This isn’t shocking to people who sim a lot of baseball. The value depends on the home run rate. The more homers getting hit the less important the contact rate. As Don Coffin comments in the article, it’s a difference of long-sequence vs. short-sequence offenses. Right now players aren’t hitting as many homers so the value of contract style hitters, as a lineup group, has risen. (The home run rate also impacts on base percentage as a lower home run rate produces fewer walks.) Of course, if you build a lineup to maximize your home run hitters, they still have tremendous value.

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.