Baseball

Baseball – Baseball (from English base and ball) is a collective bat ball game. There are 2 teams facing each other in the game, with 9 players each. The aim of the game is to get more runs than the rival team. If the batsman goes around all four bases without being knocked out, his team gets a run. Baseball is popular mainly in America, especially in the Caribbean (Cuba, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Panama, Colombia, Nicaragua and Mexico). It is a national sport in the USA. Baseball is hugely popular in East Asia, especially in Japan, the Republic of Korea and Taiwan. It is also popular in Australia or South Africa. In June 2007, the league was formed in Israel.

MLB (Major League Baseball) – Is an America’s top fully professional baseball league. It is divided into two competitions, which are the National League and the American League. The basic part of the competition is played from April to September, that is 6 months. Each of the 30 teams will play 162 matches divided into individual series of two or more matches against one team. By default, it is not the case that teams play only one match against each other. Teams are ranked in the table by percentage of winnings.

Rules of MLB: http://m.mlb.com/glossary/rules

Listed pitchers – A baseball bet conditional on the named pitchers starting the game, otherwise void.

Run line – The Spread/Handicap applied specifically to baseball and relating to the number of runs in the game.

Batter – Player in attack, batting the ball.

Batter – runner – Attacking player, who sucesfully hit the ball and stay at one of next bases (no on home base).

Fielder – Every player in defense.

Pitcher – The most important person fielder designated to pitching balls to batter.

Starting pitcher – Pitcher, who begin match. Usually throws 5 – 7 innings.

Reliever – They start after the starting pitcher, they usually throws 1-3 shifts innings.

Closer – Pitcher specialist. He enters the ninth inning when the team is in a tight lead. His task is to close the match.

Catcher – Fielder occupying the space behind home base and catches the ball from the pitcher. This eliminates the batter a strikes him out.

Outfielder – Defender in out of the field.

Infielder – Defender inside the field.

Base (home plate, first, second, third) – Field points, whic are arranged in a square at a distance of 90 feetbody

Home run – Situation, when the batter hit the ball across the field (a distance of at least 325 ft). According to the number of occupied bases is further divided into solo, 2run, 3run or grand slam.

Grand slam – Situation when the home run is reached and all 3 bases are loaded. The team scores 4 runs with this home run.

Run – Point in baseball.

Walk – 4 bad pitches from the pitcher. Batter goes to first base.

Pitch – In total, there are about 15 different types of pitch. Throws vary in speed and flight trajectory. The most common types of pitch are fastball or curveball.

ERA (Earned Run Average) – It expresses how many runs the pitcher will allowe the opponent in 9 innings. To simplify, we can say that the best pitchers are able to get under 3.00 ERA in the season, very good number is between 3.00 and 4.00, the average from 4.00 to 5.00. An ERA just above 5.00 is still acceptable, but a long-term ERA of around 6.00 and above already indicates poor performance.

WHIP (walks and hits per inning pitched) – Pitcher statistic. Shows, how much batters is released to the bases per one inning (4 bad throws or successful stroke by batter). The best pitchers have a WHIP under 1.00

Strike zone – This is the area, that the pitchers ball must go through, to allow the batter to hit. The aim of the pitcher is of course not to allow hit from batter, but his pitch must pass through this zone to be recognized as good. The distance between the pitcher and the batter is 60.6 feet.

Strike – Successful pitch from the pitcher.

Strikeout (shortened as “K”) – Is the sum of 3 good pitches against batter (strikes), which outs of the batter. The best pitchers usually have 1 strikeout per inning.

AVG, SLG – There are batters statistics. Batting average (AVG) and slugging percentage (SLG). The first says with what percentage of success the batter can record a successful hit. The second takes into account the quality and strength of the hit. A decent number is around 0.300.

Baseball stats – Baseball is a game of statistics. Statistics in baseball is a huge amount. You can find out more here: http://www.espn.com/mlb/statistics

Other news