Which teams are making the best swing decisions so far in 2025:
April 8, 2025
Which teams are making the best swing decisions so far in 2025:
12 comments
Ok being in this sub the last 24 hours you’d think the damn sky is falling so I feel like I have to make this post. I think a ton of people are overreacting for a team that’s 11 damn games into the season. They play 162 just fyi (sorry for the snark I’m just annoyed lol).
Basically what this chart says is that we’re in the top of the league at swing decisions when the ball is in the zone. However, we are also at the top when it comes to chasing out the zone. So what does that mean? We’re aggressive. Like really fucking aggressive. Bottom right isn’t the worst place to be, honestly I’d argue it’s the second best. Obviously it would be great to chase less, but we’re also being aggressive when we need to be which is a good thing. We aren’t just staring at a ton of strikes like we did last year, and even though the chases are there, we’re putting a lot of good contact on the ball.
Here’s some of our batting rankings right now:
**Exit Velocity:** 11th
**Hard Hit%:** 15th
**Barrel%:** 8th
**Batted Balls:** 15th
**Meatball Swing%:** 12th
**ZContact%:** 6th
**OContact%:** 18th
**Solid Contact%:** 7th
So what’s the issue? We’re making a lot of great contact, but we aren’t hitting it to the right places.
**Launch Angle Sweet-Spot%:** 29th
**Under%:** 2nd
**Topped%:** 25th
Currently we’re making decent swing decisions, putting solid contact on the ball, and we have by far the worst BABIP in the league. So what does that tell us? We have had some unbelievably bad fucking luck to start the year. To be quite honest, I don’t see much difference at all in our approach from Spring Training games to now, we just aren’t finding gaps right now. We’re hitting 110 MPH balls right to fielders. No, the problem is not our hitting coaches. No, the problem is not our players regressing beyond belief. No, the problem is not being too aggressive. The problem is we just simply are getting too under the ball and when we square it up, we aren’t finding the gaps. It happens. It’s baseball.
Boch said it best, everyone is looking at stats early in the season it can be super easy to try and do too much. Things will start to get simpler and back on track. It’s not gonna be everyone at once, it’s a long damn season. There’s gonna be ebbs and flows for everyone on the roster where hot bats have to pick up the slack for the cold bats. Getting Jung back will help as well.
9 players on our team currently have an average exit velocity of over 85 MPH. 6 players have a Hard Hit% over 40%. 6 players have a Barrel% over 9% (MLB average is 8.6%). We have 7 players that have an xBA over .225. All this to say, the underlying stats are there. We’re incredibly unlucky and it’s statistically impossible for it to continue forever if we just keep doing what we’ve been doing in staying aggressive and hitting the ball hard. I’m not sharing these stats to say we’re the best offense in baseball and woe is us baseball gods have it out for us. I’m just trying to make sure everyone understands that while we may not have the best offense in baseball, **we sure as hell don’t have the worst**. So let’s all just take a chill pill around here and realize we’re 11 games into a fucking 162 game season and try to exercise some patience please. Thank you.
*Also for fun here’s some other players stats I found to put things into perspective:*
**Opposing players’ BAs:**
Yainer Diaz: .067
Yordan Alvarez: .176
Randy Arozarena: .150
Julio Rodriguez: .195
Jazz Chisholm: .214
Dylan Crews: .094
Gunnar Henderson: .176
Carlos Correa: .111
It’s April 8th. If this is still happening in May we can revisit the conversation. Some of y’all need to chill tf out. Baseball is hard. That is all.
Y’all are gonna go crazy if you keep thinking so damn hard about what the first 11 games of a 162 game season mean.
I think as hitters get more ABs, they’ll start seeing the ball better which should result in less chase.
Looking at this graph the best place for us to be top right. Once we chase less, we’ll start moving upwards. Aggressive in the zone with good plate discipline.
We’ve also simply faced elite starting pitching nearly every game. Who’s been the worst starter we’ve faced so far? Buehler?
A team like the Giants (who are top right in this graph, where we want to be) got dog walked by Hunter Greene for 8.2 scoreless innings.
Here is another tidbit for perspective regarding team batting average that everyone is going to DEFCON 1 about.
