Are pitches that are put into play counted as strikes or balls?

Question

I have often seen a pitcher's pitch count displayed on the screen with it broken up into strikes, balls and total pitches. So something like

Strikes : 25
Balls : 15
Total : 40

My question is, are pitches that are put into play counted as strikes or balls (ie fouls balls, pop-ups, base hits, etc)? I am assuming they are counted towards the total... so they would have to be quantified as a strike or ball.

Answer 1

All balls in play are counted as strikes.

This is a basic principle of pitching. If the batter swings at the pitch, it's a strike.

This gives us 2 categories of pitches that are counted as strikes:

• balls in the strike zone that are not swung at
• balls that are swung at

There is only one category of pitches categorized as balls:

• balls that are not swung on and are not in the strike zone.