Comeback of contact hitting

Nothing more frustrating in Baseball (to this 56 year old at least!) than a man at 2nd or 3rd with less than 2 outs and then watching consecutive strikeouts to end an inning.  And it’s boring Baseball

Define RBI "mentality. When and where does it begin?

Bob

Steven Kwan

LuvMyKids;

I agree, there is the Manager's input involved. Terry F. was the same type of hitter. "Never give in".

Study the pitcher, the catcher, the situation, position of defense and the "flag".

Bob

From what I have seen, the pitchers are too good for players to only attack pull side. Home runs still get a lot of the attention but I have definitely seen opinions of my son rise significantly as his profile has shifted from a power hitter to a hitter with power.

@LuvMyKids posted:

Steven Kwan

Had the pleasure of sitting with his parents and family for the Mariners series last last weekend (fantastic family). I love the way Kwan battles pitchers, and he's a rookie... The kid is an enigma in that he's so centered and calm at the plate (maybe the meditation?) but plays the rest of the game like his hair is on fire! Needless to say I'm a huge fan.

Here's a homer comment, but Cleveland has been fun to watch this season - they've had 14 MLB debuts this year, they're the youngest team in the MLB by far (average age 26), the players all pull for each other and they're in the playoff hunt...

@JucoDad your pitcher and my GF have turned me into a Cleveland fan!

@Dominik85 posted:

In the early days of the statcast era the focus was pretty clearly improving batted ball quality, hitting balls harder, at better angles, more pull etc to improve power output and that definitely made sense because a lot of value was to be gained especially by hard hitters who hit the ball too low.

However I think that teams are now shifting a bit back to hit tool because it has been shown that hit tool and contact is very hard to teach and when everyone hits for power than K issues will hurt you more because you can't as easily compensate by hitting more homers.

I don't see any trends in statcast that support this. SO rate is definitely down (24.8% - lowest since 2017), but OBP and BA are also down a little.

Did you look at previous years for "this year the top 5 offenses by WRC+ all have a below average K rate"? I wouldn't be surprised if that was true most years.

This year, hard hit %, EV, LA, and pull % are all holding steady. HR as a % of Hits is down to 13.0% , which is the lowest in years, but 2B and 3B are basically unchanged, so the difference is more singles (so SLG is also down significantly).

I'm not sure how to interpret all of this. Seems like guys are striking out less, but not getting on base more, and overall fewer bases. There is still a focus on hitting the ball hard, but seeing less HRs. I wonder if they're "shortening up" with 2 strikes. I can't easily find that data.

@JucoDad posted:

Had the pleasure of sitting with his parents and family for the Mariners series last last weekend (fantastic family). I love the way Kwan battles pitchers, and he's a rookie... The kid is an enigma in that he's so centered and calm at the plate (maybe the meditation?) but plays the rest of the game like his hair is on fire! Needless to say I'm a huge fan.

Here's a homer comment, but Cleveland has been fun to watch this season - they've had 14 MLB debuts this year, they're the youngest team in the MLB by far (average age 26), the players all pull for each other and they're in the playoff hunt...

Watching him play has restored some of my faith in pro sports. There is an innocence about how he plays, the dude is having fun, but man, is he a killer. I would have bet money that he comes from a good family.

Bob,

Francona is in my opinion the best manager in baseball…( I am biased, I’m hardcore Cleveland through and through). He put on a clinic in the 2016 post season with how he used Andrew Miller. Hes doing the same now, but with hitting. You got two guys that can play long ball ( Ramirez and Naylor) and the rest are square up and put it in play. Top 10 in average, next to last n home runs and hardest team to SO.

Luv My Kids;

Several years ago when his son Nick played on our American Team on a trip to Australia, his father, Terry offered to travel as a Coach.

Bob

@MidAtlanticDad posted:

I don't see any trends in statcast that support this. SO rate is definitely down (24.8% - lowest since 2017), but OBP and BA are also down a little.

Did you look at previous years for "this year the top 5 offenses by WRC+ all have a below average K rate"? I wouldn't be surprised if that was true most years.

