We hear it sometimes, don’t we? A guy will have a ten-pitch at-bat and the broadcaster says so-and-so is a smart hitter. Fans, too, make assumptions about hitters: if I asked you who the smartest hitters in the game were, you could rattle off a list, name a few names.

In an earlier article I stated that Manny Ramirez is a smart hitter, an intelligent hitter. This statement was based on subjective elements, on personal observations. I’ve watched a lot of Red Sox games over the years, and I’ve always been amazed at Manny’s capacity to put together a good at-bat. He exudes a calm in the batter’s box that is remarkable. He has an uncanny ability to adjust to pitches: as he’s aged he’s become adept at hitting to the opposite field: outside fastball he used to drive to left are now looped hard to right, or ignored entirely. Observationally, he has always seemed a smart hitter.

But a few readers raised the question: am I simply confusing ‘good’ with ‘smart’? Certainly, Manny is a ‘good’ hitter, even a great one. But that doesn’t mean that he is ‘smart.’

This is, perhaps, a semantic difference. One could argue that any good hitter is, by extension, a smart hitter, that there exists a correlation between success at something and one’s intelligence.

At the same time we all know people who possess more or less intelligence in various walks of life. We have friends who are good at finding the right relationships, and friends who, for whatever reason, wind up dating the wrong types, over and over again. It has nothing to do with overall intellect, but some people are smart enough to date the right people, and some, well, some aren’t. All doctors are smart, I suppose, but some doctors have the added benefit of being able to emotionally connect with patients, while others can’t. They are emotionally intelligent.

For two summers during college I worked as a line cook at a busy chain restaurant on Cape Cod. I’d work the weekend brunch rushes, the busy Friday and Saturday nights when all the restaurants on Route 128 had lines out the door for tables. I was a terrible cook: I was slow, clumsy, and awkward. I couldn’t read the orders as they came over, couldn’t make the quick counts of how many burgers and how many pieces of chicken or fish had to go on the grill. I couldn’t plate the food fast enough, couldn’t figure the rhythm between me and the other cook, the correct balance of tasks. I hated the work: I hated the smell of the giant grill and the heat of the place. I hated the burns and the waitresses who whined about late order and cold food. I loathed the early morning shift: it started at 4:30 a.m., and our first task was cooking 1000 pieces of frozen bacon.

I worked a lot of shifts with another guy who was, by almost any measure, a terrible employee: he often missed shifts entirely, and when he did make it in he usually came late, sometimes still drunk. He smoked cigarettes constantly, ducking out behind the dumpsters to light Marlboro 100’s because they lasted longer than the regular cigarettes. He got mad at managers, cursed waitresses, and stole food. He was seventeen, and close to dropping out of the same high school I had graduated from years before. He wasn’t dumb, but he just couldn’t see how school could ever offer him anything worth a damn.

He was a lousy employee, sure, but the guy was the best cook I ever worked with. When things got busy or when I had gotten in his way one too many times, he’d order me to tend the deep fryer, and he’d take both the grill and the prep table, alternating between the two with a speed that I could not hope to match.

What skills did he have over me? We were the same physical size, but I was the one who had graduated from high school and was in college. I was the hard worker, the nice guy, while he was lazy and crass. Hell, I was less hung over than he was most morning. That has to be worth something.

Yet he was the better cook, by a mile. He was the better cook because he could see the things I couldn’t. His brain, somehow, was right for the work, just as mine was completely wrong. His wiring was good for it; it was so good it made up for any other failing he had. And because of this, his missteps were tolerated, because in sum he was a good employee. He screwed up in a lot of ways, but when things got busy he did the work of two cooks. He was that good, and that was worth all the annoyances. Whatever else his failing, he was as smart a cook as I was dumb.

Measuring Hitting Intelligence: Six Questions

Like cooks, I think there are intelligent hitters, guys whose brains are wired to utilize every advantage, who manipulate every system to get the best reward from their skills. And I think there are hitters who waste their talent, guys who don’t adjust, who don’t learn, who don’t maximize their abilities. Guys who retire at 34 when they could’ve played to 40, who retire at 380 homers when they could’ve gotten to 400.

So how can we define an intelligent hitter? What are the qualities that an intelligent hitter possesses? Below are a series of questions that, I think, give us a frame to answer that question: 

1. Does the hitter show improvements as they approach the peak of their ability? Are they a better hitter at 24 than they were at 21, or are they the same player at 24 that they were at 21? Do they reach base more and make fewer outs? Does their platoon differential even out (if they are left-handed hitters, do they learn how to hit southpaws?) Does their walk rate increase? Does their strikeout rate decrease?

2. Does the hitter remain effective for a long time? Is the hitter still effective at 30? At 35? At 40? How long are they effective? Is their decline slow or rapid? Does the hitter show a capacity to adjust, to change his skills?

3. Within the context of their league, does the hitter have a good on-base percentage AND a good slugging percentage? As the two goals of hitting are getting on base and advancing runners, how well does this hitter achieve both of those goals?

