Let me point out to you something quite remarkable about the 2015 Baseball Season.   In 2015 there were five major league players who hit 40 or more homers, but drove in less than 100 runs: 

            In all of baseball history up through 2014 there are only 16 such seasons, now 21, and in no other season before 2015 are there more than two such players.    Two of the 2015 players (Trout and Pujols) were teammates.   This is only the second time in history that teammates have done this, and one of those (Trout) tied the major league record for fewest runs driven in by a player hitting 40 or more homers.  

            Players began hitting 40 home runs in a season in 1920, and thirteen players had done so by the end of the 1920s.   It was actually six different players; Babe Ruth by the end of the 1920s had done it eight times, and five other players had each done it once.    Anyway, all 13 of those players who hit 40 homers had also driven in 100 runs.   Eighteen more players hit 40 home runs in the 1930s; all of those drove in 100 runs.   Nine more players hit 40 homers in the 1940s, and all of those drove in 100 runs.   Twenty-three players hit 40 homers from 1950 through 1956, and all of those drove in 100 runs.  

            The first player to hit 40 homers and NOT drive in 100 runs was Duke Snider in 1957.   Snider, who had driven in 125+ runs in 1953,  1954 and 1955, dropped below a hundred in 1957 because (a) he missed some playing time with a bad back, (b) he hit just .236 with runners in scoring position, and (c) the other team walked him a great many times when there were runners in scoring position.   The Dodger offense had a poor season.   Campanella, Pee Wee Reese and Carl Furillo, all of whom were old—all of them were at least five years older than Snider—had poor seasons, and Dodger leadoff man Jr. Gilliam, who had hit .300 with a .399 on base percentage the previous season, slipped to .250 and .323.   That made it easy to pitch around Snider, and everybody did.  

            Long before Snider, however, 40-homer men were losing RBI.   Forty-homer men in the 1920s averaged 146 RBI.    In the 1930s they averaged 163 RBI; eighteen players in the group, Hack Wilson drove in 191, Gehrig 184, 174 and 165, Greenberg 183, Foxx 175, 169 and 163, Chuck Klein 170, and DiMaggio 167  

            In the 1940s forty-homer men averaged 135 RBI.   In the early 1950s (1950-1956) they averaged 119 RBI.    In the 1930s 40-homer men averaged 163 RBI; from 1940 to 1956 not one 40-homer man drove in 163 runs, although that might be obvious, because from 1940 to 1998 no PLAYER drive in 163 runs.   The only player to drive in that many runs since 1938 is Manny Ramirez in 1999.  

            Anyway, the RBI totals of 40-homer men were dropping by 1950, and several players before Snider had come close to hitting 40 homers with fewer than 100 RBI.   It was inevitably going to happen, and after Snider it became something that would happen every few years.   Mickey Mantle hit 40 homers without driving in 100 runs in 1958 and again in 1960.   Killebrew did it in 1963, and then Henry Aaron and Rico Petrocelli both did it in 1969.   In 1973 Henry Aaron and Davey Johnson did it as teammates, the only teammates to do so before Trout and Pujols last year.  

            One might suppose that a player who hits 40 home runs but fails to drive in 100 runs would be a low-average slugger, and this is not absolutely false but it is not a reliable general truth, either.   Of the 21 players who have hit 40 homers but failed to drive in 100 runs, seven hit .300 or better, and two more hit .299 and .297.    Bryce Harper is on the list; he hit .330 last year.  

            The players hitting 40 homers and failing to drive in 100 runs have more to do with the disappearance of table-setters than with low batting averages.   

            This has to do with the disappearance and re-appearance of Triple Crown candidates, and that has to do with the dis-integration of unified batting skills, and their re-integration at the opposite end of the scale.     This is a complicated story, but stay with me; you can do it.  

