What makes a hitter great?

by | Jan 10, 2020 | Data

Have you ever wondered what TRULY makes a player a great hitter?  It’s probably an impossible question to answer.  Is it a players size and strength?  Is it their swing mechanics?  Could it be their vision?  What about their mental approach?  All of those things are difficult to quantify and correlate to success.   So instead, I decided to dive into the data using baseballsavant.com and graphs from Josh Rodriguez (@CoachRodrigues2) to see if I could figure out what makes some of the best hitters in the world great.  After doing a little research into the data, I tried to pick players that had a really good season in 2019 but for different reasons.  I decided to start by looking at a few specific areas for each player and then I would branch out based on those findings.  The areas I started with are pitch selection, exit velocity, launch angles and contact rate.  In other words, what a player swings at/doesn’t swing at, how often they hit the ball, how hard they hit the ball and at what angles they hit the ball.  My research grew from there and I added graphs and other metrics along the way.  Of course, you could spend days digging into any single player.  So while this research is obviously not complete, I figured it would be interesting and worth the effort.

I ended up selecting Mike Trout, Anthony Rendon, Alex Bregman and Yordan Alvarez for this exercise.  I included pictures for the data that I gathered.  If you’d like a closer look at the data just click on the picture and it’ll open in another tab.  Check out the write-ups on each player below:

Mike Trout

What makes him great: 
  • Has a high max exit speed
  • Has great discipline at the plate
    • Patience, which is probably more important when you’re a hitter that everyone fears
      • More than just not swinging at balls, he does well in certain areas of the zone and swings in those areas more often (middle, low, low and away)
  • Great batted ball profile
    • Low ground ball percentage – league average is 45.4, his is 25.4
    • Lots of line drives and fly balls, which pairs nicely with his exit velocity
  • Top 2% of league for barrels
Any weakness?
  • Inside pitches – weaker contact and less barrels but also manages this by not swinging in there too often
  • Swings and misses at FBs up and away but not enough to have a big impact

 

Yordan Alvarez

What makes him great: 
  • Only a half a season – so we’ll see if there are any adjustments pitchers can make but certainly had a great half a season
  • Hits the ball very hard and hard consistently – ranked 5th and 15th respectively
  • Launch angles are solid
  • The combination of his exit velocity and launch angles is why he’s in the top 2% in the league in barrel percentage (not barrels because he only played about half a season)
  • Swings at areas inside the zone where he does damage.  Limits swings on outside corner.  
Any weakness 
  • Outer third – still hits it hard but with lower launch angles – not as many hits and not as much damage
  • Swing and miss percentage is a little high
    • He’ll chase and miss breaking balls low in the zone and in the dirt.  His whiff % on breaking balls and off speed is around 35%.   Most are below the zone – see chart above.  
    • Has a little swing and miss in the up and away zone.  However he minimizes that zone by not swinging too much.
  • Limiting grounders could even make him even better.  

Anthony Rendon

What makes him great: 
  • Has great discipline at the plate
    • More than just not swinging at balls, does well in certain areas of the zone and swings in those areas more often – middle, low, and low and in
  • Very little swing and miss
    • Pairs nicely with his discipline – if he swings it’s more than likely being hit so he should be selective
  • Might not have elite exit velocity but has a higher density of hits than most players in the 90-100 range
    • This can be seen by the fact that his max exit velocity is ranked 224th but his average exit velocity is good for 65th.
    • Add in the fact that he doesn’t swing and miss much or strikeout much means that he’s putting the ball in play a lot and benefiting by the quality of contact and chances.  
  • Solid launch angle distribution
  • Capitalizes on home runs on pitches middle/middle, middle/in, middle/low, and down and in to the pull side
Any weakness 
  • His max exit velocity is a weakness but he clearly covers that with his approach and consistency and also by capitalizing on pull side home runs
  • Top of the zone – not a lot of barrels and if you dig deeper with a few other stats/data it’s not a very productive part of the zone for him  
    • Even with his discipline he’s a little susceptible to swinging at pitches at the top of the zone

Alex Bregman

What makes him great: 
  • VERY low strikeout rate, VERY high walk rate
  • Good but not great launch angle spread 
  • Tight launch angle velocities – very consistent 
  • Handles higher pitches better than most
  • VERY selective – good because he doesn’t miss – make each ball in play count
  • Capitalizes on pull side home run – hits most home runs on inner third of plate, followed by the middle third, then finally the outer third 
Any weakness 
  • A good amount of ground balls down in the zone
  • Inside is high risk high reward for pitchers – a lot of home runs but also low exit velocity 
  • Lack of exit velocity but with his pitch selection and his ability to use the pull side HR to his advantage doesn’t hurt him as much as other players.  

What did I learn?

Before breaking down the data, I don’t think I realized how many ways a player could be successful.  It didn’t shock me to find out that Mike Trout hits the ball hard and hits it at solid launch angles.  It also didn’t shock me to find out that is one way that a player can be successful.  Finding out how players who aren’t as big or strong as Mike Trout or have different qualities find success was the benefit to me.  There are an infinite number of ways for a player to be successful.  There is value in knowing that.  There is also value in a player knowing what makes them great and what areas they have to improve upon or just simply avoid.

 

One final note…

I don’t believe that data is everything.  It doesn’t always provide enough information or context to give you the “why” behind the data.  The best thing to do as a coach is to take everything you have at your disposal to come up with as detailed a picture as possible of the player you work with.  This includes video, data, watching each at bat, getting feedback from the player, etc.  I have the privilege to work with a player in the MLB and to give you an idea of how I used this data and much more check out this post.  It starts with the data but branches out into so much more.