8 ms·

Ted Williams's Strike Zone

157 points by dedalus 6y ago

vermilingua 6y ago
Seems baseball and poker have more in common than I’d realised.
- dhosek 6y ago
  Baseball is probably the most intellectual of the sports. There's a lot of strategy in it. The fielders are reading the signs the catcher gives the pitcher too so they have some idea of what to expect. The game is ultimately about pitching more than anything else as opposed to softball, which is a superficially similar game but the game is much more about batting and fielding.
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    Fast-pitch softball is quite a bit closer to baseball than slow-pitch.
    - dhosek 6y ago
      Fast pitch softball isn't a real thing. It's like a liger. Deb: What are you drawing? Napoleon Dynamite: A liger. Deb: What's a liger? Napoleon Dynamite: It's pretty much my favorite animal. It's like a lion and a tiger mixed... bred for its skills in magic.
      - reducesuffering 6y ago
        You're not aware ligers are a real thing? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liger
        dhosek 6y ago
        There are people who believe in fast-pitch softball too. Doesn't mean they're right.
rosywoozlechan 6y ago
I like this kind of technical technique break down in sports. It's interesting how you can break down a problem into a system like this and then focus on that system as a way to improve. It's similar to improving optimal outcomes in other systems, like driving more engagement in your app, improving uptime of your service, improving the speed at which your product flies off of shelves at the supermarket, improving your performance in a video game, or how optimal your shipping pipeline is from your manufacturing hub. It's just a very neat thing to do, figure out what your problem is, whatever it may be, in a way that you explain a path to improving outcomes.
- legitster 6y ago
  I find that it's almost impossible to appreciate and enjoy a sport until I start learning the technical pieces that determine decisions. Football is full of all of these random plays that make no sense. Until you learn things about how clock management works. Then they become very tense and exciting. The problem I have with baseball is that all of the minor strategic decisions are there, but you are talking about subtle changes that affect probability by a few percentage points. And that can take an entire series of games to see play out.
  - darkerside 6y ago
    Soccer is similar in that there is a tremendous amount of "luck" involved. Only a couple of goals are scored in a typical match, so teams can play excellent soccer for 90 minutes and still lose because a ball broke the wrong way. I think what's fun about that is that it mimics business (and life) much more. You have limited control over a few key factors, luck plays a large role, but if you play smart, you can see things break your way over a long period of time.
    - ashtonbaker 6y ago
      And of course this is how e.g. the Premier League and other top soccer leagues are scored - so that the best team emerges over the long term rather than in a noisy single-elimination playoff system. Which makes underdog stories like the 2015-16 Leicter City season all the more unbelievable and magical [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015%E2%80%9316_Leicester_City_F.C._season https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015%E2%80%9316_Leicester_City...
melling 6y ago
Warren Buffett has a picture of this in his office. He often uses it to explain how he invests. https://omaha.com/money/buffett/warren-buffett-waits-for-a-fat-pitch-before-taking-a-swing-and-making-an-acquisition/article_40026e55-60c2-54b6-95c5-bbee134d1696.html https://omaha.com/money/buffett/warren-buffett-waits-for-a-f... https://seekingalpha.com/article/4157066-science-of-investing-invest-within-your-circle-of-competence-to-crush-just-like-buffett https://seekingalpha.com/article/4157066-science-of-investin...
- slg 6y ago
  This version from Buffet starts to hit on a piece of the original Ted Williams version that might not be apparent for non-baseball fans. Williams is measuring batting average which is the number of hits divided by the number of at bats. Hits come on a single pitch but at bats are a collection of pitches. Therefore a pitch location for an at bat isn't really something that makes sense. This ends up biasing the results. You see the pitches in the middle of the zone are not just red because it is easier to hit balls in that location, although that is certainly part of it. Another factor is how those pitches fit into an overall at bat. Pitches aren't thrown at random parts of the zone. There is a strategy to when they are thrown in what location. Pitchers will often only intentionally throw the ball in the middle of the zone when they are behind in the count and are trying not to walk the batter. The batter know this so he is able to anticipate pitches in the center of the zone when he has the advantage. By ignoring balls thrown to his weaker areas, he often is able to get ahead of the pitcher which creates a multiplier and allows him to hit the ball even better when it is in those locations in which he already excels. Knowing his weaknesses allowed Williams to minimize the situations in which those weaknesses would come into play. That allows him to focus on his strengths and actually increase the number of opportunities that he had to act on those strengths. It is the equivalent of Buffett benefiting from compound interest that gives him more capital to invest the more successful his investments are.
