My local TV stations (Boston) are carrying all kinds of tributes for the late ted Williams. He was from all accounts, a great baseball player, and an extraordinarily kind and decnt human being (may he rest in peace). However, I am puzzled about the batting average-surely the baseball playesr of today are excellent athletes-why do players today not surpass ted’s batting average-is the pitching today so much faster, that nobody will ever bat 0.408 again? Baseball fanatics-what’s your take on this?
Stephen Jay Gould had some interesting thoughts on the subject:
Sorry if I quoted too much.
“Ever” is a long time. As the post above says, the general level of play is much better now than it was when .400 hitters were more common. Although they never were all that common.
Pitchers used to be expected to pitch the whole game most of the time. So they had to pace themselves to last. This probably caused more hits than is the case today. Now pitchers go as hard as they can for as long as they can and then someone else comes in and does the same thing. Batters used to try to just put the ball in play in which case ground balls often go through the infield and fly balls drop for singles. Now the long ball is the goal which results in lots of home runs and doubles, but also a lot of warning track outs.
It would be interesting to compare the hits per game and ERA during the era of more .400 hitters with today’s numbers. But I’m to lazy to do it.
Not only that, but there are a lot more innovations in pitching, too. Williams never had to face the splitter, for instance. Plus, he didn’t have to face as many pitchers, so he could be more familiar with them. Not to mention the fact that more relievers are used these days.
Not to mention the fact that Williams was the best hitter ever. Talent like that just doesn’t come along every day.
I think y’all are overlooking something important, too. A lot of today’s hitters don’t really care as much about batting average to begin with; people try to hit the ball harder, they strike out more often, batting average plummets, offensive production is still fine because they hit a lot of homers, etc. There are still players around who try to hit for average and don’t worry so much about trying to mash the ball (Tony Gwynn, for example, or Ichiro), but I think most of them don’t. And kids grow up wanting to be Mark McGwire, not Tony Gwynn, which only exarcebates this. Could we see another .400 hitter? Sure, and eventually I think we will. But is it likely to be soon? Probably not.
Oh, except that David Simmons touched on this already and I somehow missed it. Oops. Right then, carry on.
Neurotik hit the nail on the head. In Williams day batters rarely faced more than two pitchers in the same game. The starter and maybe one to close the ninth. Nowadays you can face 4 or 5 pitchers in the same game.
What is so amazing about Williams is he was a dead pull hitter. They would put the shift on him and he would still get a hit. I wonder what other records he might have gotten had he not missed almost 5 full seasons in his prime.
I would agree with Stephen Jay Gould’s analysis.
In the early part of the previous century, the best players were a lot better than the average players.
Now the best players are slightly better than average players.
I wonder though, what would happen if today’s fielders used the gloves that fielders back in the 1920s, 30s and 40s used.
On the plus side, there would definitely be more hits, but probably more errors also.
Picking a nit, bringing in a reliever solely to “close the ninth” is a relatively recent tactic dating back to the Cubs’ use of Bruce Sutter in the 1970s, which of course was almost 20 years after Ted Williams retired.
The argument about facing 4-5 pitchers makes hitting more difficult seems counterintuitive if we are to believe the baseball experts who claim that there’s a shortage of good pitchers nowadays. Judging by the relief pitchers my club, the Cleveland Indians, has been using in their bullpen lately it sure doesn’t look like the relievers are all that great. I shudder to think what Williams in his prime would’ve hit off currently Cleveland reliever Mark Wohlers.
Getting back to the OP, another of the reasons why hitting .400 is more difficult, which I think Stephen Jay Gould mentioned in his article but which hasn’t been mentioned here yet, is that defenses are more adept at positioning now then they were back in Williams’ day. Williams faced the “Boudreau Shift”, but fielders generally played most every other batter straight away. Now the teams all have data showing where batters are apt to hit the ball and they position their fielders accordingly.
I wouldn’t entirely discount the chances of a Colorado Rockies’ player (such as Todd Helton) hitting .400, especially if the player barely gets enough plate appearances to qualify for the league batting average title. George Brett in 1980 hit .390, but missed a sizeable chunk of the season, but still had more than the requisite 502 PAs.
If you can keep the denominator low, your chances of averaging .400 get easier.
Tony Gwynn hit .394 as recently as 1994, but one could argue how much pressure his average would have been under in the last month of the season if it had not been struck. That’s not much less than Williams’ .406 in 1941, and even that could have been under .400 had his last few games not been against a weak Detroit staff.
