Hit to Your Strengths

Mark Teixeira thrives when pulling outside pitches. (via Arturo Pardavila III)

Mark Teixeira thrives when pulling outside pitches. (via Arturo Pardavila III)

I’m no scout, but I’ve watched and played plenty of baseball in my life, and so like anybody else who has I intuitively know a few things about hitting. Turning on an inside pitch and driving it is good. Taking an outside pitch and lining it opposite field is good. Having to reach out to pull a ball, not as good; it’s hard to wrap your hands around the ball and generate power. Getting tied up inside and flaring a ball to the opposite field with an inside-out swing, not as good.

Of course, if you do get jammed and are able to get an opposite-field hit, that’s a job well done. But it’s much better to be able to turn on it. Sure, Tony Gwynn found success going opposite field with just about any kind of pitch, but very few players had his unique skill set. (Although interestingly, while looking up videos of Gwynn’s swing, I came across this article, which mentions how Gwynn may have had even more success had he started pulling inside pitches more — which he started to do for the 1997 season, one of his best.)

Similarly, having the strength to take a ball outside and drive it to the pull side is impressive, but overall less effective than trying to slap it opposite field. Hitters like Albert Pujols can hit pitches on the outside half of the plate into the left field bleachers almost with ease — Pujols led all righties with 15 such home runs last year. But not everybody is Albert Pujols; very few players have his ability to pull outside pitches for home runs.

Going with the pitch — pulling the ball if it’s inside and hitting it opposite field if it’s outside — is an idea repeated by coaches from little league the the big leagues. In this article, I’m going to explore its importance using numbers, and talk about hitters who both embody and debunk this idea.

To prove the greater overall effectiveness of going with the pitch, consider this graph. It’s a bit confusing at first, because the y-axis really represents the angle across the field at which the ball is hit, which is a horizontal component unless your head is tilted sideways. Unfortunately, since the x-axis represents the horizontal location of the pitch, some horizontal component had to be put on the y-axis.

To the right on the x-axis is outside to righties and inside to lefties, and vice versa; the top of the y-axis is left field and the bottom right field. Red represents a higher wOBABIP (wOBA on balls in play), blue a lower one.

Main plot

Wherever you look on the graph, no matter the handedness, pulling the ball is more effective for inside pitches and hitting it opposite field is more effective for outside pitches. Essentially, this suggests that for both righties and lefties, going with the pitch in either direction is effective.

We can certainly split this graph up into just righties and just lefties to check that we’re not seeing the righty-heavy hitter landscape dominate the graph; maybe this effect doesn’t exist for lefties. But both the righty and lefty graphs look more or less like the first one.

Lefties wOBA heatmap Righties wOBA heatmap

Or, if you prefer fielding-independent numbers, both the average exit velocity and launch angle are higher for going-with-the-pitch batted balls.

EV heatmap Launch Angle heatmap

Major league hitters, being the smart players they are, know of this trend. Most tend to pull inside pitches much more than outside pitches, and go opposite field with outside pitches much more than they do with inside ones. But some hitters – like the aforementioned Gwynn and Pujols – do the opposite. There are several hitters who specifically try to not go with the pitch, and they often find success doing so.

When I asked former FanGraphs prospect guy Dan Farnsworth about this, he mentioned that hitters with the best swings adjust to how deep their bat catches the ball, not the location of the pitch. They can hit an inside pitch to any field they want, or an outside pitch to any field they want; if they want to pull the ball, they catch it out in front, and if they want to go the other way, they catch it deeper. Simply put, they adjust slow/fast and not left/right.

So with that in mind, we can look at which active hitters have that ability. Which choose not to go with the pitch, and how much success do they have doing so?

The Inside-Outers

The Gwynn special. Many other hitters have made careers for themselves driving inside pitches the other way, too; Ichiro, to name one. There’s clearly a talent involved. What allows hitters to do it?

A Hardball Times Update
Goodbye for now.