This year, hard hit %, EV, LA, and pull % are all holding steady. HR as a % of Hits is down to 13.0% , which is the lowest in years, but 2B and 3B are basically unchanged, so the difference is more singles (so SLG is also down significantly).

I'm not sure how to interpret all of this. Seems like guys are striking out less, but not getting on base more, and overall fewer bases. There is still a focus on hitting the ball hard, but seeing less HRs. I wonder if they're "shortening up" with 2 strikes. I can't easily find that data.

I didn't mean to imply weak slap hitting is going to make a comeback, basically if you can't hit the ball 108 max in games you will have a hard time to produce in the majors but the gap in power between teams has closed as all teams opptimize for power (recruiting and player dev) now.

For example 2021 the 5th ranked team in homers hit 228 bombs and the 25th 176 so the 25th team hit 77% of the homers of the 5th best team in homers.

10 years earlier the 5th team hit 186 and the 25th team hit 109 which is just 58% of the 5th team.

You do need power in the modern game, it is tough to make the playoffs if you don't hit 200 bombs but plenty non playoff teams hit 200 bombs too so it is more a requirement than a big difference maker in these days.

That brings in teams like houston or toronto who of course still strike out a lot compared to 20 years ago but are among the lowest K rates in the majors currently but still hit 200 bombs.

Of course that is not an absolute, there are high K offenses which are pretty decent and low K offenses with not enough pop but I think generelly power in the game is pretty maxed out (more guys hit 20 bombs now but the top5 of the leaderboard in homers hasn't changed much, we see 50 very rarely, some 40s and a lot of 30s but not any 60+) so now teams have to look for other avenues to separate themselves.

Regarding multi year trends last year only 3 out of the top5 offenses in wrc+ but 2020 it was 4 and 2019 4 too.

Btw I read that cleveland specifically targets contact hitters when acquiring amateur players and then tries to train them for power.

The success of that has been mixed because most of those guys will go from 35 grade power to 40 or 45 and not 50+ when you make them stronger and optimize batspeed and path but every once in a while you hit a jose ramirez who makes contact and hits for big power.

I'm a Phillies fan and I keep trying to evaluate Alec Bohm's season. He might be an example of what you're talking about. He had a miserable 2021 by most measures for 3B. Watching him hit this year, it seems like he has focused all of his energy into putting balls in play at the expense of power. His spray chart is all over the place. His fly ball outs are mostly oppo. His average is way up and his RBI is up. He's putting the ball in play with runners on, and good things often happen. When you watch him play, you generally come away with a positive impression. But when you compare his numbers to other 3B, he's still well below average by most contemporary measures (including WAR) because his power numbers aren't good.

So are my eyes fooling me, or are the stats not accurately reflecting his value? I really don't know.

Yeah it is definitely a disadvantage when you hit 12 homers at a position where others hit 35, especially since guys like Arenado and machado can hit for average too.

With bohm it would be better if he could hit for power, at 110 max he should be able to hit around 30 bombs but he has some sequencing and movement flaws that prevent him from pulling the ball in the air effectively.

I know ochart has been working on that with him. Couple years ago I shot ochart a message half jokingly he needs to kvest his lead arm and he said they were doing it already so I just assume bohm wasn't able to make that change.

So maybe for him specifically it was better to use that oppo approach than to hit tons of hard grounders into the shift and occasionally running into one.

Of course the ideal solution would have been to optimize his movements so he can hit at similar launch angles to all fields but sometimes it doesn't work and you have to take what you can get.

Update for 2023:

Contrary to some expectations the shift ban didn't seem to help high contact teams.

Among the 6 lowest k rate teams none is in the top10 in team wrc+.

Last year that was different, Houston, Toronto, stl and the Mets were top6 in both Low k rate and wrc+.

That is quite surprising, I thought the shift ban would help higher K rate teams some. A team which is especially struggling is the guardians, like last year they are the lowest K rate team but unlike last year when their offense was around average despite super low power this year they are 23rd in wrc+. Interestingly they basically hit the same like last year but other teams have improved.

I could see the shift ban helping pull side only sluggers who roll over and hit a lot of pull side grounders more than all fields contact hitters like Steven kwan.