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| Fair Ball |
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A batted ball which lands in fair territory. If a ball lands in the infield between home and first base, or between home and third base, and bounces out-of-bounds it is a foul ball. If a fly ball lands on or beyond first or third base and then rolls out-of-bounds, it is a fair ball. Foul lines and poles are in fair territory.
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| Fair Territory |
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Part of the playing field within, and including the first base and third base lines, from home base to the bottom of the playing field fence and perpendicular upwards. All foul lines are in the fair territory.
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| Fan Mail |
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At first, they began to trickle in but then there was no stopping them, as literally hundreds of e-mails, faxes and chatboard posts came flooding through the information highway in praise of the Notre Dame baseball team and the way it competed at the 2000 NCAA Starkville Regional. A large portion of the comments came from the rabid Bulldogs fans, who formally had inducted the names of Notre Dame players such as Stanley, Billmaier, Tamayo, Felker, Nussbaum, Porzel and Corbin into the storied history of Dudy-Noble Field. A common thread throughout all the e-mails originating from Mississippi was a desire for the Irish to make a return visit ... and it didn't take long to work out those logistics, as Notre Dame will open its 2001 season at Mississippi State's National Bank of Commerce Classic, on Feb. 17-18.
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| Farm Club/Team |
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A minor-league team subsidized by or linked to a parent club in the major leagues.
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| Fast Ball |
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A straight pitch thrown by the pitcher as hard as possible.
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| Fast-a |
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Otherwise known as "Advanced A," these A-level minor leagues are the California League, Carolina League and Florida Stat League.
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| Favorite Toy |
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The Favorite Toy is a method that is used to estimate a player's chance of getting to a specific goal in the following example, we'll say 3,000 hits. Four things are considered: 1) Need Hits - the number of hits needed to reach the goal. (This, of course, could also be "Need Home Runs" or "Need Doubles" - Whatever.) 2) Years Remaining. The number of years remaining to meet the goal is estimated by the formula 24- .6(age). This formula assigns a 20-year-old player 12.0 remaining seasons, a 25-year-old player 9.0 remaining seasons, a 30-year-old player 6.0 remaining seasons, a 35-year-old player 3.0 remaining seasons. Any player who is still playing regularly is assumed to have at least 1.5 seasons remaining, regardless of his age. 3) Established Hit Level. For 1996, the established hit level would be found by adding 1993 hits, two times 1994 hits, and three times 1995 hits, and dividing by six. However, a player cannot have an established performance level that is less than three-fourths of his most recent performance; that is, a player who had 200 hits in 1995 cannot have an established hit level below 150. 4) Projected Remaining Hits. This is found by multiplying the second number (ears remaining) by the third (established hit level). Once you get the projected remaining hits, the chance of getting to the goal is figured by (projected remaining hits) divided by (need hits), minus .5. By this method, if your "need hits" and your "projected remaining hits" are the same, your chance of reaching the goal is 50 percent. If your projected remaining hits are 20 percent more than your need hits, the chance of reaching the goal is 70 percent. Two special rules, and a note: 1) A player's chance of continuing to progress toward a goal cannot exceed .97 per year. (This rule prevents a player from figuring to have a 148 percent chance of reaching a goal.) 2) If a player's offensive winning percentage is below .500, his chance of continuing to progress toward the goal cannot exceed .75 per season. (That is, if a below-average hitter is two years away from reaching a goal, his chance of reaching that goal cannot be shown as better than nine-sixteenths, or three-fourths times three-fourths, regardless of his age.) 3) For 1994 and 1995, we used projected stats based on a full season of play..
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| Fb |
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Fly Balls Hit Against the Pitcher (excludes line drives)
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| Fielder's Choice |
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A scoring decision where a batter reaches base safely but an out is recorded at another base. The at-bat is recorded as hitless.
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| Fielder’s Choice |
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A decision made by a defensive player to get one player out in lieu of another. Generally, a player should choose to get the ‘lead’ runner unless not practical.
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| Fielding Percentage (Fld%) |
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Number of attempts that resulted in an out compared to the number of total attempts. Formula: (Putouts + Assists) / (Putouts + Assists + Errors)
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| Fielding Percentage (Fldp) |
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Number of attempts that resulted in an out compared to the number of total attempts. Formula: (Putouts + Assists) / (Putouts + Assists + Errors)
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| Fireman |
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A team's closer or late-inning relief pitcher.
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| First Batter Efficiency |
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This statistic tells you the batting average allowed by a relief pitcher to the first batter he faces.
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| First Pitch |
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Refers to the first pitch of a given at bat, and any walks listed here are intentional walks.