I’d add that fielders are larger and faster now, and they have better equipment, too. More struck balls are run down and fielded for outs than in a few generations back. It would be interesting to know how Cobb and Hornsby would have done against fielders using gloves the size of today’s.
Less talk, more rock
Oops, sorry, Williams’ last games in 1941 were against a weak Philadelphia A’s staff. His last home run was against Detroit.
Off the subject a little, does anyone have any sympathy for his slimy, weasely son having Ted’s head frozen for possible reanimation instead of cremating him the way he wanted? I’m picturing Ted joining the cast of Futurama pretty soon. This is the same son who has made his living recently selling off Ted’s memorabilia, and who even made his dad wear a hat with the site’s URL instead of a Red Sox cap at his 1999 All-Star Game appearance.
In one of the few times I agree with Elvis, I think his son his absolute slime. He really is. I believe Ted didn’t want a funeral or ceremony, he just wanted to be cremated. But his son is going to try and make a few more bucks off of him. I wonder how he sleeps at night.
Elvis,
First of all, simply because the A’s were a weak team doesn’t mean the pitching was horrible. Williams has told of how when he came up to bat the first time, the A’s catcher said, “Mr. Mack said that we’re going to pitch to you. We aren’t going to give you anything but we are going to pitch to you.”
Elvis, Neurotik,
Exactly where in that article does it say anything about Williams head being frozen?
Let me see…NOWHERE!!!
Plus his “slimy” son as you call him is the one who kept his father from living in semi-poverty the last years of his life.
Your opinion should fit the facts, NOT the other way around.
Williams, and others before him, didn’t have to face all of the best players of their day.
WSLer, it seems John Henry Williams is actually having his father’s entire body being frozen. Initial numerous local news reports had it as only his head. link for the unbelieving. Another.
Update: It’s already frozen
There is no evidence whatever that Ted was living in poverty, or was about to, nor is there any reason to suspect he might. Gotta cite?
“Your opinion should fit the facts, not the other way around”, to coin a phrase.
You might also have noted that, even though the A’s pitching staff may well have been doing their best that day, they still sucked.
The 1941 A’s gave up the most runs and home runs in the AL that year and struck out the fewest batters.
They struck out 386 batters all year. Bob Feller struck out 260 on his own. Granted strikeouts were less common then, but fewer than 3 a game is pretty bad.
A couple of items to think about, if nothing else. First, the year Ted hit .406, there has no sacrifice fly statistic. For those of you not innitiated into baseball stats, a sac fly occurs when a fly ball you hit is caught, and a runner advances a base. When that happens, you are not credited with an at bat, and your batting average does not change. In 1941, you WERE charged an at bat in such situations, and your average dropped. So therefore, Williams’ .406 would have been even higher with today’s rules (as would all previous .400 hitters averages), and still only a couple have flirted with .400 since then.
In addition, the mound was higher then, so even if pitching was comparatively weaker then than today, pitchers still had a decided advantage. Also, while african americans and and foreign talent was not in the game as it is today, the majors had many fewer teams. For comparison, imagine how much better the level of play would be today if there were only, say, 24 teams instead of the 30 or so now. In 1941, there were only 18 teams, even if they were only white players, that’s still a high level of competition.
Another overlooked item: Today’s hitters can study themselves and opposing pitchers on video, a luxory Williams did not have. Hell, some have their opponents videos on dvds which they watch on their laptops. Don’t diminsih the .400 hitters before this era.
IMHO, Tony Gwynn got screwed in '94. He was the greatest student of hitting since Williams, and he had the balanced personality and veteran experience to handle today’s media blitz. I think .400 requires extreme talent, a dedication to the art of hitting, a mind sharp enough to study opposing pitchers, and some luck. It hasn’t happened yet because it is DAMN TOUGH TO DO. But it will happen
again.
Also, Williams son did save him from bankruptcy. William’s income in his late years was derived on autographs and memorabilia. He got used by a con memorabilia dealer in the early '90’s, I believe it was, and almost lost it all. His son brought him back from the brink. But Williams will did state cremation, so the son is a bit sick for the cryogenics.
And in a total hijack, the decision to call the all star game a tie tonight was the right decision. You can’t blow pitchers in an exhibition, for crying out loud. It was history, and nobody could see that.