            Before Babe Ruth, hitting long fly balls was considered to be a sucker’s game, because the balls would hang in the air and someone would run under them and catch them.   Ruth demonstrated that that was not an absolute truth.   If you hit the ball far enough, nobody would be able to get to it 40 or 50 times a year, and that made the gamble of hitting long fly balls worthwhile.

            Baseball before Babe Ruth had been a game of speed, quickness and agility.    After Babe Ruth it became a game of power, speed, quickness and agility.   I am speaking in absolute terms about things that are not absolutes, of course, and one of the things I am leaving out is that there had been an earlier era, the Cap Anson era, in which baseball had put a premium on strength.   But Babe Ruth at 6-foot-2 and Ty Cobb at 6-foot-1 or 6-2 had been considered physical marvels, in that they were big men who had the quickness and agility of smaller men.  

            Once Ruth established so clearly that power had value in the game, baseball began looking for other big, strong men.    But if you go back to the 1920s and 1930s, you will find that very often the best hitters are also the best power hitters.  The reason this is true is that the theory of hitting the ball hard in the air hadn’t yet swept the game.

            Yes, men are bigger now than they use to be, but that’s not ALL of that story.   Two things have happened there, I think:  1) Men have gotten bigger, and 2) Baseball players have gotten bigger relative to the rest of the population.   I should check that out and I will, but that’s another story; as of now, that’s what I think. 

            If you look back to the 1930s, there were only one or two power hitters per team—at most.   Most good hitters concentrated on putting the ball in play—the Contact theory.   In the 1920s there were 91 players with 400 or more plate appearances who hit .300 or better but with isolated power less than .100.   In the 1930s this number dropped to 69; in the 1940s it dropped to 40.   In the 1950s it dropped to 33; in the 1960s, to 18.  

            The Dee Gordon/Jose Iglesias type of player.   The player who hits for a good average but without power.   In the 1970s these players re-entered baseball, the number shooting back up from 18 to 54.   This was primarily because of artificial turf.   Artificial turf was believed to put a premium on speed, and this brought back into the game a flood of players of the Curt Flood type.        But since the 1970s, these numbers have declined again.   In this decade—and we are 60% of the way through this decade--there have been only 12 such players.   We may have fewer in this decade that in any other decade in history.

            The thing is, now everybody is trying to hit the ball hard, and almost everybody is trying to hit it in the air.   I would put it this way:  That there are two theories of hitting, the "contact" theory and the "bat speed" theory.   In 1915 100% of baseball players believed in the "contact" theory.   In 1925 90% of baseball players believed in the "contact" theory, 10% in the "power" theory.   By 1935 it was 80-20, by 1945 70-30, by 1955 60-40, by 1965 50-50, etc.   We have now reached the point at which 100% of the baseball playing population believes in the bat speed theory, rather than the contact theory.

            Of course that is an oversimplification, and of course it is not 100% true, but it is generally true.   But what you notice is that there is a separation of the players, and then there is a re-unification on the other end of the scale.   In 1915 the players were 100% unified, and now they are again, but whereas in 1915 they were all contact hitters, now they are all hitting for power.   Or trying to.

Bat Speed and Bat Quickness

            This is a continuation of the same concept; I’m just going in a little different direction.  In my old gray head there are two distinct concepts, which are bat speed and bat quickness.   Bat speed means "how fast is the bat going when it makes contact with the ball?"   Quickness means "how long does it take the hitter to get the bat where it needs to be?"

            These two are not only not the same thing; they actually work at cross-purposes for most players.   If you are going for bat speed, you tend to use a longer stroke.   Momentum gathers as the swing progresses.    If you are trying to bring the bat into the contact zone as quickly as possible, you may get there without a lot of momentum. 

            But while I make this distinction in my own mind, most people do not.  I hear the term "bat speed" many, many times in discussing young players.  Between you and me, I don’t believe at all in Bat Speed.    I believe in Bat Quickness.  To me, if a player has a lot of bat speed, that’s a negative.   That means he is going to strike out.   Unless he is going to hit 30 homers a year, I don’t want him.  

