Marco's Baseball Blog-O-Roonie 2021: HOT HITTERS

 

MARCO’S BASEBALL BLOG-O-ROONIE 2021: HOT HITTERS

There’s almost nothing as fun in baseball as when some hitter goes cosmic and starts getting a hit 3 or 4 times a game for like a week. A no-hitter is riveting for that one game...miraculous fielding plays are ooh and ahh for a while, but when a player just goes bonkers at the plate and starts unloading extra-base hits and hitting walk offs right and left...that’s the game at it’s exciting peak.

‘Oh boy, here comes this guy again...Don Mattingly has now homered in seven straight games...whoops! Make it eight straight!”

“Rennie Stennett of the Pittsburgh Pirates has just gone seven for seven in a ballgame at Wrigley Field.”

“Joe DiMaggio has just gone 3 for 5 to extend his hitting streak to fifty-six games!”

“Big Papi Ortiz gets on base 19 times in 25 plate appearances for OPS of 1.948 and is named MVP of 2013 series.”

“Chris Taylor of the Dodgers hits his third home run of this playoff game!”

“Yordan Alvarez goes 4 for 4 with two doubles, a single and a triple to lead Houston over Boston.”

Baseball is such a random thing that it’s almost unpredictable. All we really know is that the law of baseball averages tends to keep batting averages under .500 over any fifty game span no matter how hot the hitter. And sometimes he’ll bat Mendoza level (under .200) for a season. (Cody Bellinger? Are you still there?)

Chris Taylor of the Dodgers was an All Star in 2021 but in September he hit .104 with an on base of .154 and slugged .188. That’s really, really low. Then in the Playoffs he went off like a Roman candle and won big games with big hits. What happened?

Well, to put it succinctly, Chris Taylor is a good fundamental hitter with an aggressive style who never met a fastball he didn’t want to swing at and the opposing pitchers, for some reason...thought they should pitch him fastballs up. He had a great time blasting long drives into the stands or off the walls for the whole playoff run.

Kike Hernandez of the Red Sox was also white hot...at least until Game 4 of the Divisional Playoffs against the Astros. Then he went stone cold at the plate because Dusty Baker decided to watch him try to hit sinkers and sliders instead of change ups and fastballs. Suddenly, no more chest high straight meat to deposit over the Monster.

It’s my contention that Taylor and Hernandez are both examples of happy circumstance: The pitchers were throwing it where they wanted to hit it. And when you’re that hot, your long drives bounce off the fence just inches above the left-fielder’s glove and your wounded duck broken bat mis-hits fall just in front of the center fielder who had just been moved back to defend against your awesome display of recent power. Tends to inflate the average.

Most of Taylor’s hits were pulled. Most of Hernandez’ hits were pulled or to center. No shame but neither of these guys is really that good a hitter.

Eddie Rosario hasn’t looked like a good hitter for his career. He was non-tendered by Minnesota two years ago, then traded for a washed up Pablo Sandoval by Cleveland just to dump his salary. He found something he liked in Atlanta and he’s proved to be their Big Noise in this season’s playoffs. Rosario is not being fed pitches he likes. From what I’ve seen he’s spraying the ball all over the lot. He’s a leftie who’s pulling the inside pitch for homers and slapping the ball down the third base line against the shift. He’s getting the barrel on the breaking balls he’s seeing and not futilely trying to pull them with power. Very impressive. His lifetime OPS is .782 but for some reason it’s .903 since he got to Atlanta and is off the board this playoff season. He’s also hitting like a demon in the clutch. He beat the Dodgers with his bat and his glove in Game 6.

Eddie reminds me of Harold Baines, although Hall of Famer Baines was a better hitter for average. Harold also had a twenty year career with high numbers.

Yordan Alvarez is the fourth Hot Hitter that has taken a turn at being the Man as THE offensive player of this year’s post season. And Yordan is the one guy that I would have to say is a real HITTER now and in the future. He was rookie of the year when he came into the league in 2019, had knee issues in 2020 and hit well this year. His playoff OPS is .938 and he was MVP of the ALCS this year.

