Contact, In and Out
It is generally
thought in the world of baseball that making contact with pitches outside of the strike zone is a bad thing. What was that, making contact is bad? Yes, well when the ball is out of the zone at least. Since in order
to make contact with a ball off the plate requires the batter to reach, the power generated by the body from staying back is lost and the result is a weak arms and hands swing that is prone to weak dribblers and pop-outs. Some players like Vlad Guerrero and Ichiro are known to be able to hit the ball hard regardless of how ridiculously far the ball is off the plate. Are Vlad and Ichiro simply anomalies or is making contact with pitches out of the strike zone not as bad as generally thought? Are Vlad and Ichiro even the best at hitting out of the zone? That is what we will find out today.
To determine this, I will simply will use Fangraph's O-Contact% found in the plate discipline section and OPS. O-Contact% is (copied straight from Fangraph's definition) the percentage of pitches a batter makes contact with outside the strike zone when swinging the bat (Lg. Avg. is 61.33%), and OPS is OPS, not the best offensive metric but sufficient for my purposes. Now for the chart:
An R-Squared of .100 is relatively weak but considering the two stats I'm comparing, I found it surprisingly strong. A high O-Contact% has a noticeable affect on a player's OPS, enough that if a player is struggling and has a high O-Contact%, bringing that percentage down could be the necessary adjustment to break out of the slump.
If we take Vlad and Ichiro out the data, the R-Squared becomes .107, but surprisingly they are not the best at hitting out of the zone. Todd Helton is the king of hitting well out of the zone with his 2006 and 2007 seasons looking like this (he is also labeled on the first chart as TH):
2006 - 82.69% O-Contact%, .880 OPS
2007 - 83.86% O-Contact%, .928 OPS
Despite having the 5th and 6th highest O-Contact percentages looking at 06-07 numbers combined, Helton still managed great OPS', especially with a .928 OPS in 2007. Placido Polanco and Dustin Pedroia also get honorable mention for their hitting out of the zone abilities.
Using Josh Kalk's excellent Pitch F/X player cards we can see exactly how Helton managed what he did in '07:
Looking at them is revealing but disappointing in a way. He does make contact with a lot of fastballs up and in and change-ups outside, but gets out almost every time he makes contact. Helton is such a good hitter with pitches inside the zone that he makes up for it. However I was looking for someone who drives balls out of the zone, not one who gets outs. Perhaps Helton is not the king of hitting well out of the zone.
Looking at Vlad's player card, I guess he really is King when it comes to driving the ball out of the strike zone. He has hits in such ridiculous places, if it wasn't Vlad's card I was looking at, I would think they were mistakes. Sorry for demoting you for a few minutes there, Vlad.
Overall, contact with pitches out of the strike zone is undesirable as it correlates inversely with OPS. Also, Vlad is still King of hitting pitches out of the zone. View Ichiro's and other players' Pitch F/X cards here to decide who is queen.
thought in the world of baseball that making contact with pitches outside of the strike zone is a bad thing. What was that, making contact is bad? Yes, well when the ball is out of the zone at least. Since in order
to make contact with a ball off the plate requires the batter to reach, the power generated by the body from staying back is lost and the result is a weak arms and hands swing that is prone to weak dribblers and pop-outs. Some players like Vlad Guerrero and Ichiro are known to be able to hit the ball hard regardless of how ridiculously far the ball is off the plate. Are Vlad and Ichiro simply anomalies or is making contact with pitches out of the strike zone not as bad as generally thought? Are Vlad and Ichiro even the best at hitting out of the zone? That is what we will find out today.To determine this, I will simply will use Fangraph's O-Contact% found in the plate discipline section and OPS. O-Contact% is (copied straight from Fangraph's definition) the percentage of pitches a batter makes contact with outside the strike zone when swinging the bat (Lg. Avg. is 61.33%), and OPS is OPS, not the best offensive metric but sufficient for my purposes. Now for the chart:
If we take Vlad and Ichiro out the data, the R-Squared becomes .107, but surprisingly they are not the best at hitting out of the zone. Todd Helton is the king of hitting well out of the zone with his 2006 and 2007 seasons looking like this (he is also labeled on the first chart as TH):
2006 - 82.69% O-Contact%, .880 OPS
2007 - 83.86% O-Contact%, .928 OPS
Despite having the 5th and 6th highest O-Contact percentages looking at 06-07 numbers combined, Helton still managed great OPS', especially with a .928 OPS in 2007. Placido Polanco and Dustin Pedroia also get honorable mention for their hitting out of the zone abilities.
Using Josh Kalk's excellent Pitch F/X player cards we can see exactly how Helton managed what he did in '07:
Looking at them is revealing but disappointing in a way. He does make contact with a lot of fastballs up and in and change-ups outside, but gets out almost every time he makes contact. Helton is such a good hitter with pitches inside the zone that he makes up for it. However I was looking for someone who drives balls out of the zone, not one who gets outs. Perhaps Helton is not the king of hitting well out of the zone.
Looking at Vlad's player card, I guess he really is King when it comes to driving the ball out of the strike zone. He has hits in such ridiculous places, if it wasn't Vlad's card I was looking at, I would think they were mistakes. Sorry for demoting you for a few minutes there, Vlad.
Overall, contact with pitches out of the strike zone is undesirable as it correlates inversely with OPS. Also, Vlad is still King of hitting pitches out of the zone. View Ichiro's and other players' Pitch F/X cards here to decide who is queen.