  - dmurray 6y ago
    > By ignoring balls thrown to his weaker areas, he often is able to get ahead of the pitcher... Shouldn't this strategy tend get him behind in the count, not ahead? Since he'll be giving up more strikes. To get ahead he needs to avoid swinging at pitches outside the zone, but that's a trivially good strategy - if you can tell which pitches those are in time to not swing. I guess what you're getting at is that pitches aimed at the edge of the strike zone are more likely to miss it. So there's a double advantage in not swinging at pitches away from the centre of the stroke zone - they might be called balls, and if you do swing you won't be very successful statistically anyway.
dfxm12 6y ago
I know my strike zone. When a project gets handed my way that I know is not suited to my strengths/job description and lines up particularly well with someone else's on the team, I communicate that to my manager. Unfortunately, my manager is batting 1.000 when it comes to ignoring me :). I don't even get a token "this is something I need you to improve in". If I wasn't so busy or if every project wasn't "highest priority", it might not matter as much.
- fred_is_fred 6y ago
  "Which of the other highest priority projects should I deprioritize to work on this" or "If you had to rank these 5 highest priority projects from 1-5, what would that list look like"? Managers like this need to have it shown to them in black in white that you are at capacity. Once you push back, I suspect you will have better luck.
  - sulam 6y ago
    I take things one step further. "My assessment of the priority is A, B, C. I only have time to work on A, B. I am going to let TPTB know that I am focused on these, and that C isn't getting my time. Let me know if you disagree with my prioritization, but otherwise, this is how I plan to manage the situation."
    - fred_is_fred 6y ago
      That's another great approach. In almost every case this has happened to me simply pointing out that you cannot have everything as top priority caused the manager to reassess.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    > "If you had to rank these 5 highest priority projects from 1-5, what would that list look like"? 1, 1, 1, 1, and (a token) 2.
dhritzkiv 6y ago
A shame the resolution is so low. Zooming in, the numbers are illegible. I found a higher-resolution version[1] on a Deadspin article[2]. [1] https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/19e2qerif7ffcjpg.jpg https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/19e2qerif7... [2] https://deadspin.com/the-beautiful-infographics-of-ted-williamss-the-scienc-1511889371 https://deadspin.com/the-beautiful-infographics-of-ted-willi...
- dang 6y ago
  Ok, we'll change to that latter article from http://tedwilliams.com/_data/hzone.htm http://tedwilliams.com/_data/hzone.htm. Thanks! Edit: ok, changed back from https://deadspin.com/the-beautiful-infographics-of-ted-williamss-the-scienc-1511889371 https://deadspin.com/the-beautiful-infographics-of-ted-willi...
  - kevmo 6y ago
    That's significantly different content that completely omits the Ted Williams quote.
  - BoiledCabbage 6y ago
    Agreed that you probably want to change it back. The original posted the quote alongside it which was his philosophy at hitting, which can be applied to life in general. And Warren Buffett explicitly called out that philosophy as his approach to investing (which is why this was posted). The new link is just an article about infographics about baseball. Completely useless outside of baseball - mainly now just trivia about an athlete. Original link, and a comment with the link to higher resolution is best option.
    - gowld 6y ago
      I like the baseball dataviz better than the "metaphorr for life" pablum.
TwoBit 6y ago
Being that Ted Williams was the greatest batter of all time, for most other hitters the numbers would probably all be lower.
- trey-jones 6y ago
  Or he was the greatest batter of all time because of his dedication to these principles, and willingness to do the work to make them habit.
  - TwoBit 6y ago
    Not sure what you mean by starting with "or". Both statements may well be true.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
tonystubblebine 6y ago
I'd been using a baseball metaphor for my own change in strategy recently. I don't think I'm meant to hit home runs. I don't mean just that the luck hasn't struck. It's more that I don't feel particularly connected to the mainstream and where they are headed, am sort of unreasonable about how I think the world should work in a way that makes me the opposite of a heat seeking missile, don't love scalable acts like creating a business that can scale on top of cookie-cutter jobs or on top of advertising or virality. And sure, maybe I'll get lucky, and I'll get to that. But I decided to stop going up to the plate trying to hit a home run. When I had venture capital, I thought I was Barry Bonds. But now that I don't, I realized I'm Tony Gwynn. I go up to the plate trying to hit a single. If I have a runner on base, I try to move them over. For my intention, a single is a business that will generate $10k in profit, has the potential to continue for several years, and can be completely run by other people, leaving me with time to go up to the plate again. What I found last year is that I have enough time/energy to attempt about six singles and that I connected on three of them. And it feels similar this year. You can score a lot of runners just by hitting singles and I think there's a better chance that will happen for me than when I was trying to hit home runs. The driving force for me though was wanting different optimizations. It's depressing to strike out year after year. And so hitting singles has a lot more positive reinforcement. And then two, I wanted to make more money, which has happened because these singles pay off immediately. Last, there is always the possibility of an inside the park homerun. Maybe I'll hit a line drive to the outfield, the fielder will kick the ball, lose track of it, chase it down, overthrow third, and I'll come running home.
