coach responsible for positioning my F3/F5 (and having no reponsibility for positioning F1
), this subject is of great relevance to me. I don't want girls getting hurt, and I think (and sometimes worry) about exactly how close can I position my F5 in an expected sacrifice bunt situation.... 25'? 30'? 35'? 40'? I am mostly concerned about the batter who shows bunt, then hits away. I don't even like thinking about that possibility, but it happens almost once per game.
So, I've taken a few minutes to calculate the chances of a hard hit ball actually hitting the head of a fielder.
First, the chances of a struck ball (fair or foul) being in the HORIZONTAL (left to right) zone of a players head (that means the ball is on a line to their head, but could be on the ground, in the air, etc. is 1 in 125. I get this by first finding the # of feet in the 40' circle around the batter, then figuring how may ball widths that is, and then understanding a fielders head is about 2 ball widths wide.
Second, the chances of a struck ball (fair or foul) being in the VERTICAL (high to low) zone of a players head (that means the ball is about 5' off the ground, but will be left or right of their head most of the time) is about 1 in 167.
The chances that a ball is HIT on a line to actually HIT the pitchers head (could be a soft hit or a hard hit) then is 1 in (125*167), or about 1 in 20,000.
If we're concerned with balls hit very hard only, let's call that one in three, that leaves us 1 in 60,000 ball contacts that are HARD at a fielder's head.
Let's say a batter makes contact with a ball (foul ball or put in play) on average 3 times each at bat. So each batter has a 1 in 20,000 chance of hitting a ball HARD on a line toward the pitcher's face.
So you see, it's no different from the odds of winning a lotto. THERE WILL BE A WINNER, or in this case, a LOSER who gets a ball hit very HARD straight into their face, and then it is only a question of whether the glove gets up to deflect or catch the hard hit ball.
So, 1 in 20,000 batters will hit a ball very hard right into a pitchers face. If you accept that 10% of the time, that pitcher will fail to get a glove on the ball, then if follows that 1 in 200,000 batters will actually hit a pitcher's face with a hard driven ball.
Most #1 pitchers will face under 2,000 batters in their careers in live game conditions. That's why it is extremely uncommon for a pitcher to be sent away in an ambulance. But these statistics say that 1 in 100 pitchers will eventually get hit in the face with a hard driven ball and will likely get rushed to the hospital with broken bones in the face.
That also means 99 in 100 pitchers will end their careers never having been hit directly in the face by a hard driven ball.
Every parent must simply decide whether a 99% chance of an injury free face is good enough odds, or whether the 1% chance of the ambulance ride is unacceptable.
Of course the stats for F5s is very different, because they are only exposed the way a pitcher is on a sacrifice bunt situation in which the batter shows bunt, but then hits away. That reduces the chances of an F5 being hit in the face by at least 90%, so lets call in 1 in 1000 F5s will get hit in the face by a hard driven ball. Am I comfortable asking F5 to play 30' from the batter in a bunt situation? With 999 out of 1000 F5s ending their career face injury free? It's that 1 in 1000 that always gives me pause....
So, these odds are for every coach and parent to wrestle with. and as players become 18, for them to wrestle with as well.
