Tyler Pettorini squares up one his two base hits in Sunday’s win over Oklahoma in the Las Vegas Classic. (Press Pros Feature Photos)
The junior from Wooster with that wonderful baseball pedigree led the Buckeyes in hitting in 2023, and hasn’t missed a beat through the first ten games of the season. People have always wondered why good hitters hit. Here’s the answer.
Back in the day, when people still considered Ted Williams the greatest hitter who ever lived, someone once asked Williams why hitting a baseball seemed to come so naturally to him.
Williams, who never wavered on the subject of hitting, said without hesitation, “Recognition and reflex…and practice, practice, practice.”
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Today, we don’t think of Ted Williams with the same respect as they did when he was the last man to hit .400 for a season (.406 in 1941)…hit .344 for his career…and hit 521 home runs over 19 seasons while playing an average of 120 games a year.
Publisher/editor Sonny Fulks writes Big Ten sports and Buckeyes baseball for Press Pros.
But Ohio State’s Tyler Pettorini, who may never have heard of Williams, is an example of what Williams preached well into his 80s and up until his death in 2002.
Williams loved to hit.
Pettorini loves to hit.
Williams stressed practice, practice, and practice some more.
Pettorini would probably hit until his hands bleed.
In the throes of last year’s disappointing baseball season, Pettorini led the Buckeyes in hitting with a .315 average, despite having 59 fewer plate appearances than freshman Henry Kaczmar, who was second at .293. This spring he’s off to another fast start, hitting .342 after two weeks and ten games, and does it in a manner by which he expects something good to happen every time he goes to the plate.
When the sophomore from Wooster plays the hits seem to come in bunches, and for why? His calmness and ability to command the moment? No, he’s just a natural hitter who can’t get enough of a good thing. Like Ted Williams.
“I try not to have bad thoughts when I go to the plate,” says Pettorini, who’s too young to know about Williams’ legacy, but has read some of his thoughts on hitting.
Ironic. Williams once told Frank Howard, while managing the former Buckeye with the Washington Senators, “Hitting is 50% above the shoulders. If you think you’re going to hit, you will. If you think you’re going to fail, you’ll fail.”
And has Pettorini ever gone to the plate thinking negatively?
“I’ve learned through all the experience, try to be in a good mood when I’m at the plate. Things seem to work out better.” – Tyler Pettorini
“It’s happened before, but I try my best not to,” he admitted recently. “Things don’t usually work out. I’ve learned through all the experience, try to be in a good mood when I’m at the plate. Things seem to work out better. But there are times when it’s just not my day, and then you have to stay positive.”
Buckeye coach Bill Mosiello, who preaches his own version of hitting through positive thoughts, is one of Pettorini’s biggest supporters. Mosiello, by his own admission, can be as hard on players, but says: “Tyler really worked in the off-season to make himself a more complete ballplayer, and I never thought that I would say that. But I knew he could hit.”
Nearly every great hitter you can name is identified by two things – hand-eye coordination and confidence. You just see it, and you hit it. But at Mosiello’s insistence during the past off-season Pettorini went out to summer baseball to become a more selective hitter. Swing at better strikes and you’ll have better results. The returns in 2024 bear proof .
Through ten games he’s up 30 points, he has an equal number of strikeouts to walks, compared to 3 to 1 strikeouts to walks in 2023, and he showed particular patience during a key at bat recently when he took a pair of tough fastballs for strikes before lining a third one to left field for a 300-foot insurance run against Southern Cal.
In addition, his glove work over the fall and winter have earned him an opportunity to be an everyday player. Every facet of his game is improved, and he has that confidence…that if there’s a tough at bat to be taken, Pettorini’s capable of doing it.
It was his late double that drove in a pair of runs in the championship game against Oklahoma in last spring’s Frisco Classic.
Clutch? He hit .349 in Big Ten play last year with a .990 OPS (on base, plus slugging), the club leader in both categories. And had four hits, driving in four runs in an April 16 series finale win over league champion Maryland.
“In the past I would probably swing at more pitches early [in the count],” he admits. “Now I’m more selective because that’s what he (Mosiello) said was my biggest priority last summer. I worked on it.”
Williams: “If you get fooled by a pitch with less than two strikes, take it..”
Ironic, actually, that while he’s not all that knowledgeable about Williams, he’s grown up a child of baseball with a family that includes an Ohio State legacy (his uncle Terry), and his grandfather (Tim), who won 1,243 games as coach of Wooster College, and his father, Tim, Jr., who played at Wooster.
And yes, there are those who now question that Ted Williams was the best hitter who ever lived – that someone like Andre Dawson would have been a better modern player.
A hall of famer, sure enough (inducted in 2010), Dawson played for 21 years in the majors and hit .279 – never came close to hitting .400 – with a hundred less home runs that Williams.
He was a great player!
But unlike Williams, if he ever talked about hitting…no one remembers.
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This Coming Weekend Notes:
The Buckeyes leave Thursday with their 6-4 record for a final Western trip to play four games against Cal Poly at San Luis Obispo, California, followed by a single game against Cal State Fullerton on March 13, in Fullerton, California.
Cal Poly is currently 3-7, having lost five of their last six, including back-to-back-to-back shutout losses to the University of Texas…no runs in 27 innings! This past weekend they dropped two of three to the University of Utah.
Cal State Fullerton is 4-6, having last three straight games this past weekend in Greenville, North Carolina, including an 11-3 decision to Purdue on Sunday. You may have forgotten, but Fullerton owns four NCAA College World Series titles, the most recent in 2004.
Stats-wise, through ten games the Buckeyes are hitting .263 as a team, led by Mitchell Okuley at .432 and Pettorini at .342, while opponents are hitting .287 against Buckeye pitching. The biggest turnaround through ten games, however, can be found in team ERA. Through ten games in 2023 they were sitting at 9.84 as a staff. Thus far in 2024 that number has shrunk to 5.55. Opponents’ ERA against Buckeye hitting is 5.48. Oklahoma, as a team, was hitting .331 prior to Sunday’s game. But the numbers don’t lie, when you pitch well you’re competitive, nonetheless.
The Buckeyes’ three principal starters thus far – Beidelschies, Purcell, and Bruni – all have sub-4.00 earned run averages. Beidelschies is 3.18, Purcell is at 3.09, and Bruni is at 3.75.
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