“It’s just my swing,” says Marlins shortstop Adeiny Hechavarria, who in 2015 hit .347 on those inside-out pitches (third highest among those with as many inside-out balls in play as he had). “There are even pitches on the inside that I try to turn on and pull, but something about my swing, sometimes it goes the other way.” Hechavarria doesn’t pull much: he pulled 32.4 percent of inside pitches and 21.6 percent of outside pitches in 2015, both well below-average rates.

“You always concentrate on hitting it up the middle, taking it up the middle,” Hechavarria says. Failing to hit it up the middle seems like it leads more often to going opposite field than pulling it. Hechavarria is a good example of a hitter who can enjoy success inside-outing balls instead of pulling them. For a hitter with no power to speak of (.085 career ISO), that’s a good strategy. Hechavarria isn’t having a lot of success this year, but in years past he’s maintained a more than respectable batting average with it.

Another hitter who is very successful at going the other way with inside pitches is another shortstop, Boston’s Xander Bogaerts. But like his Miami counterpart, Bogaerts doesn’t go up aiming to do that.

“I don’t necessarily think Xander is trying to inside-out a ball. I think he’s trying to stay to the middle of the field,” said Red Sox hitting coach Chili Davis. “Last year he worked on a swing path that allowed him to let the ball get deep and still be able to get the barrel to it.” This is in line with what Farnsworth said – good hitters can hit any pitch opposite field, not just inside ones, if they catch it deep enough in the zone and can still put a good swing on it. Davis continues: “His thought process is to not really be concerned with where the ball goes when he barrels it, but to just barrel it and stay through it.”

Bogaerts himself said something similar. “Take whatever [you] get. You prepare in the cage, and I can’t control if they are going to throw me in or outside, all I can do is try to be on time and ready. It depends on where he throws it.” Instead of basing his swing on where the pitch is, he bases it on the kind of pitch that’s thrown. If he times it right, he can hit any kind of pitch in any location opposite field.

This seems like a more refined approach than Hechavarria’s, where he just aims to hit anything up the middle but sometimes ends up slapping it opposite field. Indeed, Bogaerts performs much better than Hechavarria when hitting pitches to the opposite field that are thrown down the middle or outside – a .369 average on those compared to .289 for Hechavarria. (Bogaerts hit for more power on those hits, too.)

Furthermore, pitchers are beginning to figure out Hechavarria – the percentage of inside pitches he sees has decreased each of the last four years, and he’s running a .263 wOBA right now – while they can’t figure out Bogaerts, who is having a breakout year and batting over .340. Bogaerts is a hitter with a good swing, who can adjust to the pitch type and hit pitches where he wants. Hechavarria is a hitter with a much worse swing, who can inside-out balls well but has difficulty adjusting. Both are opposite field hitters of much different types and calibers.

The thing is, players who can inside-out the ball well aren’t necessarily good inside pitch hitters. The approach that guys like Hechavarria take to the plate is ne that won’t really let them pull inside pitches with authority. There’s no correlation between the ability to get hits to the opposite field on inside pitches, and the ability to pull inside pitches well.

woba on inside pitches hit to the pull side and opposite field

But again, it all comes down to how the batter is approaching the pitch. If they’re looking to simply inside-out the pitch, then accidentally pulling the ball will be, well, an accident, and it won’t turn out well. If they adjust as they see the speed of the pitch, they’ll be able to pull the ball if they want and go to the opposite field if they want.

Of course, Hechavarria and Bogaerts are hardly the only ones in the majors with that ability. Players like Paul Goldschmidt, Mike Trout, Ryan Braun and Miguel Cabrera all have that kind of hit in their hitting repertoire, and everybody would agree that they have great swings. But simply the ability to inside-out pitches well is not indicative of a great swing. You have to be able to hit any spot to the opposite field, not just inside pitches. And likewise, you have to be able to pull any spot, too.

