Hitting vs Pitching: which is more important to win?

[lhowser]

The scenario does not say "great" but above average pitching. Great pitching would win but in this scenario the above average hitting beats the above average pitching and even if it doesn't, it's a lot more fun to coach.

 

[SBmom8992]

For 10U or for a 12U rec league I can believe this. DD #3 usually pitches about 2 innings for 12U rec leagues, and averages about 5 K per outing. She's gotten as many as 8 K in a 2 inning outing. Dropped third strikes and all that.

At the TB level, much harder to get the Ks against girls who really know how to hit. I've seen DD throw pitches that would be strikeouts in rec ball that were in-the-park HRs when top notch batters were at the plate.

DD is playing TB and was placed on the B level fall team (no tryouts and first time playing TB since moving from rec to TB this fall). She's had similar success against A level teams in fall tourneys. We are hoping for her to be placed on the A Spring team once tryouts are completed to see how she can hold up against better hitters.

 

[BobInMadison]

There was an interesting HS playoff game in these parts a few years ago...

A freshman pitcher shut out the other team, and hit a solo HR to win 1-0. That team went to the state finals, with pretty much no hitting, just a one-girl team. That pitcher is now a freshman at Drake. (Rubber Biscuit can tell you a lot more about that particular pitcher)

 

[Lsjames]

I have changed my coaching philosophy this year because of this question. I found that my team was losing a lot of 4-2 and 5-4 ball games. Heres the conclusion i came to.
Who wins the game? The team with the most runs scored, right? You can't score runs by pitching. I would say that superior hitting usually wins more often. I now practice hitting 50-70% of practice. We won our first tourney of the year last week.
I understand that good pitching could prevent others from scoring, but i have found that really good hitters can hit faster pitchers better anyways.
Pitching will win as long as you don't make mistakes on defense. It requires you to be perfect. But you can hit well, allow the other team to score a few, and still win.
So, i would vote for superior fire power over pitching. Easy to say when you have two pitchers in 10u who throw 50+.

 

[canyonjoe]

Average pitching with great hitting can win a lot of games.

Great pitching with average hitting can win more

Great pitching with below average hitting will help you lose a lot of close games.

But below average pitching will kill you all the time. Unless you just have unreal hitting, you will eventually
get shut down by some good pitching enough to lose. Bad pitching tends to make bad hitters much better.

 

[corlay]

Pitching will win as long as you don't make mistakes on defense. It requires you to be perfect. But you can hit well, allow the other team to score a few, and still win.

This has been my experience in 12U Travel, over the past year.

Good pitching and average defense can keep you from being mercied by a good hitting team,
but if you can't hit the ball yourself, prepare to lose a lot of 0-1, 0-2, 0-3, etc. games...

 

[Classof2020]

The best teams in our area, the ones that win the tournaments are the ones with the ace pitchers. Of the two teams that were at the top of all the 12U ASA tournaments in our state both were almost all first year players that were not impressive in warm up in the slightest, but they hardly ever had to field because they both had GREAT second year pitchers one about 5' 10" - and they could shut all the other teams down. Then their top couple hitters would score one or two and that was it.

In fact when I think about the top 4 they were the ones with the super dominant pitchers.

 

[SoAZDad]

I'm agreeing with a lot of the above scenarios, but most of them are redefining the parameters of the OP, e.g., GREAT pitching against (what I'm interpreting as) below average hitting ( = one or two hits in the game). The OP did not lay down that scenario. In any case, again, I agree that great pitching will win games. I agree that GREAT hitting will win games, too.

EDIT: I apologize, now I see that many opinions are coming from the adjective used in the poll (= "great"), different from the descriptor used in the OP (= above, at, or below average). My bad.

 

[gophert]

At the 12U level, I have noticed that the better hitting teams seem to do better. Watched an "A" level team here in Middle TN mop up another "A" level team with a dominate 60 mph pitcher with good hitting. Their pitcher was just average. My vote goes to hitting.

 

[Rocketech1]

A year ago, DDs 10u team was in the semifinal game at Nationals playing against the best pitcher in the tournament. She threw 55+ and was very accurate. The first inning she was untouchable, 3up, 3down. The 2nd inning we start putting the ball in play and the defense starts making errors including the pitcher, we score a few runs. By the third inning, the same thing happens, a few hits some errors and we score a couple more runs and the pitcher is pulled. We ended up winning the game 9-4 to get to the championship. We had good but not great hitting and our pitchers were above average but no flamethrowers. So in general, I think great pitching will beat great hitting teams but that is not always the case.

As a side note: had this pitcher occasionally used a changeup she would have been unstoppable from 35feet. She and the coaches mistakenly thought they could blow every team away with speed alone but that strategy back fired against our team.