Balanced pairs appear naturally in the realm of relative homological algebra associated with the balance of right-derived functors of the Hom functor. Cotorsion triplets are a natural source of such pairs. In this paper, we study the connection between balanced pairs and cotorsion triplets by using recent quiver representation techniques. In doing so, we find a new characterization of abelian categories that have enough projectives and injectives in terms of the existence of complete hereditary cotorsion triplets. We also provide a short proof of the lack of balance for derived functors of Hom computed using flat resolutions, which extends the one given by Enochs in the commutative case.