The Outside-Inners

“I’ve always said that pull hitters don’t pull the inside pitch,” says Chili Davis. “They can’t get to the inside pitch, because of their swing path. They’re going to pull balls that are more middle and out over the plate, because they can get out and around it. That’s their swing path.”

This may seem counter-intuitive, because inside pitches are typically much easier to pull. But in reality, there’s little correlation between ability to pull the ball on inside pitches and to pull it on outside pitches.

Relationship between inside and outside pull production

There is certainly a relationship between the rates at which players pull inside and outside pitches…

Relationship between inside and outside pull rates

But no such relationship exists for production. The guys who can reach out and wrap outside pitches to successfully pull them – the ones Davis called “pull hitters” – usually have longer swing paths, so it’s hard for them to get to the inside pitches as easily. Also because of that swing path, they do end up pulling inside pitches – but it’s not necessarily as effective, with the ball maybe coming off the bat too close to the handle.

“A guy that comes to mind is Brandon Moss,” Davis remarks. “He’s so close to the plate that if you pitch him in, he can’t [get] to the pitch in. But if it’s away from him, he can get extension and get the head out, and pull the ball. Teixeira is another.”

The numbers certainly support what Davis says:

TEIXEIRA AND MOSS PULLING THE BALL
Pull wOBA on Inside Pitches Pull wOBA on Outside Pitches
Mark Teixeira .327 .556
Brandon Moss .306 .424
League Average .441 .240
2015 only

Both are significantly above-average at pulling outside pitches, and significantly below-average at pulling inside pitches. For Teixeira, at least, the reason why is simple.

“The length of my arms. I’ve always been good at taking pitches middle away and pulling them, because I have long arms,” he says. “When I get extended, I can hit the ball a long way.” Evidently, when he has to tie up his arms to keep his swing short for an inside pitch, he struggles.

Is that all, though? Teixeira has obviously enjoyed stretches as one of baseball’s best hitters, but one wonders if he could have benefited from a shorter swing. There are plenty of players Teixeira’s height or taller – Goldschmidt, George Springer, Freddie Freeman – who are good at going inside-out with pitches. I don’t have a way to measure their arm lengths, but I’d imagine they’re comparable to Teixeira’s.

Teixeira hit only nine inside pitches the other way in 2015 and didn’t get a hit on any of them. “I don’t hit the ball to the opposite field too much. I try to keep things simple and do damage,” he explained. “If my timing dictates it goes the other way, so be it, but driving the ball to the pull side is usually your best bet as a power hitter.” Overall, then, Teixeira can’t do much of anything with inside pitches.

WOBA BY PITCH LOCATION
Inside Outside
Mark Teixeira .250 .489
League Average .359 .335
2015 only

In a sense, Teixeira is using a similar strategy to Hechavarria: use your strengths (or, in Hechavarria’s case, avoid your weaknesses), and don’t try to be a hitter you can’t be. Hechavarria can’t be a deadly pull hitter because he just doesn’t have enough power. Teixeira has to be a pull hitter because his swing is too long. Of course, there’s an enormous discrepancy in how well the two strategies work, but in principle they aren’t that different.

So if Teixeira is like Hechavarria, we need someone to compare to Bogaerts. Enter Hank Conger. Conger isn’t what anybody will think of as a slugger, but the Rays catcher actually is quite good at pulling the ball. He had a much higher wOBA than Teixeira last year when he pulled inside pitches – .458 – and also had a significantly above-average wOBA when pulling outside pitches, at .476. Following Davis’s theory, he is slightly worse at pulling the inside pitch, but at least it’s not as big a gap as Teixeira or Moss have. Why is that?

“I guess it’s contact point, really. I tend to get my contact point more out in front, more so than most people,” he explains. As Farnsworth pointed out, and as anyone who’s even played a baseball video game knows, swinging early leads to pulling it more. “It’s maybe one of those things where the bat path comes into play. I don’t know if there’s anything analytical that could possibly explain that, but I don’t go up there trying to pull everything. I try to stay through the middle.”

