You've Got Two Strikes On You. What's Your Plan?
"He treats it like a hit-and-run, because he doesn’t want it to be in the umpire's hands, to call him out...So he’s always anticipating yes-yes-yes."
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Major League hitters are hitting .155 in two-strike counts this year. That’s down from .194 as recently as 2006. Two strikes hits disappeared like Blockbuster Video locations.
The most common explanation is that there is no such thing as a two-strike approach anymore. The refrain is that, with the exception of a celebrated few, hitters are not choking up, not shortening up and are just swinging up, regardless of the count.
Though this may feel true when watching a game, there are indications that most hitters are trying to adjust to make contact.
Photo by Chanan Greenblatt on Unsplash
Dan Aucoin, a senior analyst from the Cincinnati Reds and Driveline Baseball, shared some reversed engineered swing data from 2018 that showed hitters had lower bat speed in two-strike counts. This might be the most compelling evidence that, league-wide, hitters may alter their swings to avoid a strikeout.
To be fair, pitchers are more lethal than ever, teams have positioned players to steal any would-be cheap hits away, and umpires are giving more calls on the edges than before. These may be the biggest factor in the reduction of hits, not a failure to choke up. That still doesn’t excuse hitters from being under-prepared.
Over his 21 year career, Adrian Beltre was in 5,932 plate appearances with two-strike counts and posted a respectable .228 average in those situations. What’s more, when the league’s ability to get hits with two strikes was rapidly declining, Beltre actually got better, raising his batting average from .218 to .234.
Adam Rosales, who played with Beltre in Texas for parts of three seasons, wanted to know his secret.
“We talked about his two-strike approach,” Rosales said on an episode of the Patrick Jones Show podcast. “I was like ‘A.B. how do you approach it because you are really good at it?’ and he says he treats it like a hit-and-run, because he doesn’t want it to be in the umpire's hands, to call him out. So he’s always anticipating yes-yes-yes unless it’s really out of the strike zone.”
Beltre’s approach to treating it like a hit-and-run would lead to a lot of contact and a lot of balls in play, hence the above-average batting average. But the go-swing approach also led to a lot of silly swings as he tried to guess along with the pitcher. Yet Beltre felt that he stood to help his team more if he put the ball in play rather than watching strike three go by.
The 2020 San Francisco Giants were one of baseball’s best teams in two-strike situations. That may be a result of a lineup-wide approach that differed greatly from Beltre’s:
Donnie Ecker, Justin Viele and Dustin Lind, the three heads of the team’s batting tree, want their pupils to funnel in on zones they know hitters can crush pitches. Even if that means a hitter takes a borderline pitch that could be strike three — if the hitter isn’t going to pulverize it, the hitter can let it go.
The looking-to-crush mentality in two-strike counts counters the conventional wisdom. Most coaches want to expound the virtues of staying short, choking up, and reducing movement. Joe Maddon’s Cubs preached choking up and staying with a “b hack.” Dave Martinez’s Washington Nationals wanted hitters to spread wider and use the middle of the field. The Giants’ attack mindset may result in more strikeouts, but it will also produce more hits — and better ones at that. While they led baseball with a .196 average, they also hit 32 two-strike home runs in 2020.
Since 2018 Alex Bregman’s 757 OPS in two-strike counts is the fourth highest in baseball. Bregman’s approach shows how he can drive the ball while remaining defensive as well.
“When you have two strikes on you I think you should look fastball every time,” Bregman told a young player in a cage session that was shared by Flatground Bats’ Twitter account. Bregman goes on to demonstrate the logic behind this approach. If the hitter is focusing on getting to a fastball on the outer-third in a two-strike situation, the barrel will still be able to adjust for the breaking ball in the zone.
There are a variety of ways to physically prepare for those at bats but one element that is often lacking is the cognitive training. Hitters work on driving balls in cages -- perhaps hit-and-run coverage drills like Beltre uses or placing batting tees deep in the zone like Bregman does -- but players rarely address swing decisions.
When he was an assistant hitting coach with the Nationals, Joe Dillon introduced various drills using pitching machines that pushed the boundaries of a hitter’s ability to make decisions, which is especially valuable in two-strike counts.
“If you think traditionally how we train, it’s swing, swing, swing, and then they go tell you to be patient in the game,” Dillon told the Washington Post in 2018. “So we’ll work on saying, ‘No.’ There’s a process to saying, ‘Don’t swing,’ just like there’s a process that says, ‘Swing.’ ”
With the increase in velocity, break, and zone size, training to lay off those tough pitches is just as important as it is training to hit them. The Giants’ approach in 2020 would suffer if they didn’t have the ability to shut down their swing. Bregman’s approach wouldn’t be as effective if he wasn’t taking swings against slider machines or firm fastballs on the outer-third. Beltre’s approach wouldn’t be as productive if he didn’t train his swing to handle the coverage.
The game is challenging enough as it is. Don’t make it more difficult by not having a two-strike approach.
What’s your plan?
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