4. Does the hitter walk a lot? Do they see a lot of pitches? Are they patient at the plate, or do they tend to swing at the first pitch they like? What is their strikeout-to-walk ratio like?

5. If you looked at the player’s career, does it have a clear and gradual arc? How consistent is the player, year in and year out? Are there outlier seasons, seasons that, for better or worse, don’t fit with the rest of his career?

6. Does the hitter speak intelligently about hitting? Does he have a specific theory about hitting? Is he known to seek help, or adjust, when he struggles? Is he linked to a hitting coach? After his career, was he hired as a hitting coach, and did the team’s offense improve?   

Does It Work, Part One – The Splendid Hitter

Who is the prototypically intelligent hitter? Who is, beyond any shadow of doubt, an intelligent hitter? If we asked around, what names would come up?

Let’s try Ted Williams.

1. Does the hitter show improvements as they approach the peak of their ability?
Absolutely. Williams was a fine hitter at 21, and he only got better. Though his absence during World War 2 makes it harder to judge, Williams clearly showed improvement as he aged. His K-rate deceased and his walk rate stayed very good. His on-base percentage was .436 in his rookie year: he didn’t fall below that until he was 40 years old.  

2. Does the hitter remain effective for a long time?
Again, he certainly did. Williams led the league in on-base percentage and slugging percentage when he was thirty-eight. In his last year in the major leagues, in 1960, Williams had a better on-base and slugging percentage than the league leaders.

3. Within the context of their league, does the hitter have a good on-base percentage AND a good slugging percentage?
Yes. Obviously.

4. Does the hitter walk a lot?
Again, yes. Williams was one of the most selective players of all-time. There are dozens of anecdotes about Williams’s patience at the plate. His strikeout-to-walk ratio was very good, and it improved as he aged.

5. If you looked at the player’s career, does it have a clear and gradual arc?
Well, the war years make it tricky, but his career has a clear arc. He didn’t have a bad year, by his standards, until 1959, when he was 40 years old. No outliers, no seasons way above or below his standards.

6. Does the hitter speak intelligently about hitting?
Obviously yes. Ted’s autobiography is littered with opinions about hitting. Every interview with him illustrates that he thought a great deal about hitting, that he approached it with a near-scientific zeal. He was an effective major league manager: the Senators had an OPS+ of 97 in 1968. A year later, with Williams at the helm, the team OPS+ was 112. And he loved to talk hitting: there are dozens of interviews with him talking hitting with guys like Gwynn and Boggs and Mattingly.

Does It Work, Part 2 – Kong the Anti-Intellectual

As for the anti-Williams, the proto-typically ‘unintelligent’ hitter…it’s hard to pick someone for a few reasons. One: it’s difficult to find anticodtal evidence for unintelligent hitting, as (somehow) it doesn’t take hold of the imagination the way stories about Ted Williams do. And it’s not fun to call anyone unintelligent.

How about uncompromising? I think Dave Kingman was about as uncompromising as any player ever was. Certainly, his personality reflects this. Let’s go with King Kong:

1. Does the hitter show improvements as they approach the peak of their ability?
No. Kingman’s on-base and slugging percentages, and his Run Created per Game, Age 22-28:

There is no growth there, no improvement. He started making more outs, creating less runs.

2. Does the hitter remain effective for a long time?
Again, no. Kingman was an effective hitter from Age 29 to Age 32, and again at Age 35. He hit a lot of homeruns, but he was almost certainly the least effective 30-homer guy who ever played. His skills never changed: he tried to hit a homer every time he came up to the plate.

3. Within the context of their league, does the hitter have a good on-base percentage AND a good slugging percentage?
No. Kingman’s lifetime on-base percentage was just .302, which is terrible. He hit a lot of homeruns, but that skill is offset by the huge number of outs he made: 5381 outs in 6677 at-bats.

4. Does the hitter walk a lot?
No. Kingman walked 608 times in his career. His career high was 62, when he was 36 years old. He struck out three times for every walk, posting a poor strikeout-to-walk ratio.

5. If you looked at the player’s career, does it have a clear and gradual arc?
No. Kingman’s career is all over the place. He was good in 1981, terrible in 1982 and 1983. He was good in 1975 and 1976, but terrible in 1974 and 1977.  

6. Does the hitter speak intelligently about hitting?
I don’t know.

Does It Work, Part 3 – The Raj

As interesting as the debate between Ted Williams and Dave Kingman is, perhaps I’m being unfair to Mr. Kingman by placing him in such illustrious company.

I’ve always linked Ted Williams and Rogers Hornsby in my mind. Both were elite hitters: Ted is routinely cited as the greatest hitter of all-time, while Hornsby is often cited as the greatest righthanded hitter of all-time. They were both known for their rigorous training regimines: Horsnby famously refused to watch “moving pictures’ because he thought the flickering light would damage his eyes. They are the only two men who won two Triple Crowns, and both of the guys were widely thought of, in their time, as jerks. Despite this, both men managed in the major leagues.