These are 5 good baseball teams. I wouldn’t bet on the Mets, Trashtros, Twins, or Braves being this low all season, so why should be that concerned about ours? Obviously because we watch every game and we’re invested in our team, but I look at those other 4 and I’m like ah man they’re off to a slow start they got good hitters and they’re gonna be scary this season. That’s how we should feel about our team as well.
[deleted]
Great process. Awful BAPIP luck.
I’d be curious to dig in more to contact quality-type stats since our xWOBA is pretty bad, but the swing decisions (and having good hitters) should be a bit less subject to sample size shenanigans than xWOBA. Looks like something to maybe tackle after work…
Interesting chart. I took a look at how the Rangers in and out of zone swing rates have changed over the past couple years, and we’re definitely seeing them chase more.
Basically it seems like while Rangers have consistently been aggressive swingers on pitches in the zone, they’re chasing quite a bit more this year. I’m not sure how much of that is changes to the lineup (like replacing patient Nate Lowe with ultra aggressive Jake Burger), or how much of it is a different hitting philosophy or just a bit of small sample randomness 11 games in to the season.
Its obviously easier said than done, but it seems like it would be good for the team to be a bit more patient at the plate since right now we’re not seeing the increased aggression translate into better results on pitches in the strike zone.
Rangers 🤝 Stars
Subreddit dooming while team wins games
Teams that play indoors and/or in typically hot areas are notoriously worse in frigid weather. Yesterday’s game was not an indicator at all
Just tell em, look at the standings. Nice post tho gj
I think it’s also worth mentioning that we kinda got SCREWED by our early schedule. The rangers are an indoor team (which still feels weird to say) and we got our first two road series scheduled in places that are experiencing wind chills below freezing. When half of your games are being played in conditions where if you don’t catch the ball right on the barrel your hand is numb for the next 2 innings, anyone’s offensive numbers would be shit.
Wild thing is it doesn’t seem like we strike out with as much as we are swinging. We swing in and out of the zone but we don’t strikeout like I would expect.
Great chart, but when making visuals like this put a date in the image. This pic will show up in search results in years from now and will mislead people in the future who will think it shows recent data.
12 comments
Ok being in this sub the last 24 hours you’d think the damn sky is falling so I feel like I have to make this post. I think a ton of people are overreacting for a team that’s 11 damn games into the season. They play 162 just fyi (sorry for the snark I’m just annoyed lol).
Basically what this chart says is that we’re in the top of the league at swing decisions when the ball is in the zone. However, we are also at the top when it comes to chasing out the zone. So what does that mean? We’re aggressive. Like really fucking aggressive. Bottom right isn’t the worst place to be, honestly I’d argue it’s the second best. Obviously it would be great to chase less, but we’re also being aggressive when we need to be which is a good thing. We aren’t just staring at a ton of strikes like we did last year, and even though the chases are there, we’re putting a lot of good contact on the ball.
Here’s some of our batting rankings right now:
**Exit Velocity:** 11th
**Hard Hit%:** 15th
**Barrel%:** 8th
**Batted Balls:** 15th
**Meatball Swing%:** 12th
**ZContact%:** 6th
**OContact%:** 18th
**Solid Contact%:** 7th
So what’s the issue? We’re making a lot of great contact, but we aren’t hitting it to the right places.
**Launch Angle Sweet-Spot%:** 29th
**Under%:** 2nd
**Topped%:** 25th
Currently we’re making decent swing decisions, putting solid contact on the ball, and we have by far the worst BABIP in the league. So what does that tell us? We have had some unbelievably bad fucking luck to start the year. To be quite honest, I don’t see much difference at all in our approach from Spring Training games to now, we just aren’t finding gaps right now. We’re hitting 110 MPH balls right to fielders. No, the problem is not our hitting coaches. No, the problem is not our players regressing beyond belief. No, the problem is not being too aggressive. The problem is we just simply are getting too under the ball and when we square it up, we aren’t finding the gaps. It happens. It’s baseball.
Boch said it best, everyone is looking at stats early in the season it can be super easy to try and do too much. Things will start to get simpler and back on track. It’s not gonna be everyone at once, it’s a long damn season. There’s gonna be ebbs and flows for everyone on the roster where hot bats have to pick up the slack for the cold bats. Getting Jung back will help as well.