Yordan has something going that these other hitters don’t: he can hit the ball to Beaumont. His kind of power (he’s 6’5” and 225 lbs.) let’s him swing easy at pitches off the plate and still hit it over the fence. Anything over the plate is likely to wind up over the center field wall. So far, the Red Sox and Braves have the same remedy for the Alvarez situation...Ball Four! Also, they’re not letting him bat against a right handed pitcher. This guy scares people. He’s the second coming of Willie McCovey.

Good hitters who also hit with power are a special breed. Alvarez is still developing, but he’s already a must to avoid for pitchers. The truly great hitters in baseball history come in differing types. Now these are the guys who would get hot and stay hot season after season. I’ve run this down before so I’ll keep it short:

Scientists: hitters who study the game and maximize batting average over the long ball.

Ty Cobb, Rod Carew, Tony Gwynn, Wade Boggs, Ichiro. They all could hit .350 in their sleep. But don’t expect more than fifteen homers a season out of them. All of them used the opposite field to maximum effect.

Beast Savants: not really the thinking types, these guys overpowered the other team by hitting the ball out of the yard until the outfielders had to move back and let their singles drop in. The result? 40-50 home run guys who also hit .350+. Babe Ruth, Jimmy Foxx, Hank Greenberg, Lou Gehrig, John Mize, ..and more recently since pitching got much deeper, faster and trickier and outfielders got more athletic and gloves got more high tech and hitters faced a new pitcher every at bat...Papi Ortiz, Miguel Cabreras, Albert Pujols, Manny Ramirez, Mike Trout.

Special Cases: Rogers Hornsby...he won two triple crowns as a three time .400 hitter with 40 homer power. He was a Scientist AND a Beast. As was…

Ted Williams… probably the ultimate Scientific hitter of all times. His power kept the outfield deep. He could have hit over .400 a couple more times if he’d been content to go to left against the shift. But he would have had to sacrifice home runs and be content with 60 doubles a season off the Monster.

Joe DiMaggio combined a brainy approach to the game with raw, God-given talent. At his best, Joe would just destroy pitching staffs single handedly.

Stan Musial hit in the .350 to .370 range year after year and hit 39 homers a couple of times. He was so blessed with great eyes and quick hands that he barely had to study pitchers...he could just hit them. A spray hitter first and foremost, he could turn it on when he played in a friendly park like Ebbet’s Field and be an ultimate bomber.

Mickey Mantle combined the threat of on base speed with the biggest power bat in baseball. Speed gave Mick the ability to beat out an extra twenty infield hits a year that gave him averages of .353 and .365 in his prime while still being a 50 homer threat. Willie Mays was close to the Mick in power and had years of .345 and .347. Aaron and Frank Robinson were similar power/average hitters with good speed.

George Brett...A real Science hitter made the choice to hit .330 and above with 20 homers instead of .290 with 35. This was mostly because of the home park he played in. Kaufmann was Yellowstone.

Rockies: a couple of Colorado Rockies had big seasons in the 1990’s and 2000’s. I’m not sure how to score them because of the Mile High effect and the steroid era but Todd Helton and Larry Walker both had multiple seasons where they batted above .350 with 40+ home runs. It’s not their fault if they were hitting in Colorado.

Other hitters of the steroid years will not be discussed here. I’ve already mentioned Manny Ramirez and I’m not sure about some of the others. Broke my own rule dammit.

SHORT PLAYOFF NOTES:

TWO SONGS FOR THE BOSTON RED SOX:

...”I’m Sittin on Top of the World” games two and three of the ALDS. “Nobody knows you When You’re Down and Out” games four and five and six.

THE STOLEN BASE RETURNS: Teams got tired of waiting around for another home run and went out and played some real baseball with steals and productive outs, just to get something on the board. Result...40 steals and 2 caught stealings. (Or something like that.)

BUT NOT THE BUNT: the Red Sox , desperate for a run, had runners on second and third with nobody out and failed to score. They even had a right handed batter up with nobody on the shifted right side and had a strike out instead of dropping any kind of bunt down. If it’s on the first base side it’s an automatic run. No dice.. Renfro mght finally do something except strike out ...nope.

Astros in 6...my pick.

Later...