So how does the Raj do?

1. Does the hitter show improvements as they approach the peak of their ability?
He did, yes. Hornsby’s statistics are slightly difficult to interpret, because he came into the majors as the game was changing. He was a rookie in 1915, and his numbers during those first years in the majors seem like nothing compared to what he did later. But that is an illustration of the times, not his abilities. Hornsby was a fine young hitter, and he got better as he aged.  

2. Does the hitter remain effective for a long time?
No he did not. Or: he was effective, but he didn’t play very much at all. He stopped being a major league regular at age 33.

3. Within the context of their league, does the hitter have a good on-base percentage AND a good slugging percentage?
Yes he did.

4. Does the hitter walk a lot?
Sure. And he drew more walks as he aged, a sure sign of adjusting, of sharpening skills.

5. If you looked at the player’s career, does it have a clear and gradual arc?
Well, years 19-33 have a nice arc, but things get a little crazy towards the end. It’s surprising that Hornsby, who was almost certainly still a good hitter, couldn’t stay in a lineup. I don’t know why this is so, but isn’t the fact that he was done as a regular at 33 a strike against his hitting intelligence? I mean, he was still a very good hitter, but for whatever reason, whether it was temper or attitude or a desire to manage, Hornsby couldn’t stay in a lineup. He couldn’t even stay with a team: he was traded a lot in his later years, as was Dave Kingman.

6. Does the hitter speak intelligently about hitting? Yes, he did. He was like Ted Williams in that regard.
So it’s a push. Hornsby does well by some standards: he was a terrific young hitter who improved. But he didn’t age well; he wasn’t able to stay in the game after his skills started to atrophy. An intelligent hitter, but not quite in the same class as Ted.

Conclusions (and Does It Work, Part 4)

First: it’s important to note that these questions are a way of framing a discussion. It is hardly my intention for this to be a definitive measure. It is unlikely that most player will do as well as Ted Williams does, or as poorly as Dave Kingman. And I want to clarify that I didn’t design the study to fit those specific players. I wrote the list of questions down before thinking about Williams or Kingman. I wasn’t trying to conform the questions to fit a certain kind of player: I was trying to determine what characteristics would correlate with hitting intelligence. And it’s not an entirely fair metric: catchers and middle infielders are probably hurt by these measures.

There are loads of active players who do well on this metric, guys who we recognize as good hitters: Ramirez, A-Rod, Chipper Jones, Jeter, Pujols. People perceive Vladimir Guerrero is a wild hacker: we all know that he can hit any pitch, anywhere. But by this measure he rates as an intelligent hitter: his K-rate have decreased and his walk rate has held steady. He’s been a very consistent player…we just have to see how he ages. With guys like Vlad it’s hard because we don’t know how their careers will end. These questions are best asked after it’s all over, when we can sit back and look at the whole story.

I am reluctant to label any player as ‘unintelligent.’ The term ‘uncompromising’ seems more apt, less insulting. And I think it’s important to realize that a player can still be a fine hitter, even if they are uncompromising.  

You probably want a name, I suppose. Alfonso Soriano doesn’t do well on these questions. Let’s say he’s ‘uncompromising.’ I mean, everything about him is uncompromising: he was reluctant to move off second base, he continues to be reluctant about hitting anywhere but leadoff. He never takes walks, thinks he can hit anything out of the park.

1. Does the hitter show improvements as they approach the peak of their ability?
Not really, no. Soriano was 25 when he made it to the majors, and he had an okay season at that age. At 26 and 27 he was good, but then he regressed a bit, took a step backwards.

2. Does the hitter remain effective for a long time?
We’ll have to wait and see. My guess is that Alfonso Soriano will age very poorly.

3. Within the context of their league, does the hitter have a good on-base percentage AND a good slugging percentage?
Obviously not. The National League had a .332 on-base percentage last year. Soriano’s career on-base percentage is lower than that, .328.

4. Does the hitter walk a lot?
No. Nor has he shown any inclination, really, to do so. He had one year when he walked 67 times. That was the same year he hit 46 homeruns and posted career highs in on-base and slugging percentages. All of that in a pitcher’s park. The next year he was right back to hacking at everything. He didn’t adjust. Aside from that year, he’s never drawn even 40 walks in a season.

5. If you looked at the player’s career, does it have a clear and gradual arc?
More up and down, than a smooth arc.

6. Does the hitter speak intelligently about hitting?
Again, I don’t know, not really. I do know that Soriano has been adamant about leading off, even though his skills are a far better match for a cleanup hitter. One would think the Cubs, who are paying him $136 million dollars, might recognize this, but the Cubs have never been a particularly smart franchise. Maybe Mark Cuban will change that.

So that’s what I’ve got: a few questions to frame the discussion, a few ways to look at the issue. Perhaps it’s a moot point or an issue of semantics, but I think it’s an interesting topic, a discussion worth having. Then again, what do I know? I was a lousy cook.