The player-tracking Jackie Robinson Youth Jersey technology of Statcast helps us visualize the struggle between pitchers
and hitters better than ever before, and it also gives us a clear idea
of who hits each offering the best. There are all sorts of traditional
stats we could use to determine the "best," from batting average to
homers, but let's instead turn to Statcast?'s most all-encompassing
metric.
Expected Weighted On-Base Average (xwOBA) sounds more complex than it
actually is. It accounts for the expected outcome of each ball put in
play, while also factoring in strikeouts and walks to give a full Jacob Rhame Youth Jersey picture of what should happen based on a combination of contact quality
and the amount of contact a hitter makes. Stripping away the effects of
defense and ballpark, xwOBA acts like OBP, except that it awards more
value for extra-base hits -- in this case, the ultimate goal of
hitters.Which hitters excelled the most against certain pitch types in
2017? Setting a minimum of 200 pitches seen for each pitch
classification gives us a healthy sample size of hundreds of hitters.
Some of these names are exactly who you'd expect; others, not so
much.Let's just get this out of the way: Judge was incredible in a lot
of ways last season. Joc Pederson Youth Jersey A 52-homer rookie season means Judge was doing a lot of things right,
but a cool 25 of those dingers came against four-seamers. They ranged
from a 97.1 mph Kevin Gausman heater that Judge crushed with a 119.4-mph
exit velocity (the second-hardest-hit homer by anyone last year, shown
above) to an 89.1-mph Marco Estrada fastball that he took to the upper
deck at Rogers Centre.
It's not surprising to see J.D. Martinez right behind Judge after he
clubbed 45 homers of his own, but the Cardinals' Jose Martinez might be
unexpected. Jose Martinez, like his teammate Tommy Pham, sort of came
out of nowhere as one of St. Louis' best bats down the stretch last
year, making hard contact (i.e. balls struck with exit velocities of 95
mph or harder) on over 45 percent of his contact -- right on par with
Josh Donaldson and Martinez's new teammate, Marcell Ozuna. Avila is one
of the more low-key, intriguing free-agent position players still out
there; only Judge, Joe Blanton Youth Jersey Joey Gallo and Khris Davis made hard contact on a more consistent basis
than he did a year ago (min. 150 balls in play).Sano might have been
baseball's best slugger through the first six weeks before a shin injury
derailed his season. Morrison remains available after busting out for a
career-high 38 home runs, with an MLB-high 17 of them coming off a
two-seamer or sinker. Goldschmidt placed himself back into the National
League Most Valuable Player discussion partly because of his significant
commitment to pulling the ball, and it appears he was all over
fastballs that pitchers tried to ride in on his hands.
