Mookie Betts is one of the best players in Major League Baseball. He has an American League MVP award to his credit and a handful of runner-ups on either side of the circuit. A player of such stature isn't going to have a whole lot of ways in which his game can improve or present new developments within his game. We know he's elite and that's kind of where the story starts and ends.
But the release of new Statcast data earlier this week might allow us to bask in the glory of the latter. It allows us to zero in on a specific perspective in which we can gush about Betts in ways that we maybe hadn't before. In this case, it's Mookie against the contact hitter archetype.
Betts has never been a high strikeout guy. While it's worth noting that the K% has been a touch higher since arriving in Los Angeles than it was in Boston, the overall volume has never been an issue. His "worst" strikeout rate in his career was 16.3 percent, which came in 2022. For context, the highest K% that year belonged to Patrick Wisdom of the Chicago Cubs, who punched out at a shade over 34 percent.
The career mark sits at 13.7 percent. Even in being aided by a couple of years in Boston where he lingered around 11, it's an elite rate. This year, though, it's at 9.6 percent. It's a 98th percentile strikeout rate with a 96th percentile whiff rate. We can throw a 94th percentile chase rate in there, too.
It's the culmination of a clear process as far as the approach is concerned. Since that 2022 season where Betts punched out at a career-worst, we've seen his Swing% decrease. It was 44.2 percent that year, 38.1 last year, and 37.0 thus far in '24. The rate on pitches outside of the zone had ballooned up to 26 percent in 2022 before falling back to 21.1 this year. He's grown more patient, but has used that patience in pursuit of more contact rather than simply driving up the BB% on its own.
This is all to say nothing of that walk rate, which is also impressive (14.8 percent). But the remarkable thing about Betts isn't that he walks more than he strikes out. It's that he's able to create as much impact at the plate as a contact-oriented hitter, especially in relation to some of his counterparts in the hit tool department.
Let's give this a little bit of additional context.
Only four players have a lower K% than Mookie Betts thus far: Luis Arráez (6.8), Steven Kwan (7.6), Jung Hoo Lee (8.2), and Nico Hoerner (8.9). Lee's career is still in its infancy, but the other three very much have a reputation as some of the better contact hitters the bigs has to offer. What sets Mookie apart, though, is in the profile. Because he's not merely a contact hitter.
If we averaged out the collective ISO figures from those four players, it'd sit at .100 exactly. Betts is at .213. The average HardHit% is 28.7. Betts is at 43.7. He's parlaying his approach into not only contact, but quality contact.
Betts' ability to elevate is part of why he's able to generate so much impact in the ISO game against his contact-oriented friends. His groundball rate sits under 25 percent, whereas the rest of the group isn't below 38. Hard contact and elevation is going to make you an elite hitter. Those two factors combined with the consistency in overall contact makes you something even more special.
Which brings us back to the new Statcast data from earlier this week. Betts has below-average swing speed, averaging 69.5 MPH against the league's 71.5. An 11.2 percent fast swing rate is on the lower end of the entire sport. He has a shorter-than-average swing, too. His average length is 6.9 ft while the league's at 7.3. But being the exceptional hitter that he is, he spins that short, deliberate swing into consistently hard contact. He's squaring up balls in play on 39.3 percent of his swings, which sits as fourth best in the league. Only Arráez is in league with the output Betts has on the new leaderboard.
Betts can sit at the lunch table with the power guys. He can sit with the contact guys too, though. And what makes Betts such a pleasure to watch & analyze is that there isn't anything complicated within it all. He isn't honing in on a specific pitch type or even a certain part of the zone.
As much fun as it can be to dig into the numbers and look for underlying information, it isn't necessary in Mookie's case. He simply hits baseballs better than just about everyone else, regardless of profile.