Great post. We can disagree. Just to spin it around, pitchers can work counts, too. Best example again being Greg Maddux. The story goes that he would work batters across entire seasons -- throwing pitches to certain batters in games early in the year, so that he could plant expectations in their minds that could be exploited later in the year if necessary. Sounds far fetched, but hey it's Maddux, no reason to disbelieve it. Lots of good pitchers work counts and adjust on the fly like you do as a batter. I come at it from the pitcher point of view. I blogged about Ervin Santana working counts once after one of his complete games last spring. Then Santana had Gregorious struck out in the Wild Card game. Sure, it looked like he missed his spot, as Castro was set up "outer half" and then stabbed back in at the pitch rather than receiving it properly, which did not help. #framing But maybe at the last moment Santana's instinct told him "no, not outer half" on that pitch, and so he changed location during his delivery. Not likely, but not impossible. It shouldn't be the umpire's job to think "Castro was over there, Gregorius isn't biting, so this pitch that's still only half way to the plate should be called a ball." The umpire's thinking should be "did this pitch pass through the strike zone?" That's all. Leave the cat and mouse games to the pitchers and hitters.