I was playing in a collegiate summer league at the time when I had a teammate that was in a slump.  He said he was going to swing at the first pitch of his next at-bat no matter what.  Shortly after proclaiming his odd strategy, he went to the plate, swung at the first pitch, and got a hit.  Later on he confirmed that this was not a one-time thing.  This was an approach he had used many times.  I have heard other players say this or even thought it myself, only to step in the batter’s box and take the first pitch for a strike.  I felt like this could not be a successful strategy in the long run.  That teammate hit much better than I did that summer.

The toughest thing in all of sports is to hit a round ball squarely with a round bat.  Although there are a host of reasons it would be tough to hit major league pitching, deciding whether to swing might be the toughest part.  Hitters have a split second to decide what kind of pitch is being thrown, where it will end up, and whether to swing at the pitch or not.  My teammate that summer didn’t have to make that decision mid-pitch many times since he had already determined he was going to swing.

After watching Josh Hamilton for years now, I am convinced he does this in many of his at-bats.

It is no secret Josh Hamilton likes to swing at the first pitch, or that he can have lousy plate discipline. Let’s take a look at how he compares to the rest of the league when it comes to the first pitch of an at-bat.

We compiled the first pitches from Josh Hamilton’s plate appearances spanning the past two and a half seasons (2012, 2013, and through July 31 of 2014).  Below is a table showing how he has fared (he did not hit any triples).

Total PA	AB	Hits	Doubles	Home Runs	AVG	SLG
1526	220	78	16	16	.355	.645

Compared to his overall batting average of .270 and slugging percentage of .491 over the same time period, he mashes the first pitch.  He also does well on the first pitch compared to the league averages (AVG .335, SLG .539) on the first pitch over same time frame.

However, Hamilton swings at the first pitch…a lot.  The totals over the past two and a half seasons can be seen below compared to the rest of the MLB.

	Plate Appearances	Swing Rate	Contact Rate
Josh Hamilton	1526	43.7%	70.1%
MLB	492090	26.9%	79.4%

As you can see, Hamilton swings at the first pitch much more frequently than his peers.  Also when he swings, he makes contact less frequently.  That trend is not simply the result of Hamilton swinging at more pitches out of the strike zone.  His contact rate is lower than the league average whether or not the pitch found the zone.

	In Zone	Plate Appearances	Swing Rate	Contact Rate
Josh Hamilton	No	944	29.9%	57.8%
	Yes	586	66.0%	79.1%
MLB	No	257335	15.1%	64.0%
	Yes	235799	39.8%	85.8%

Hamilton swings almost twice as often on first pitches outside of the strike zone compared to the rest of the league.  Although this shows he is rather undisciplined on the first pitch, it isn’t enough to prove my theory correct.  However, the league has definitely taken notice of Hamilton’s first pitch tendencies.  MLB players see 47.8 percent of first pitches in the zone compared to Hamilton who sees just 38.3 percent of first pitches in the zone.

Now let’s break it up even further by looking at different pitch types.

First Pitch Type(Out of Zone)	Hamilton Swing Rate	MLB Swing Rate	Difference
Fastball	22.7%	14.1%	8.6%
Changeup	41.7%	22.0%	19.7%
Curveball	34.3%	10.9%	23.4%
Slider	32.8%	18.7%	14.1%
Cutter	36.8%	18.9%	17.9%

It should be noted that there are other pitch types that aren’t included in this table due to a lack of sample size.  For example knuckleballs, splitters, and screwballs aren’t thrown very often (especially first pitch) so it’s hard to draw conclusions.

It can be observed that Hamilton’s swing rate is higher than the MLB rates for every pitch type in the table.  However, Hamilton’s contact rate on fastballs out of the zone is right on league average (78.3 percent compared to 78.7 percent).  Hamilton seems to see fastballs better than the other pitches.  He swings at first pitch fastballs out of the zone a smaller percentage of the time than he does at other pitches.

Hamilton also sees a smaller percentage of first pitch fastballs compared to the rest of MLB.  The league sees 63.6 percent first pitch fastballs while Hamilton sees them at a 44.4 percent clip.  Why you may ask?  Because he lives for first pitch fastballs.

