What do fouls count as in baseball

A foul ball is an intermediate result between a "strike" a total miss and a "fair ball" one that goes into play. Logically, a foul ball should be scored in an intermediate fashion between a strike and a fair ball as well. One way of doing this is to count "half" strikes for a foul ball. That would cause a certain amount of game confusion keeping track of these "half" strikes. Another way of achieving a comparable, and equitable, result is to award the first two foul balls in an at bat as strikes to the pitcher, and the remaining ones as "free" shots to the batter.

In practice, it would mean that about half the foul balls are counted as strikes, and about half after the second one are not. In theory, it means the that "burden of proof" is on the hitter to put the ball in play on the first two fouls, but for the third strike, the "burden of proof" is on the pitcher to get a "full" not a foul, or "half" strike. It's not unfair for the pitcher to have foul balls recorded as strikes, while the batter is not put out. All contacted balls plus called strikes are strikes for the pitcher.

That includes "fair balls" that become hits, or outs, as well as foul balls, whether or not they become "strikes" for the batter. The reason this rule exists is because in the early days of baseball, players would intentionally bunt foul to wear the opposing pitcher down.

King Kelly was notorious for bunting foul in order to wear down a pitcher and eventually get balls leading to a walk. Back in those days, foul balls were not strikes. The rules of baseball had to be changed because of this strategy. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top.

The coach asserts that the ball was in foul territory and his fielder touched the ball in foul territory, therefore the ball should be a dead ball. In the judgment of the home plate umpire at the time of the call , the fielder made contact with the ball in flight while the ball was in fair territory, therefore the play stands as originally ruled. The American League did not adopt the foul strike league immediately, and the rules difference probably contributed to higher offense in the AL than NL in and The adoption of the foul strike rule has been suggested as a possible contributor to decreased scoring in the Deadball Era.

Question, Comment, Feedback, or Correction? Are you a Stathead, too? Subscribe to our Free Newsletter. This Week in Sports Reference Find out when we add a feature or make a change. Do you have a sports website? Or write about sports? So the rules of baseball do not penalize a batter with a strikeout when they are attempting to put the ball in play and the batted ball lands in foul territory.

Another way a batter can hit a ball foul is when they are bunting the ball. During the first two strikes of any at-bat , baseball rules treat all foul balls the same — which is that the foul ball results in a strike being awarded to the batter. The difference in rules comes during the last strike of the at-bat. When a batter has two strikes and they lay down a bunt, the ball must go fair. If a bunted ball goes foul while the batter has two strikes, the ruling is the ball is dead and the batter has struck out.

In the very early days of baseball, batters were actually allowed to continuously foul off balls with a bunt. This was a strategy that was used to make pitchers throw a lot of pitches because batters were able to more easily foul off pitches.

In baseball, a foul ball is sometimes a strike, sometimes a dead ball, and sometimes a strikeout. Because of the various ways a batter can get a strike called on them, lots of people begin to wonder about how many fouls equal a strike.