            There are a few players, like Gary Sheffield and John Kruk, who have both quick bats and bat speed.   Andrew McCutchen is the best example of that right now; he generates a tremendous amount of bat speed in a millisecond.   Brett was like that, and Kyle Schwarber looks like he generates a great amount of bat speed with a very late reaction to the pitch.   Jim Thome did.   Kevin Millar did.  But guys like Derek Jeter, Ichiro Suzuki, Rod Carew, Tony Gwynn  . .they don’t have fast bats.   They have slow, slow, slow bats.   Ichiro, although occasionally he will turn on a pitch, has the slowest bat of any player since Juan Pierre.   Quick, but slow.   The problem is that "slow" is the opposite of both quick and fast, and quick and fast don’t mean the same thing at all when it comes to swinging a bat. 

            The thing is, there is a minimal advantage to hitting the ball hard—unless you’re going to hit it up against the fence or over it.   Of course a hard-hit ball is better than a weakly hit ball—a little better—but centering the bat on the ball 55% of the time is a whole lot better than hitting the ball hard 40% of the time. 

            From 1900 to 1909, hitters with 400 or more plate appearances in the season averaged 1.31 bases per hit.   In the 1920s this was up to 1.42; in the 1940s, it was up to 1.45.   By the 1960s it was up to 1.54; by the 1990s, 1.58.   In the last decade it was up to 1.62.   It’s down a little in this decade because of the banning of steroids, but not really down; in historic terms it is still going up:

            In this decade the bases per hit of regular players are down from 1.62 to 1.59—2%--but the batting average is down from .278 to .268, which is more like 4%.  

The Iterative Effect

            I made this point 40 years ago; if I had copies of my old books I would look up the exact quote.   Suppose that you have a lineup in which every player hits .270 with 10 homers and creates 70 runs.    Suppose that you can substitute for one of those players with a player who hits .270 but with 35 home runs.   That might add to the team 30, 35 runs.   

            Go back to the lineup with nine guys who hit .270 with 10 homers.   Suppose that instead of adding power, you add a .300 hitter, a guy who hits .300 but with 10 homers.   That’s not going to add as many runs to your lineup as adding the power hitter.   It will probably improve you by 20, 25 runs, whereas the power hitter would probably add 30, 35. 

            However, the second time you make the substitution for a power hitter, the second one adds fewer runs than the first one did.   The third power hitter that you add to the lineup adds fewer runs than the second, and the fourth adds fewer than the third.

            With a high average hitter, though, the opposite applies.   Adding a second .300 hitter adds more runs than adding the first one; adding a third .300 hitter adds more runs than the second one.  

            The reason this is true is that the power hitter is maximizing your ability to capitalize on opportunities, but is diminishing the number of opportunities that remain.   Because there are fewer opportunities left, fewer men left on base to drive in, each additional power hitter has fewer opportunities to work with.   But the .300 hitter is increasing both the number of opportunities, and the rate at which the team will capitalize on its opportunities.    The more of those guys you add, the better. 

            I made this point 40 years ago, but in a very different context.   Forty years ago I was talking about Greg Luzinski against Rod Carew, Dave Parker against Pete Rose, Jim Rice against Lou Brock.   The thing is, there aren’t any Rod Carews anymore; everybody now wants to be Jim Rice or Dave Parker.  

            So the question is, have we gone too far?  Have we moved to the Land of Diminishing Returns?

            Well, I certainly believe that we have.  When you start stacking up 40-homer men who drive in less than 100 runs each, you’ve gone too far.  

            When the defense start shifting against you and you can’t defeat it with the bunt or by just making late contact to roll the ball the other way, you’ve gone too far.  

            We have gone too far.

            I am asked sometimes, "What is the undervalued skill in baseball today?  What is the thing that teams don’t value properly, in 2016 major league baseball?"   It’s this.   It’s contact hitting.   That’s what I believe.