The Tigers’ trio, by Matt Vierling, Colt Keith and Zach McKinstry, brings the total of sacrifice flies given up by the Twins to 32 this season, more than every American League team except the A’s, who have given up 34. It’s a recent trend — half of them have come in June, with 12 in the past nine days alone.
Obviously, the best way to prevent sacrifice flies is to keep runners from reaching third base with fewer than two outs. But once that happens, is there anything pitchers can do to prevent them?
It’s tricky, Baldelli said, because in those situations, “pitchers want to attack and get a punch-out [strikeout].” And for most pitchers, that usually means throwing pitches high in the strike zone — the sort that hitters most easily lift into the air.
“You know that almost any contact, there’s a decent chance that the run is going to score. So you try to get ahead, get a swing-and-miss ahead of anything else,” Baldelli said. “Elevating fastballs is going to be one way you’re going to get into those good counts, but you leave yourself open. I haven’t focused on the fact that we’ve given up a bunch of sac flies, but that’s obviously part of it.”
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