No matter how you count up the numbers, hitting a baseball is an exercise in failure. When trying to rank, compare, and assess hitters, we are basically looking for the guy who fails the least often. We know he is still going to fail the vast majority of the time, but by failing less than his contemporaries he will emerge as the superior on-field force. When I was growing up watching baseball, the primary measure of success was the batting average. Hit .300? You’re an all-star. Hit .221? Doesn’t matter if you hit 30 home runs or your OPS was .850 – you’re going to the bench or the minors. Now in the age of advanced analytics, we have a whole new world of data that opens the door for many different measures of success and failure.
What is true success for a hitter? Derived to its simplest form, failure is making an out, and success is not making an out. Sounds easy, but I’m not really going to be convinced that Christian Yelich feels like he succeeded when he gets credit for a single on a pop-up behind shortstop that probably should have been caught. Conversely, the reception in the dugout for a batter who hits a ground ball to second base after the leadoff man knocked a double is certainly not the reception for someone who has just failed. I’m not quite ready to define a “productive out” as success, but we do have statistical choices beyond the batting average that may give more insight into the true success and failure of the hitter.
Of course a hitter is trying not to make an out when he comes up to the plate. But what is he really trying to do? He’s trying to hit the damn cover off the ball! He wants to hit the baseball fair as hard as possible. Many things on the field are out of his control, the positioning and skill of the fielders as well as the quirks and size of the park. Even the weather and air density factor into the success or failure of the batter while being completely outside of his control. The one thing squarely in the control of the batter is making quality contact with the baseball and hitting it as hard as he can.
Hard contact percentage has become one of my favorite statistics to follow over the past few seasons, and I have seen sustained hard contact rates leading directly to future performance increases. A great example is Jackie Bradley’s 2018 season. As mid-May turned into early June, all the chatter here in New England was about how Jackie’s terrible batting average was dragging down the offence and we needed to get rid of him ASAP before he cost us our shot at a World Series run. His batting average was below the Mendoza line at the time, but his hard contact rate was sitting 5th on the team and closing in on Andrew Benintendi’s. I explained to everyone who would listen that Jackie was smacking the ball at a near-elite level and that his low batting average was just a function of bad luck and bad timing.
Fortunately for all Red Sox fans, the team and Bradley himself didn’t panic over batting average and stuck with the methodology. I don’t need to give the blow-by-blow of Jackie winning the ALCS MVP with his dynamic offensive performance. But I can’t help but think that 15 years ago, JBJ would have been benched, traded, or worst of all had his swing turned inside-out by a well-meaning hitting coach. His other-worldly defensive skills clearly make it easier to leave him in the lineup when his bat is cold, but I believe that advanced analytics and specifically hard contact rates came into play as well. I imagine a day after Jackie went 0-4 while drilling 3 line drives that Alex Cora and maybe some other staff folks sat him down and said “Hey Jackie, tough day out there today. Don’t get down on yourself about that 0-4, you’re hitting the ball harder than 70% of the league right now. Just keep doing what you’re doing, go out there and murder that baseball every time. We’re behind you, and we know the hits are going to fall for you.”
Jackie kept doing what he was doing, and towards the end of the year and especially in the playoffs the hits really fell for him. His determination paid off, and now the 2-time College World Series winner has an MLB World Series ring to add to the pile. It’s tough enough for Mike Trout to shrug off failure when he is making an out 6.7 out of 10 times. Jackie was hitting the ball harder than most of the other players in the game on a regular basis, and still failing better than 8 in 10 tries. His confidence in his swing and the eventual balancing of the game allowed him to ride out a stretch of bad luck right into the sweetest victory an MLB player can taste.
So when you need ammo for your next barroom baseball discussion or want to pick up an under-valued player in your fantasy league – ignore the batting average and check in on what type of contact the hitter is making.