- a_t48 6y ago
  Ichiro made a career out of singles even though he was more than capable of knocking it out. You're in good company.
  - tonystubblebine 6y ago
    Exactly. One thing I like about both Gwynn and Ichiro is that they were technicians. A single is analyzable in a way that you can nearly feel like you can understand it. A home run, especially a Venture-backed home run, is a mystery with a lot of luck that defies logic or analysis.
callmeed 6y ago
Wild to see this on HN. I'm a huge baseball nut and Ted Williams was my father's hero so naturally I learned a lot about him as a kid. I believe this image is from his book The Science of Hitting. Williams has a fairly fascinating biography and I'd encourage people to browse his story a bit. A few interesting things about him: - He served in both World War II and the Korean War. During the latter, he crash landed his plane after it took heavy fire. - He was an amazing angler and at times held tarpon or bonefish records. I believe he's also in the fishing hall of fame. - He was actually a terrible baseball manager. Most people attribute this to giving no attention to pitchers and not being able to handle that his players simply weren't as gifted or as disciplined as him. - He was the last player to have a batting average > .400 for a full season [1] but amazingly did not win the Most Valuable Player award that year. It went to Joe DiMaggio. [1] For those who don't follow baseball, this is calculated as (hits / at bats) and generally the modern-day leaders vary between .330 and .375 (see https://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/batting_avg_top_ten.shtml https://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/batting_avg_top_t...).
- josephruscio 6y ago
  Last player to have a batting average >.400 is what he's famous for but in the last few decades (as "Moneyball"-style analytics took over the sport) "on-base percentage" is now generally considered a better measure. Ted Williams is the all-time career leader with .4817 and led the league in it a record twelve times (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Major_League_Baseball_career_on-base_percentage_leaders https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Major_League_Baseball_... )
- croissants 6y ago
  > He was an amazing angler Not the point of this post, but I may as well ask, what makes someone an "amazing angler"? I mostly associate Ted Williams with god-tier hand-eye coordination, which doesn't seem readily applicable to fishing?
  - callmeed 6y ago
    Well fly fishing in general is an activity that requires a good amount of coordination and practice to do well. For Williams specifically, I think it was essentially him applying the same perfectionism, discipline and scientific approach to it as he did to hitting a ball. Back to your question, I think its about "sportfishing"–that is, going after certain fish with certain gear, fishing in tournaments, holding records, etc. It's a thing (see https://igfa.org/ https://igfa.org/)
every 6y ago
Somewhat in the same vein, I can heartily recommend "Weaver on Strategy": https://tht.fangraphs.com/on-weaver-on-strategy/ https://tht.fangraphs.com/on-weaver-on-strategy/
phjesusthatguy3 6y ago
I'm surprised by the "The Slight Upswing is Best" graphic. I understand Cub-Scout-softball-playing-me isn't any example at all for what a professional-league baseball player should do, but I always internalized swinging up and through the pitch, and I was the best batter in my league. Is (or was) there some explanation for why you would want to swing flat at a ball?
- OldHand2018 6y ago
  You'll notice in the bottom right of the graphic that it says "*exaggerated". Timing is important - the bat is not presented at a constant angle to the ball despite what the graphic implies! You could hit the ball 500 feet but on the wrong side of the foul pole, and you've accomplished nothing. Modern baseball analytics places a very high value on the the "Three true outcomes" [1]. Batters are "optimizing" for the exit angle of the ball leaving the bat - we're in a juiced ball era (perhaps even a juiced batter era) and home runs are valued very highly. You'll notice that strikeouts are also setting records. Nobody seems to care as much about ground balls or line drives and that seems to be what a "flatter" swing gives you. If we were playing with the same baseball as Ted Williams played with, you'd have a lot more fly ball outs. I'm pretty sure that his "slight upswing" was actually very slight compared to current players. [1] https://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Three_True_Outcomes https://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Three_True_Outcom...
wwarner 6y ago
That's a great batter's point of view. Here's a pitcher's POV [0], a poster breaking down the different pitches. ”Hitting is timing. Pitching is upsetting timing.“ [0] https://s3.amazonaws.com/my.llfiles.com/00120380/pitch-grips.pdf https://s3.amazonaws.com/my.llfiles.com/00120380/pitch-grips...