9 players on our team currently have an average exit velocity of over 85 MPH. 6 players have a Hard Hit% over 40%. 6 players have a Barrel% over 9% (MLB average is 8.6%). We have 7 players that have an xBA over .225. All this to say, the underlying stats are there. We’re incredibly unlucky and it’s statistically impossible for it to continue forever if we just keep doing what we’ve been doing in staying aggressive and hitting the ball hard. I’m not sharing these stats to say we’re the best offense in baseball and woe is us baseball gods have it out for us. I’m just trying to make sure everyone understands that while we may not have the best offense in baseball, **we sure as hell don’t have the worst**. So let’s all just take a chill pill around here and realize we’re 11 games into a fucking 162 game season and try to exercise some patience please. Thank you.
*Also for fun here’s some other players stats I found to put things into perspective:*
**Opposing players’ BAs:**
Yainer Diaz: .067
Yordan Alvarez: .176
Randy Arozarena: .150
Julio Rodriguez: .195
Jazz Chisholm: .214
Dylan Crews: .094
Gunnar Henderson: .176
Carlos Correa: .111
It’s April 8th. If this is still happening in May we can revisit the conversation. Some of y’all need to chill tf out. Baseball is hard. That is all.
Y’all are gonna go crazy if you keep thinking so damn hard about what the first 11 games of a 162 game season mean.
I think as hitters get more ABs, they’ll start seeing the ball better which should result in less chase.
Looking at this graph the best place for us to be top right. Once we chase less, we’ll start moving upwards. Aggressive in the zone with good plate discipline.
We’ve also simply faced elite starting pitching nearly every game. Who’s been the worst starter we’ve faced so far? Buehler?
A team like the Giants (who are top right in this graph, where we want to be) got dog walked by Hunter Greene for 8.2 scoreless innings.
Here is another tidbit for perspective regarding team batting average that everyone is going to DEFCON 1 about.
Bottom 5 batting average by team:
– Mets: .206
– Astros: .202
– Twins: .199
– Braves: .193
– Rangers: .184
These are 5 good baseball teams. I wouldn’t bet on the Mets, Trashtros, Twins, or Braves being this low all season, so why should be that concerned about ours? Obviously because we watch every game and we’re invested in our team, but I look at those other 4 and I’m like ah man they’re off to a slow start they got good hitters and they’re gonna be scary this season. That’s how we should feel about our team as well.
[deleted]
Great process. Awful BAPIP luck.
I’d be curious to dig in more to contact quality-type stats since our xWOBA is pretty bad, but the swing decisions (and having good hitters) should be a bit less subject to sample size shenanigans than xWOBA. Looks like something to maybe tackle after work…
Interesting chart. I took a look at how the Rangers in and out of zone swing rates have changed over the past couple years, and we’re definitely seeing them chase more.
|Year|Z-Swing %|O-Swing %|
|:-|:-|:-|
|2025|67.5%|32.9%|
|2024|67.9%|27.9%|
|2023|67.1%|26.2%|
Basically it seems like while Rangers have consistently been aggressive swingers on pitches in the zone, they’re chasing quite a bit more this year. I’m not sure how much of that is changes to the lineup (like replacing patient Nate Lowe with ultra aggressive Jake Burger), or how much of it is a different hitting philosophy or just a bit of small sample randomness 11 games in to the season.
Its obviously easier said than done, but it seems like it would be good for the team to be a bit more patient at the plate since right now we’re not seeing the increased aggression translate into better results on pitches in the strike zone.
Rangers 🤝 Stars
Subreddit dooming while team wins games
Teams that play indoors and/or in typically hot areas are notoriously worse in frigid weather. Yesterday’s game was not an indicator at all
Just tell em, look at the standings. Nice post tho gj
I think it’s also worth mentioning that we kinda got SCREWED by our early schedule. The rangers are an indoor team (which still feels weird to say) and we got our first two road series scheduled in places that are experiencing wind chills below freezing. When half of your games are being played in conditions where if you don’t catch the ball right on the barrel your hand is numb for the next 2 innings, anyone’s offensive numbers would be shit.
Wild thing is it doesn’t seem like we strike out with as much as we are swinging. We swing in and out of the zone but we don’t strikeout like I would expect.
Great chart, but when making visuals like this put a date in the image. This pic will show up in search results in years from now and will mislead people in the future who will think it shows recent data.