First Pitch Swingers and Takers

In the 30 plate appearances leading up to the playoffs, Harrison Bader had gone three for 25 with four walks. His 13-game slash line was .120/.233/.120 heading into the Wild Card Series against the Brewers. Bader was slumping. Though he was brought in as a defensive replacement in that series against the Brewers, Bader did not record a plate appearance. His next at-bat came against Tanner Banks in game one of the NLDS against the Phillies when he was brought in as a pinch hitter in the top of the ninth.

Bader swung on the first pitch:

The intensity of playoffs, the scream of the crowd, the adrenaline pumping must make a man want to get in that box and swing out of his shoes! That is especially true if the man had been sitting on the bench all game, got called in to pinch hit, and had previous playoff experiences where he blasted homers out of the park in similar situations. But that happened two years ago, and Harrison Bader had not been seeing the ball leading up to his playoff debut against the Phillies. Still, he swung on the first pitch.

That swing resulted in an offensively harmless foul ball, and the at-bat ended with a single: three pitches, three swings, and Bader was on first. In the following game, Bader started and appeared to be the definition of patience, taking the first pitch in each of his four at-bats, going deep into counts. Yet he made four outs in as many at-bats. The next day comes and Bader is back on the bench, back to getting called on into the game (this time as a pinch runner, staying for the next at-bat), and back to swinging on the first pitch:

A line out ended that at-bat and the inning. Bader would have to wait until the next series against the Dodgers to pinch-hit and swing at the first pitch (not everything comes in video nowadays). The result was a line-out to end the game. Having tried a little bit of everything, Bader’s playoffs ended the following day against the Dodgers with a two-strikeout game before being pulled out of the lineup for Jeff McNeil. However, in that last game, he displayed more of an approach; take the first pitch you see from a pitcher, then attack the next time you see him. The strategy didn’t work out for success, but an approach was certainly displayed.

For reference, Bader is not necessarily a free swinger. His 46.6% Swing% (47.8% MLB Avg.) and 10.5% SwStr% (11.1% MLB Avg.) align closely with the rest of the league, but when the playoffs came, Bader swung on the first pitch in five out of his nine chances to do so. That’s 55.5%. On the season, Bader swung 25.9% of the time on the first pitch. The small sample from the playoffs is just another example of how the playoffs can change a man. During the regular season, Bader was not all that aggressive on first pitches. Here, the most aggressive stand:

Talk of swinging on the first pitch has been heard around parks, cages, and lots since there ever was a first pitch, and the greatest account of the hitter’s perspective came from legend Ted Williams, in his book The Science of Hitting:

     So you haven’t seen it and you have to know: Is it that little extra today or isn’t it? Nobody has good enough timing or good enough vision to get up there cold and determine that difference right away. But if you take a couple of pitches, your chances are better. Now, the crux of the matter: Hitting is 50 percent from the neck up. You are not just taking pitches, you are taking specific pitches. You learn from them.

There were plenty of hitters who shared Williams’ philosophy, maybe they read his book. These players took on a more patient approach in 2024:

Think back to when you actually played baseball. If you made it to higher levels, where your teammates were concerned more with getting hits than they were with stuffing as much big-league chew into their cheeks as physically possible, you may have received some pre-at-bat advice as you walked from the on-deck circle to the batter’s box. “The first pitch is probably the only good one you’ll see”, your teammate said as you knocked the last bit of dirt stuck in your cleats with the end of your bat. Did you take the advice and swing as hard as possible on that first pitch? It’s a philosophy that leans more to the likes of Castellanos, and Seager, and Harper, and who can forget Altuve? Yet, on average, the 0-0 count in 2024 was not the most likely place to find a pitch right down the middle. It was more likely to happen when a pitcher fell behind:

The bar graph above categorizes all fastballs in Statcast’s zone five as “the only good one you’ll see.” It’s not a perfect way of isolating the best pitch of an at-bat by any means, but it’ll do. So a hitter’s chances of getting a meatball aren’t necessarily better in the first pitch. Let’s go back to legend Williams’ writing:

I didn’t necessarily take a strike because I wasn’t just taking a strike by taking that first pitch the way people might have thought. I had quite another motive:

I didn’t want to hit until I had seen a fastbball

Perhaps this was Bader’s approach in his last 2024 playoff game; get a look at the fastball. In his first at-bat, he saw three of Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s fastballs and swung on the first pitch in his next. In aggregate, this happened among all hitters in 2024. Disregarding the pitch type, when a hitter saw a pitcher for a second time in a single game, they swung 1% more often on the first pitch, from an average first at-bat, first-pitch swing rate of 31% to a second at-bat first-pitch swing rate 32%. It’s not enough to point out the advantages of either philosophy. Yet competition we must have.

A proper place to split this sample of 203 hitters would be right on the average, 31%. We’ll call players under a First Pitch Swing% the takers, and players over that mark the swingers. Since I’m splitting these groups in such a specific way, I’m ruining the assumption that these two samples are randomly generated. We’ll have to give a little leeway to the significance test:

Proponents of swinging on the first pitch might argue that getting up there and getting your “A” swing off is the best approach in today’s modern game. Their slugging percentages show some lift over the taker. When pitchers hurl baseballs that appear possessed in a hitter’s general direction, many match power with power, uncertainty with aggressive decisiveness. Yet, others might say you have to get a look at it, size up the pitcher, and take the first pitch. This tiny statistical comparison suggests there may be something to taking the first pitch as it applies to getting on base. Though as many times as hitters say to themselves…take the first pitch, take the first pitch…as they walk to the plate, the bat can have a mind of its own, swinging away and producing enough of a draft to create a whomp sound as it cuts through the air, swing and a miss, strike one. Damn!… What happened to taking the first pitch? I’ll remember for next time.