Contact High and Hitting to All Fields: the San Francisco Giants' Counterintuitive Offensive Success

by Chris Alarie

by Chris Alarie

Two weeks ago, the San Francisco Giants signed an 18 year old shortstop from the Bahamas named Lucius Fox who was ranked by MLB.com as the third best international prospect available in this year's class of free agents. This was notable because the Giants have not been particularly aggressive in signing highly touted international prospects in recent years, unlike the rival Los Angeles Dodgers. Accordingly, one might be tempted to wonder why the Giants bucked their usual strategy in order to sign Fox. A clue might be evident in the MLB.com scouting report on Fox: “On offense, he's known for his ability to put the ball in play, and he can spray the ball to all fields.” The ability to make contact and hit to all fields is a hallmark of a number of the Giants' best hitters and may offer some hint toward the organizational philosophies that have led to three unexpected World Series titles in the last five years.

In recent seasons, Major League Baseball has become something of a three-true-outcomes league, with teams being less concerned with the increasing rate of strikeouts so long as those strikeouts are somewhat mitigated by homers and walks. Over the last five seasons, the Giants have mostly gone against that trend, instead building lineups based around hitters with little power¹ but high contact rates and the ability to hit toward all fields. This approach, which manager Bruce Bochy often refers to as “keeping the line moving”, has allowed the team to remain surprisingly productive offensively in recent seasons.

This offensive approach serves the team well in three ways: 1) it mitigates the power-draining tendencies of their home ballpark; 2) it makes them less susceptible to another recent league-wide trend: extreme defensive shifts; and 3) it allows them to find players who may have been undervalued by other teams. In his excellent, recent article about the highly effective Giants' homegrown infield, Grantland's Jonah Keri writes about how the Giants foursome of first baseman Brandon Belt, all-star second baseman Joe Panik, all-star shortstop Brandon Crawford, and third baseman Matt Duffy had never “quite garnered 'elite prospect' status—yet all four have gone on to exceed expectations.” Importantly, a key piece of each player's success is the ability to make contact at a high rate and hit to all fields.² Perhaps most notable among this foursome is Joe Panik, whose ability to hit to all fields and general resemblance in terms of swing and approach³ to the Giants star and bellweather, Buster Posey, has earned him a nickname as being one of the Clones of Posey.⁴ Keri describes Panik's unexpected success thusly:

“Panik isn’t just an excellent player; he’s also a great fit for the Giants. As harsh as AT&T Park is on home run hitters, it’s a place that rewards contact hitters. For Panik, who owns the ninth-highest contact rate among MLB’s 162 batting-title-qualified hitters, that’s great news. He also sports baseball’s seventh-lowest swing-and-miss rate and is in the top third among NL hitters for line drive rate. At just 24 years old, five years away from free agency, and still making the league minimum, Panik has become one of baseball’s most valuable commodities.”

A look at Panik's spray chart confirms that he is indeed excellent at hitting balls to all parts of the field, perhaps explaining why he has been so successful as a player who defies the favored three-true-outcomes mold—his “tortoise and the tortoise” home run race with Matt Duffy notwithstanding.

This all-fields approach is not exclusive to the Giants current quartet of infielders. Alien right fielder Hunter Pence is one of the team's only traditional power threats, but much of his effectiveness comes from his ability to hit with power to the opposite field. Former, longtime third baseman Pablo Sandoval is noted for his tendency to swing at and ability to make contact with nearly any pitch. Left field Nori Aoki takes a typically Japanese, inside-out approach to hitting that results in hit scattered all throughout the diamond. Perhaps no hitter exemplifies the Giants' all-fields approach than star catcher Buster Posey. When he is most effective, Posey's approach is to look to drive the ball up the middle of the field with an tendency to take whatever pitches he faces and hit them to the appropriate field, resulting in an ability to hit with power to all fields.

People often mistakenly conflate Oakland Athletics' general manager Billy Beane's moneyball⁵ approach to team building with a preference for high on-base-percentage and at least moderate power—something akin to the aforementioned three-true-outcomes. But really what Beane was attempting to do was find players with useful skills that were undervalued in the player scouting and acquisition markets, largely to mitigate Beane's relative disadvantages in terms of budget and resources. But now that the three-true-outcomes approach has become something like baseball orthodoxy, teams must look to other undervalued skills in order to gain advantages over their competition. The Giants, lead by vice president and longtime general manager Brain Sabean—who is derisively depicted in Moneyball as being out of touch—seem to have found such an advantage with their unorthodox emphasis on acquiring hitters who can make contact and above average rates and hit to all fields, whether or not they can do so with home run power. While a number of other key factors deserve at least equal credit—from heroic postseason pitching performances to consistently excellent defense to a future hall of fame manager—the Giants have nonetheless managed to become the first baseball dynasty of the 21st century while defying the league-wide offensive trends.

Chris Alarie is Senior Editor-in-Chief of Uncanny Valley Magazine.

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1 The 2010 World Series champion team was an exception, as that team's lineup, by the end of the season, was comprised primarily of players with moderate home run power.^↩
2 Brandon Belt has become a bit more of a pull hitter in recent seasons, making him the only player occasionally—but not always— susceptible to defensive shifts. But throughout his career, he has been able to hit to all fields.^↩
3 And rosy-cheeked-ness.^↩
4 The other Posey Clone is backup catcher Andrew Susac.^↩
5 So named after the Michael Lewis book and Bennett Miller film about Beane.^↩