MLB: The Ted Williams Approach Is Influencing Hitters Today

Some modern day MLB power hitters are using the approach that Ted Williams wrote about nearly 50 years ago in their efforts to hit for more power.

For many years, generations of young baseball players and even MLB stars have been given hitting advice like “keep your elbow up” and “roll your top hand over” and “don’t swing up on the ball!” Some coaches emphasize hitting down on the ball to try to impart backspin. Other coaches teach hitters to focus on hitting to the opposite field. This is what young hitters have been taught for many years, and they believed their coaches knew everything there was to know about baseball, so they dutifully followed.

One of the first prominent hitting instructors in Major League Baseball was Charlie Lau, whose prize pupil was George Brett. Lau worked with the Kansas City Royals for much of the 1970s. He believed a hitter should have a balanced stance and incorporate a weight shift from a firm, rigid back side to a firm, rigid front side. He prized contact hitting and hitting the ball up the middle and to the opposite field.

In the 1980s, the “Oklahoma State” style of hitting taught by Oklahoma State coach Gary Ward became popular. This was similar to the linear approach of Charlie Lau, with an emphasis on making contact and hitting line drives to all fields, rather than pulling the ball and hitting for power. The tremendous success of Oklahoma State during Ward’s tenure made this method of hitting a popular style to teach for players growing up in the 1980s.

Meanwhile, there was a book sitting on the shelf of the library written by one of the greatest hitters who ever lived, Ted Williams, that differed from the popular hitting methods and the “elbows up/don’t swing up on the ball” advice given to young players. The Science of Hitting, by Ted Williams and John Underwood, came out in 1971. It’s been available to everyone for nearly 50 years, but has too often been left sitting on the shelf, collecting dust.

Williams was ahead of his time. One example is the famous image of the strike zone with colored baseballs that showed the batting average Williams estimated he hit based on the location of the ball. This was a precursor to the modern heatmaps we see that reveal what pitches hitters can handle the best and which they struggle on.

He was also a proponent of pulling the ball through rotational hitting with the hips opening up and bringing the bat around. The swing should be slightly up and the wrist should not roll over. Williams wanted to hit the ball hard, in the air, to the pull side. That’s where the money is.

Recently, as exit velocity and launch angle become popular throughout baseball, hitters and their hitting coaches are turning to Williams’ thoughts on hitting. Coaches are telling their hitters to turn on pitches and hit the ball in the air. One of those hitters, the Toronto Blue Jays’ Josh Donaldson, recently tweeted a batting cage video with the caption, “Just say NO…. to ground balls.”

One of Donaldson’s teammates on the Blue Jays, Jose Bautista, made a major change in his hitting approach in his seventh year in the big leagues. Through the first six years of his career, he pulled the ball roughly 36 percent of the time. His career batting line through his first 2,038 plate appearances was .238/.329/.400. In 2010, he drastically changed his approach with a major emphasis on pulling the ball. Since then, he’s pulled the ball around 51 percent of the time and hit .264/.387/.542. He’s a completely different hitter because of this change in approach.

Nationals second baseman Daniel Murphy is a more recent example. In 2015, his seventh year in the big leagues, he was encouraged by Mets hitting coach Kevin Long to pull the ball more and hit the ball in the air more. He ended that year with a monster postseason and carried it over into the best season of his career in 2016. His fly ball percentage last year was almost 8 percent higher than his career mark and his pull percentage was 6 percent higher. He also had a hard hit percentage that was by far the best in his career.

With Statcast tracking launch angle and exit velocity, we’ve learned that the sweet spot for hitters is an exit velocity above 98 mph and a launch angle around 27 degrees. These are the taters, the long balls, the big flies. The term “Barrels” is used to represent the best-hit balls that come from a combination of how hard the ball is hit and the angle at which it is hit. Last year, the leaders in Barrels per balls in play were the sluggers you might expect: Khris Davis, Chris Davis, Mark Trumbo, Giancarlo Stanton, Chris Carter, Nelson Cruz, Mike Trout, David Ortiz, Miguel Cabrera and Mike Napoli.

Of course, this approach won’t work for everyone. The Cincinnati Reds don’t want Billy Hamilton hitting the ball in the air. Hamilton is one of the fastest players in the game and he should take advantage of his speed by hitting the ball on the ground and beating it to first as fast as he can. Telling him to hit the ball in the air would be ridiculous.

Also, as much as this approach is being embraced by some prominent hitters, league-wide rates don’t reflect a noticeable change. Last year, fly balls were hit 34.6 percent of the time, which was an increase from 33.8 percent in 2015, but negligible compared to the 34.4 percent in 2014. Last year’s fly ball rate was the sixth-highest in the last 10 years. Similarly, last year’s pull percentage was the sixth-highest rate in the last 10 years.

So, despite what some prominent hitters are saying about their change in approach, this hasn’t shown up when looking at all hitters as a group. The one measure in which hitters did perform better in 2016 than in most of the last 10 seasons was hard hit percentage. Last year’s 31.4 percent hard hit percentage was the second-highest in the last 10 years.

For many players, though, the 50-year-old teaching of Ted Williams is becoming their modern mantra. Players like Bautista, Donaldson and Murphy are rejecting the level swing, hit-the-ball-to-all-fields approach in favor of pulling the ball and getting it in the air. It will be interesting to check the numbers at the end of the year to see if more of the league adopts the Ted Williams style of hitting.