157 points by dedalus 6y ago

vermilingua 6y ago

Seems baseball and poker have more in common than I’d realised.

dhosek 6y ago
Baseball is probably the most intellectual of the sports. There's a lot of strategy in it. The fielders are reading the signs the catcher gives the pitcher too so they have some idea of what to expect. The game is ultimately about pitching more than anything else as opposed to softball, which is a superficially similar game but the game is much more about batting and fielding.
- sokoloff 6y ago
  Fast-pitch softball is quite a bit closer to baseball than slow-pitch.
  - dhosek 6y ago
    Fast pitch softball isn't a real thing. It's like a liger. Deb: What are you drawing? Napoleon Dynamite: A liger. Deb: What's a liger? Napoleon Dynamite: It's pretty much my favorite animal. It's like a lion and a tiger mixed... bred for its skills in magic.
    - reducesuffering 6y ago
      You're not aware ligers are a real thing? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liger
      - dhosek 6y ago
        There are people who believe in fast-pitch softball too. Doesn't mean they're right.

rosywoozlechan 6y ago

I like this kind of technical technique break down in sports. It's interesting how you can break down a problem into a system like this and then focus on that system as a way to improve. It's similar to improving optimal outcomes in other systems, like driving more engagement in your app, improving uptime of your service, improving the speed at which your product flies off of shelves at the supermarket, improving your performance in a video game, or how optimal your shipping pipeline is from your manufacturing hub. It's just a very neat thing to do, figure out what your problem is, whatever it may be, in a way that you explain a path to improving outcomes.