Sounds similar to what Hechavarria and Bogaerts said, except instead of trying to inside-out balls up the middle like Hechavarria or waiting on pitches like Bogaerts, Conger pounces on them – leading to pulling the ball when he doesn’t time it right to hit the ball straight. “Some people try to go the other way,” he continues. “I don’t really try to do that, just like I don’t go up there trying to pull. I guess I just tend to be more out in front than normal people.”

Overall, though, this is a much more similar approach to Bogaerts’ than any of the other hitters we’ve looked at so far: Conger is adjusting to the speed of the pitch, trying to catch it at a certain point in its path. Does that mean he has a better swing than Teixeira?

Probably not. After all, just look at their numbers. There’s almost no way someone like Teixeira – long one of the game’s premier power hitters – would have worse mechanics than someone like Conger, a career backup/time splitter with a career wRC+ of 88. But while Teixeira can ride his long arms, tremendous power, and great hand-eye coordination (or could before this year, at least), Conger needs to use his knack for timing.

But there are certainly players, and I’ve already named a few, who can adjust slow-fast and have the physical skills that make them a great hitter; essentially, they combine the best aspects of Teixeira/Moss and Bogaerts/Conger. Hitters with very few holes in their swings who can hit any location, any kind of pitch. Mike Trout is the gold standard for this: he was the only player in 2015 with at least 15 opposite-field hits on inside pitches and 15 pull hits on outside pitches (16 and 19 respectively).

WOBA ON DIFFERENT PITCHES (PITCH LOCATION, HIT LOCATION)
Inside, pull Inside, oppo Outside, pull Outside, oppo
Mike Trout .495 .392 .545 .480
League Average .473 .266 .304 .368
2015 only

Trout was well above average in all four categories last year. While he is struggling a little bit to pull inside pitches this year, he is still far above average in all the other categories, and the inside pulling will likely right itself soon.

There are more batters, of course, who pop up consistently when looking through the tops of these types of lists. Bryce Harper and Nelson Cruz are two of them; they too were above average in all four categories that Trout was last year. Miguel Cabrera is another.

It shouldn’t be a shock that the best hitters in the game have the best swings, but what’s even more important than how good the swing is is the approach. Mark Teixeira can’t get around to inside pitches, but he makes up for that by purposely pulling outside pitches with his long arms and doing damage there. Adeiny Hechavarria can’t generate much power by turning on the ball, but by swinging inside-out and aiming up the middle he can get hits at a good clip. Not everyone is Mike Trout, but that doesn’t stop them from being good hitters.

References & Resources

  • Huge thanks to Eno Sarris (Hechavarria, Bogaerts) and David Laurila (Davis, Teixeira, Conger) for procuring quotes
  • Dan Farnsworth for providing analysis
  • Baseball Savant for Statcast and PITCHf/x data on pitch location and spray angle
  • Jerry Brewer, Athletics Nation, “Tony Gwynn and the art of hitting”


Jonah is a baseball analyst and Red Sox fan. He would like it if you followed him on Twitter @japemstein, but can't really do anything about it if you don't.
7 Comments
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Peter Jensen
7 years ago

Jonah – There is a vast difference between pulling outside pitches from same handed pitchers and pulling outside pitches from opposite handed pitchers. Similarly,for going inside out on same handed pitchers and opposite handed pitchers. Your analysis would be even more informative if you broke it down to same and opposite pitcher hand.

Donald J. Trump
7 years ago

So… Is there a conclusion here? What should I have learned?

Matthew Yaspan
7 years ago

I really enjoyed this, Jonah!

Skeeter wagoner
7 years ago

Well witten report my 15 year old is currently working on hitting in all directions on inside pitches and turning really well on them also. He does make great hits with outside pitches but with a little less power.

James
7 years ago

Good article Jonah,
But I don’t understand some points.
Thank for share here

Claude
7 years ago

last night i watched money ball and it really sparked my interest in baseball again. thanks for the wonderful information