November 5, 2015

Hitting Like the Royals

Dodgers Digest does a nice job of rounding up the praise for the Royals high-contact rate. He also wonders if the Dodgers could benefit from that approach. A lot people seem to be asking that question.

The answer, I believe, is yes, there is a time and place for that approach. Back in 1999, I remember watching Pedro Martinez one-hit the Yankees, striking out 17. At the end of the seventh inning, when Martinez had 12 strikeouts, and the Red Sox led 2-1, I wanted Joe Torre to gather his batters together and tell the group to choke up on the bat and try to make contact. There was no way they were going to hit Martinez that night swinging for the fences. Instead, the Yankees kept taking big swings, and missing big, with five more strikeouts over the last two innings.

What the Royals teach us is the way to beat hard throwing pitchers with good stuff is to try to meet the ball. If the ball is coming in at 95 MPH, it will come off the bat pretty well if it can be struck. Batters should trade power for precision.

Should teams adopt it all the time? The Blue Jays led the majors in scoring by a wide margin, hitting home runs and drawing walks. The Jays also posted a good batting average, so they did a decent job of putting the ball in play. I still believe if the Jays and Royals played a very large number of seven game series, the Blue Jays would win most of them. It’s a great strategy against pitchers like Clayton Kershaw, the Mets staff, all the big strike out pitchers. I’m not sure it’s such a great idea against pitchers with middle of the road fastballs.

Note, too, that the other side of the coin is how do you stop the Royals offense? Opponents need to think about sacrificing some offense to get better defense against them. So if there is a choice between the middle infielder who hits and the one that is a wizard with the glove, take the wizard against the Royals. That might turn one or two batted balls into outs that might be hits with the other one playing.

1 thought on “Hitting Like the Royals

  1. Devon

    If the Royals success continues this way, do you think we’ll start seeing more base stealing again? Like the 80’s or even 70’s? You’ve got me thinking. If teams build up on defense to defend against contact hitting, & offenses begin to be built our more contact hitting, then it seems to me like base stealing numbers might increase with that.

    ReplyReply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *