Say your team is facing a club with strong starting pitching but a wretched bullpen. Say that bullpen was often used (maybe in extra inning games) in that team's previous series. So, they are bad and tired.
Would it make sense to open the series taking pitches for the sake of taking pitches with the goal of knocking the starter out in the fifth or sixth inning? Then you get to three or four innings to be aggressive against the bullpen. Maybe it's not a wise strategy for a single game, but could it be one for a series? "Let's take a ton of pitches tonight, get the starter out of the game and get to their overworked bullpen. Tomorrow and Sunday they'll have nothing in the pen that can protect a lead." It could make even more sense if you did this against a hated division rival that was scheduled to face a non-threatening out-of-division doormat in their next series. Not only could you take a ton of pitches to face a battered bullpen tonight, tomorrow, and Sunday, you could also take a ton of pitches with the goal of softening the hated division rival for the non-threatening doormat to increase the chances the rival would lose that series.
... In a pregame interview, Brady Clark just talked about how the whole Brewer lineup goes to the plate with the goal of "working the count," "seeing pitches," and "getting the opposing pitcher to throw as many pitches as he can."
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