A couple of months ago, I watched a baseball game on TV. The game was a pretty good one. In the game, the play-by-play guy indicated that a batter looked ready for offspeed pitches, then the pitcher threw an offspeed pitch and the batter crushed it. Boom! Without doubt, it was gone, a home run.
The batter was one of the most dangerous hitters in the majors. After that home run, the announcer demonstrated that opposing pitchers should not throw an offspeed pitch to that batter again.
After watching the game, I began to think about a question. In the 2023 season, which batters did crush a lot of home runs against offspeed pitches?
To understand a little bit more, I went to check on the statcast website.
Matt Olson had a fantastic season. He led the majors with 54 home runs. Additionally, he collected 139 RBI, leading the majors. Among those 54 home runs, 8 were hit against offspeed pitches. During the regular season, Olson’s batting average was .269 against offspeed pitches.
Is Corey Seager the best shortstop on offense? Well, let the numbers tell. Seager slashed .327/.390/.623 with 33 home runs and 96 RBI in 119 games. A batting average of .327 ranked 5th in the majors. Moreover, his OPS of 1.013 was only behind Shohei Ohtani. For pitchers, throwing offspeed pitches to Seager might not be very effective. Against offspeed pitches, Seager had a .319 batting average and blasted 8 home runs.
Well, looking at Max Muncy’s stats is quite interesting. He batted .212/.333/.475 with 36 home runs and 105 RBI in 2023. It’s the first time that Muncy collected at least 100 RBI in a single season. He doesn’t have a high batting average, but he can crush home runs. Against offspeed pitches, Muncy’s batting average was only .210, but he smashed 7 home runs.
In addition, CJ Abrams played 151 games for the Nationals and it’s his first season to play at least 100 games in the big leagues. In 2023, he was hitting .245/.300/.412 with 18 home runs and 64 RBI. Speed is his weapon and he had 47 swipes this season. However, it’s worth mentioning his stats against offspeed pitches. He had a batting average of .293 against offspeed pitches and he blasted 7 home runs. Nonetheless, his xwOBA against offspeed pitches was .285.
Finally, Eddie Rosario, Gunnar Henderson, Yordan Alvarez, and Alec Bohm each crushed 6 home runs against offspeed pitches. It’s worth indicating that Alec Bohm’s xwOBA against offspeed pitches increased from .330 to .422.
In the MLB, hitting is not easy. Some pitchers can throw really hard with a fastball of 95 mph or faster. Some pitchers can throw nasty offspeed pitches to deceive batters. During the regular season, several batters had shown that they were able to handle offspeed pitches and without doubt, they can crush offspeed pitches. Now, as we can see, one of these players, who blasted at least 6 home runs against offspeed pitches, is still playing in the Fall Classic. Let’s keep watching to see whether he can keep crushing offspeed pitches in the most important series of the year.
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