Because the number of balls is usually larger than strikes 2. Because when batter at bat, it is often written as Pitcher vs Batter (for example: Darvish vs Suzuki). This might because the ball "reach” batter before pitcher. read more
In the early days of baseball, before scorekeepers and scoreboards and radio announcers, when umpires gave a count, if they gave a count, l’m sure some gave balls first and some gave strikes first. After all, verbally “two balls and two strikes” and “two strikes and two balls” convey the same information. read more