legitster 6y ago
I find that it's almost impossible to appreciate and enjoy a sport until I start learning the technical pieces that determine decisions. Football is full of all of these random plays that make no sense. Until you learn things about how clock management works. Then they become very tense and exciting. The problem I have with baseball is that all of the minor strategic decisions are there, but you are talking about subtle changes that affect probability by a few percentage points. And that can take an entire series of games to see play out.
- darkerside 6y ago
  Soccer is similar in that there is a tremendous amount of "luck" involved. Only a couple of goals are scored in a typical match, so teams can play excellent soccer for 90 minutes and still lose because a ball broke the wrong way. I think what's fun about that is that it mimics business (and life) much more. You have limited control over a few key factors, luck plays a large role, but if you play smart, you can see things break your way over a long period of time.
  - ashtonbaker 6y ago
    And of course this is how e.g. the Premier League and other top soccer leagues are scored - so that the best team emerges over the long term rather than in a noisy single-elimination playoff system. Which makes underdog stories like the 2015-16 Leicter City season all the more unbelievable and magical [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015%E2%80%9316_Leicester_City_F.C._season https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015%E2%80%9316_Leicester_City...

melling 6y ago

Warren Buffett has a picture of this in his office. He often uses it to explain how he invests. https://omaha.com/money/buffett/warren-buffett-waits-for-a-fat-pitch-before-taking-a-swing-and-making-an-acquisition/article_40026e55-60c2-54b6-95c5-bbee134d1696.html https://omaha.com/money/buffett/warren-buffett-waits-for-a-f... https://seekingalpha.com/article/4157066-science-of-investing-invest-within-your-circle-of-competence-to-crush-just-like-buffett https://seekingalpha.com/article/4157066-science-of-investin...

slg 6y ago
This version from Buffet starts to hit on a piece of the original Ted Williams version that might not be apparent for non-baseball fans. Williams is measuring batting average which is the number of hits divided by the number of at bats. Hits come on a single pitch but at bats are a collection of pitches. Therefore a pitch location for an at bat isn't really something that makes sense. This ends up biasing the results. You see the pitches in the middle of the zone are not just red because it is easier to hit balls in that location, although that is certainly part of it. Another factor is how those pitches fit into an overall at bat. Pitches aren't thrown at random parts of the zone. There is a strategy to when they are thrown in what location. Pitchers will often only intentionally throw the ball in the middle of the zone when they are behind in the count and are trying not to walk the batter. The batter know this so he is able to anticipate pitches in the center of the zone when he has the advantage. By ignoring balls thrown to his weaker areas, he often is able to get ahead of the pitcher which creates a multiplier and allows him to hit the ball even better when it is in those locations in which he already excels. Knowing his weaknesses allowed Williams to minimize the situations in which those weaknesses would come into play. That allows him to focus on his strengths and actually increase the number of opportunities that he had to act on those strengths. It is the equivalent of Buffett benefiting from compound interest that gives him more capital to invest the more successful his investments are.
- dmurray 6y ago
  > By ignoring balls thrown to his weaker areas, he often is able to get ahead of the pitcher... Shouldn't this strategy tend get him behind in the count, not ahead? Since he'll be giving up more strikes. To get ahead he needs to avoid swinging at pitches outside the zone, but that's a trivially good strategy - if you can tell which pitches those are in time to not swing. I guess what you're getting at is that pitches aimed at the edge of the strike zone are more likely to miss it. So there's a double advantage in not swinging at pitches away from the centre of the stroke zone - they might be called balls, and if you do swing you won't be very successful statistically anyway.

dfxm12 6y ago

I know my strike zone. When a project gets handed my way that I know is not suited to my strengths/job description and lines up particularly well with someone else's on the team, I communicate that to my manager. Unfortunately, my manager is batting 1.000 when it comes to ignoring me :). I don't even get a token "this is something I need you to improve in". If I wasn't so busy or if every project wasn't "highest priority", it might not matter as much.

