What is a Wild Pitch? Definition and Examples
A wild pitch is a pitch so high, wide, or low that the catcher cannot control it with ordinary effort, allowing a baserunner to advance, charged to the pitcher rather than the catcher.
What a Wild Pitch Means
A wild pitch is a charged to the pitcher when a legally delivered pitch is so errant — too high, too wide, or bounced in the dirt — that the catcher cannot stop or control it with ordinary effort, and a runner advances or scores as a result. The key trigger is runner movement: no matter how badly a pitch sails to the backstop, it is only scored a wild pitch if a baserunner advances (or, on a third strike, the batter reaches first because the ball gets away). It is the pitcher's counterpart to the catcher's passed ball.
How a Wild Pitch Is Scored
The official scorer applies two tests. First, was the pitch genuinely difficult to handle — high, low, or wide enough that a catcher exercising ordinary effort could not field it? Second, did a runner advance because of it? Both must be true.
- If the pitch was catchable and the catcher simply missed it, the scorer charges a passed ball to the catcher instead.
- If no runner advances, nothing is charged at all, regardless of how wild the pitch was.
- On a dropped third strike that gets away and lets the batter reach first, the pitcher is charged with a wild pitch.
Critically, a wild pitch is not an error and does not appear in any fielder's fielding percentage. It is its own category, and runs that score on a wild pitch are unearned-or-earned depending on the broader inning's reconstruction.
Worked Example
Picture a runner on third with one out. The pitcher throws a curveball that bounces a foot in front of the plate, skips off the catcher's glove, and rolls to the backstop. The runner trots home. The scorer rules it a wild pitch: the pitch was uncatchable with ordinary effort, and a runner advanced. The pitcher is charged, the run counts, and the catcher's record is untouched. Knuckleball pitchers historically lead the league in wild pitches because the pitch's unpredictable movement is brutal to catch — a reason knuckleballers often pair with oversized catcher's mitts and specialist receivers.
Why It Matters
Wild pitches are a small but real component of run prevention. A pitcher who racks up wild pitches with runners on base leaks unearned advancement and runs, which inflates his run total even when his WHIP and strikeout numbers look strong. For relievers protecting a one-run lead, a single wild pitch can blow the save. They also factor into catcher evaluation indirectly: a receiver who blocks balls in the dirt well saves his pitchers from wild-pitch charges that would otherwise score runners.
Limitations and Common Misconceptions
The most common confusion is wild pitch versus passed ball — the distinction is purely about fault. Wild pitch blames the pitcher's location; passed ball blames the catcher's receiving. Fans also assume any pitch to the backstop is a wild pitch, but if no runner advances, it's scored as nothing. Finally, a wild pitch is unrelated to a balk, which is an illegal pitching motion, not an errant throw.
Related Terms
In Legends Deck: Wild-pitch propensity is baked into each pitcher card's *Command* and pitch-control ratings, raising the simulated chance that a runner advances on a pitch in the dirt — and it interacts with the receiving catcher's *Blocking* rating, so pairing a wild arm with an elite framing-and-blocking catcher measurably suppresses extra bases in our sim.