Situational Analysis of Offensive Strategies in Baseball: A Comparative Study on Batting Performance Across 0–5 Pitch Counts

The ball–strike count resets at each plate appearance, continuously shifting strategic advantage between pitcher and batter. Prior research has focused on total count effects, leaving a gap regarding whether different sequential orders of balls and strikes within equivalent count situations produce meaningful performance differences. Purpose: This study investigated whether ball–strike progression sequences significantly affect collegiate batting performance. Methods: T Drawing on 9454 plate appearances from 120 University Baseball League games, one-way ANOVA with Bonferroni post hoc comparisons assessed sequential order effects across AVG, OBP, SLG, and OPS. Results: The results indicate that sequential order produced statistically significant differences across all four indicators at the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th pitch situations (ps < 0.05), while no significant differences emerged at the 1st pitch or full count. Practical Implications: These findings demonstrate that the path through which a count develops systematically influences batting performance, with sequence effects significant at the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th pitch situations but absent at the initial pitch and full count—consistent with the strategic constraints inherent to these boundary situations. Future research should incorporate pitch type, pitch location, and game-context variables to further clarify the dynamic interaction between pitchers and batters.