fred_is_fred 6y ago
"Which of the other highest priority projects should I deprioritize to work on this" or "If you had to rank these 5 highest priority projects from 1-5, what would that list look like"? Managers like this need to have it shown to them in black in white that you are at capacity. Once you push back, I suspect you will have better luck.
- sulam 6y ago
  I take things one step further. "My assessment of the priority is A, B, C. I only have time to work on A, B. I am going to let TPTB know that I am focused on these, and that C isn't getting my time. Let me know if you disagree with my prioritization, but otherwise, this is how I plan to manage the situation."
  - fred_is_fred 6y ago
    That's another great approach. In almost every case this has happened to me simply pointing out that you cannot have everything as top priority caused the manager to reassess.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- sokoloff 6y ago
  > "If you had to rank these 5 highest priority projects from 1-5, what would that list look like"? 1, 1, 1, 1, and (a token) 2.

dhritzkiv 6y ago

A shame the resolution is so low. Zooming in, the numbers are illegible. I found a higher-resolution version[1] on a Deadspin article[2]. [1] https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/19e2qerif7ffcjpg.jpg https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/19e2qerif7... [2] https://deadspin.com/the-beautiful-infographics-of-ted-williamss-the-scienc-1511889371 https://deadspin.com/the-beautiful-infographics-of-ted-willi...

dang 6y ago
Ok, we'll change to that latter article from http://tedwilliams.com/_data/hzone.htm http://tedwilliams.com/_data/hzone.htm. Thanks! Edit: ok, changed back from https://deadspin.com/the-beautiful-infographics-of-ted-williamss-the-scienc-1511889371 https://deadspin.com/the-beautiful-infographics-of-ted-willi...
- kevmo 6y ago
  That's significantly different content that completely omits the Ted Williams quote.
- BoiledCabbage 6y ago
  Agreed that you probably want to change it back. The original posted the quote alongside it which was his philosophy at hitting, which can be applied to life in general. And Warren Buffett explicitly called out that philosophy as his approach to investing (which is why this was posted). The new link is just an article about infographics about baseball. Completely useless outside of baseball - mainly now just trivia about an athlete. Original link, and a comment with the link to higher resolution is best option.
  - gowld 6y ago
    I like the baseball dataviz better than the "metaphorr for life" pablum.

TwoBit 6y ago

Being that Ted Williams was the greatest batter of all time, for most other hitters the numbers would probably all be lower.

trey-jones 6y ago
Or he was the greatest batter of all time because of his dedication to these principles, and willingness to do the work to make them habit.
- TwoBit 6y ago
  Not sure what you mean by starting with "or". Both statements may well be true.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

tonystubblebine 6y ago

I'd been using a baseball metaphor for my own change in strategy recently. I don't think I'm meant to hit home runs. I don't mean just that the luck hasn't struck. It's more that I don't feel particularly connected to the mainstream and where they are headed, am sort of unreasonable about how I think the world should work in a way that makes me the opposite of a heat seeking missile, don't love scalable acts like creating a business that can scale on top of cookie-cutter jobs or on top of advertising or virality. And sure, maybe I'll get lucky, and I'll get to that. But I decided to stop going up to the plate trying to hit a home run. When I had venture capital, I thought I was Barry Bonds. But now that I don't, I realized I'm Tony Gwynn. I go up to the plate trying to hit a single. If I have a runner on base, I try to move them over. For my intention, a single is a business that will generate $10k in profit, has the potential to continue for several years, and can be completely run by other people, leaving me with time to go up to the plate again. What I found last year is that I have enough time/energy to attempt about six singles and that I connected on three of them. And it feels similar this year. You can score a lot of runners just by hitting singles and I think there's a better chance that will happen for me than when I was trying to hit home runs. The driving force for me though was wanting different optimizations. It's depressing to strike out year after year. And so hitting singles has a lot more positive reinforcement. And then two, I wanted to make more money, which has happened because these singles pay off immediately. Last, there is always the possibility of an inside the park homerun. Maybe I'll hit a line drive to the outfield, the fielder will kick the ball, lose track of it, chase it down, overthrow third, and I'll come running home.

a_t48 6y ago
Ichiro made a career out of singles even though he was more than capable of knocking it out. You're in good company.
- tonystubblebine 6y ago
  Exactly. One thing I like about both Gwynn and Ichiro is that they were technicians. A single is analyzable in a way that you can nearly feel like you can understand it. A home run, especially a Venture-backed home run, is a mystery with a lot of luck that defies logic or analysis.