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| Five Hundred Wins |
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Notre Dame's Paul Mainieri reached the 500-win milestone early in the 1999 season, when the Irish posted a 14-11 win at the University of New Orleans (255 of his 587 wins have come with the Irish). The milestone held special significance for Mainieri, who played on two Sun Belt Conference championship teams during his playing career at New Orleans. FORTY-WIN SEASONS - Notre Dame has posted 12 straight seasons with 40-plus wins, including 48 wins in 1989 and '92, 46 victories in four seasons ('90, '93 '94, '00), 45 wins in '91 and 44 in '95. Notre Dame's active streak of seasons with 40-plus wins ranks fourth in Division I baseball, trailing only Florida State (23), Wichita State (23) and Clemson (15).
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| Fly Ball |
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A bill hit into high into the air. Short high hits are termed pop-fly’s. If the ball is caught it will be termed a fly-out.
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| Force Out |
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An out created when a runner is forced to advance because there is another runner behind them, although they will be thrown or tagged out. The defensive player needs only to touch the base being approached by the runner with the ball in hand to record the out.
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| Force Play |
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A defensive play where a base runner, who is forced to run because there is an advancing runner behind him, is put out by a fielder who touches the base to which he is running.
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| Force-Out |
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This is an out created by a defensive player by touching the base of an incoming base runner who has no choice but to advance to that base because there is a runner either on the base, or advancing to, the base behind the player.
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| Forkball |
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A pitch thrown by placing the ball between the first two fingers, usually resulting in a sinking ball.
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| Foul Ball |
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A ball that hits the ground to the outside (the right or left) of the foul lines before passing the 1st or 3rd base bag. Remember that batted balls often curve towards the foul lines.
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| Foul Line |
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Lines extending from home plate through 1st and 3rd base to the outfield fence and perpendicularly upwards. These lines are considered in play.
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| Foul Territory |
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Part of the playing field outside the first and third base lines extended to the fence and perpendicularly upwards.
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| Foul Tip |
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A batted ball which is deflected directly from the bat into the catcher's hands and is legally caught. A foul tip that is caught is a strike.
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| Four |
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Colloquial reference to home plate. Only used in context of game situation though, as in "Look at Four! Look at Four!" from the third base coach to a runner running full speed into third, or "Four! Four!! Four!!!" from a catcher calling for a throw with a runner going home.
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| Four-Time All-Americans |
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Notre Dame senior RHP Aaron Heilman could post the fourth All-America season of his career, which would place him among an elite group of Notre Dame student-athletes (he already is the first Irish baseball player ever to be a three-year All-American). Just 16 previous Notre Dame student-athletes have been four-year All-Americans, with four coming from team-oriented sports: men's basketball player Kevin O'Shea ('47-'50) and women's soccer players Holly Manthei ('95-'98), Jen Grubb ('96-'99) and Anne Makinen (1997-2000). Others include cross country runners Oliver Hunter ('40-'43) and Mike McWilliams ('90-'93), plus men's fencers Mike Sullivan ('76-'79), Charles Higgs-Coulthard ('84-'87), Yehuda Kovacs ('86-'89), Leszek Nowosielski ('88-'91), Jeremy Siek ('94-'97) and Luke LaValle ('96-'99) and women's fencers Molly Sullivan ('85-'88), Myriah Brown ('96-'99), Sarah Walsh ('96-'99) and Magda Krol ('97-'00).
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| Freshman Phenoms |
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Notre Dame has produced two BIG EAST rookies of the year-DH Jeff Wagner ('96) and infielder Brant Ust ('97)-while current freshman RHP Aaron Edwards has been tabbed by Baseball America as the 2001 preseason BIG EAST rookie of the year. Wagner set the Irish freshman home run record (10) only to see Ust hit 11 in '97. Ust was the first freshman middle infielder ever named first team all-BIG EAST and was a consensus Freshman All-America pick by Baseball America and Collegiate Baseball. RHP Aaron Heilman was second team all-conference, a consensus '98 Freshman All-American and one of three players named co-national freshman of the year by Collegiate Baseball. Centerfielder Steve Stanley was named second team all-BIG EAST in '99, the only freshman to earn all-BIG EAST. His classmate, catcher Paul O'Toole, became the seventh Notre Dame player to earn first-team Freshman All-America in the '90s, as one of three catchers named to the Collegiate Baseball team. Rightfielder Brian Stavisky was the only freshman position player to earn all-BIG EAST honors in 2000 (second team) before being named a Freshman All-American by Baseball America and Collegiate Baseball (his 14 home runs ranked fourth in the nation among all freshmen).
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| Full Count |
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When a batter has three balls and two strikes against him.
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| Fungo |
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A ball hit to a fielder during practice. It's usually hit by a coach using a "fungo bat," which is longer and thinner than a normal bat.
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