Fastballs	AB	Hits	AVG	SLG
Not In Zone	23	8	.348	.435
In Zone	59	24	.407	.797
Total	82	32	.390	.695

I knew it was going to be pretty much impossible to prove Josh Hamilton decides to swing at the first pitch before he steps in the batter’s box.  After all, I only get that inclination during some of his at-bats and he might decide before the pitch.  He would never get away with that strategy if he did it all the time in the big leagues since the league has already made adjustments to him.  What we can conclude is that Josh Hamilton is a free-swinger on the first pitch over the past two and a half seasons.  He has been successful swinging at the first pitch, especially when it’s a fastball, and even more so when it’s in the zone.

It seems that nothing will stop Josh Hamilton at swinging at the first pitch.  Well, except a knuckleball that is.  He has not swung in three plate appearances.

It was Monday, April 21^st, 2014.  Michael Choice of the Texas Rangers started running when the pitcher lifted his leg.  However, the catcher stood out of his crouch at about the same time and slid away from the right-handed-hitting Elvis Andrus on a called pitch out.  As the ball crossed the plate, Andrus jumped and lunged simultaneously in his best attempt to make contact but his swing looked more like a bad landing on a less-than-perfect triple axel.  Andrus had one objective with that swing: to protect the runner.

For those unfamiliar, protecting the runner is the ideology that swinging through a pitch when a runner is stealing makes it harder for the catcher to throw the base stealer out.  The swing is thought to be a distraction and makes it so the catcher can’t cheat upwards without getting hit.  Although this is a largely agreed upon fact among those involved in baseball, I wanted to see if it was beneficial or not.

Using the data collected here at Baseball Info Solutions, I compiled all stolen base attempts of second base from the 2013 season where a catcher pop time was recorded (the time it takes from when the pitch is caught to when the ball gets to the fielder covering second base).  This eliminates stolen base attempts where the catcher didn’t have a chance to throw the runner out.  It also removes the instances where the catcher made an extremely poor throw.

The table below shows the aggregate totals from the 2013 season.

	Stolen Base Attempts	Caught Stealing	Stolen Base	CS%
No Swing	1637	493	1144	30%
Swing	411	193	218	47%

It is easy to see that runners were caught stealing less frequently when the batter didn’t swing compared to when he swung.  If swinging makes it more difficult for a catcher to throw a runner out, why were catchers more successful in these situations?  One possibility is that the pitches that batters choose not to swing at are so far out of the strike zone that it is tougher for the catcher to get off a good throw.  However, this would mean an unlikely percentage of pitches on stolen base attempts are out of the strike zone.  It is likely that there is a different reason behind these statistics.

While these results were somewhat surprising, this is not comparing apples to apples here (more like Miggy to Ellsbury).  Out of the 2048 stolen base attempts where we had a valid catcher pop time, there were 1765 attempts where we also had a stolen base time.

	SB Attempts	Average SB Time (seconds)
No Swing	1435	3.51
Swing	330	3.59

Runners were caught stealing way more often when the batter swung because the hitter knew they needed to protect the runner for a reason: he was slow.  Many times these slower runners (on average 0.08 seconds slower) were likely put in motion due to a hit and run where a batter was forced to swing or in a 3-2 count where the manager didn’t think the batter would strike out.  However, when the batter swung and missed the slower runner was usually left out to dry.

So does swinging actually help protect the runner?  The easiest way to judge this was to look at catcher pop times.

	SB Attempts	Average Pop Time (seconds)
No Swing	1637	1.97
Swing	411	2.01

This means the average catcher pop time is 0.04 seconds longer when the batter swings compared to when the batter takes.  In order to put this amount of time in perspective, Eugene Coleman of the University of Houston found that the average major league ballplayer ran 24 feet per second.  Using this number (it doesn’t take into account sliding but it’s a good baseline), having 0.04 more seconds means the average major leaguer can cover 11.52 more inches of ground.  That difference in pop time means the potential base stealer can almost travel an extra foot!  This is significant because many plays (and stolen bases) are decided within a foot of the base.

This led to the conclusion that swinging does help protect the runner.  On average it takes the catcher more time to get the ball to second base when the batter swings compared to when he doesn’t.  However, it should be observed that many times the batter took the pitch when a runner was stealing.  There are a variety of possible reasons for this revolving around the idea that there is a certain amount of risk a player takes by swinging.  One reason they would take is that they don’t want to risk messing up a potential stolen base and/or good jump by fouling the pitch off.  Another reason they might take is that they don’t want to swing at a ball and give the pitcher a free strike.  After all, the runners that steal are expected to have the speed to be successful.

So should the batter swing when the runner is moving?  That is not for me to decide, but you might want to ask Michael Choice.  After all, he was safe.