callmeed 6y ago

Wild to see this on HN. I'm a huge baseball nut and Ted Williams was my father's hero so naturally I learned a lot about him as a kid. I believe this image is from his book The Science of Hitting. Williams has a fairly fascinating biography and I'd encourage people to browse his story a bit. A few interesting things about him: - He served in both World War II and the Korean War. During the latter, he crash landed his plane after it took heavy fire. - He was an amazing angler and at times held tarpon or bonefish records. I believe he's also in the fishing hall of fame. - He was actually a terrible baseball manager. Most people attribute this to giving no attention to pitchers and not being able to handle that his players simply weren't as gifted or as disciplined as him. - He was the last player to have a batting average > .400 for a full season [1] but amazingly did not win the Most Valuable Player award that year. It went to Joe DiMaggio. [1] For those who don't follow baseball, this is calculated as (hits / at bats) and generally the modern-day leaders vary between .330 and .375 (see https://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/batting_avg_top_ten.shtml https://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/batting_avg_top_t...).

josephruscio 6y ago
Last player to have a batting average >.400 is what he's famous for but in the last few decades (as "Moneyball"-style analytics took over the sport) "on-base percentage" is now generally considered a better measure. Ted Williams is the all-time career leader with .4817 and led the league in it a record twelve times (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Major_League_Baseball_career_on-base_percentage_leaders https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Major_League_Baseball_... )
croissants 6y ago
> He was an amazing angler Not the point of this post, but I may as well ask, what makes someone an "amazing angler"? I mostly associate Ted Williams with god-tier hand-eye coordination, which doesn't seem readily applicable to fishing?
- callmeed 6y ago
  Well fly fishing in general is an activity that requires a good amount of coordination and practice to do well. For Williams specifically, I think it was essentially him applying the same perfectionism, discipline and scientific approach to it as he did to hitting a ball. Back to your question, I think its about "sportfishing"–that is, going after certain fish with certain gear, fishing in tournaments, holding records, etc. It's a thing (see https://igfa.org/ https://igfa.org/)

every 6y ago

Somewhat in the same vein, I can heartily recommend "Weaver on Strategy": https://tht.fangraphs.com/on-weaver-on-strategy/ https://tht.fangraphs.com/on-weaver-on-strategy/

phjesusthatguy3 6y ago

I'm surprised by the "The Slight Upswing is Best" graphic. I understand Cub-Scout-softball-playing-me isn't any example at all for what a professional-league baseball player should do, but I always internalized swinging up and through the pitch, and I was the best batter in my league. Is (or was) there some explanation for why you would want to swing flat at a ball?

OldHand2018 6y ago
You'll notice in the bottom right of the graphic that it says "*exaggerated". Timing is important - the bat is not presented at a constant angle to the ball despite what the graphic implies! You could hit the ball 500 feet but on the wrong side of the foul pole, and you've accomplished nothing. Modern baseball analytics places a very high value on the the "Three true outcomes" [1]. Batters are "optimizing" for the exit angle of the ball leaving the bat - we're in a juiced ball era (perhaps even a juiced batter era) and home runs are valued very highly. You'll notice that strikeouts are also setting records. Nobody seems to care as much about ground balls or line drives and that seems to be what a "flatter" swing gives you. If we were playing with the same baseball as Ted Williams played with, you'd have a lot more fly ball outs. I'm pretty sure that his "slight upswing" was actually very slight compared to current players. [1] https://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Three_True_Outcomes https://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Three_True_Outcom...

wwarner 6y ago

That's a great batter's point of view. Here's a pitcher's POV [0], a poster breaking down the different pitches. ”Hitting is timing. Pitching is upsetting timing.“ [0] https://s3.amazonaws.com/my.llfiles.com/00120380/pitch-grips.pdf https://s3.amazonaws.com/my.llfiles.com/00120380/pitch-grips...