The MLB’s top regular-season teams, the Toronto Blue Jays and Milwaukee Brewers, led their leagues in batting average and contact rate. High-contact players like the Blue Jays’ Ernie Clement, pictured, and the Brewers’ Sal Frelick have grown from quiet contributors to known commodities. (Instagram via ernieclement28)
By MITCH BANNON / THE ATHLETIC
Four days after the Toronto Blue Jays peppered 12 hits across Yankee Stadium, winning Game 4 of an American League division series, the Detroit Tigers’ president for baseball operations, Scott Harris, leaned into the microphone at his end-of-year news conference. As he outlined Detroit’s offseason plan and 2026 vision, the Blue Jays’ recent success lingered in his words.
“We need to make more contact as an organization,” Harris said. “We need to move the baseball more in the big leagues than we are.”
The proclamation was just the latest indication of a narrative that emerged in 2025, one centered on making more contact.
The MLB’s top regular-season teams, the Blue Jays and Milwaukee Brewers, led their leagues in batting average and contact rate. High-contact players like the Blue Jays’ Ernie Clement and the Brewers’ Sal Frelick have grown from quiet contributors to known commodities.
In an era dominated by whiffs and home runs, the Blue Jays used contact to transform themselves from 74-win also-rans to American League champions. Toronto’s 20-win improvement and path to the World Series appeared so attainable for every other franchise hoping to make it to the playoffs. The allure is straightforward: Invest in contact and coast to the top of the sport.
But many executives are not sure how replicable that style is for other clubs. Repeating it, even for the Blue Jays, will not be so simple.
“That’s just part of the sports industry in general,” the Blue Jays’ president, Mark Shapiro, said. “A narrative gets written based upon an outcome. People try to say, what parts of that can we learn? Good executives, good organizations are trying to stay ahead of that. By the time they react to it, it’s probably too late.”
Bat-to-ball dominance is not particularly new in modern baseball. The mid-2010s Kansas City Royals rode league-leading contact to consecutive World Series appearances, including a title in 2015. From 2017 to 2023, no franchise posted a higher contact rate than the Houston Astros. Even as home runs are undeniably crucial to postseason success, the league’s top team in contact rate has advanced to at least the division series in nine of the past 10 years.
Through it all, though, power remains king.
The balance between power and contact remains a debate in front offices, possibly because fans want the high-contact style deployed by the Brewers and the Blue Jays to become a new normal. Fundamental defense and a steady stream of balls being put in play are more entertaining than six strikeouts, a walk and a homer.
But a baseball executive who cited those fan desires also said that a lineup filled with players with high batting averages can, for some reason, appear scarier than an equally productive lineup of high-whiff power hitters. Never mind that the perception is more narrative than proven reality.
The noise of that contact narrative still reaches the ears of baseball’s top decision makers. Brewers general manager Matt Arnold pointed to recent rule changes — with infield shifts banned in 2023 — as a potential opening for more contact success. His Brewers flourished alongside the Blue Jays, capturing baseball’s attention with contact during the regular season. Frelick and Caleb Durbin became two of the MLB’s most difficult hitters to strike out. They ranked in the top 10 in contact rate.
The New York Yankees, at least by public perception, may be the antithesis of a contact-first team. They struck out the third most in baseball in 2025, more than any other postseason team, while leading the MLB in home runs. At a news conference last week, when asked if the Yankees wanted to be more like the Blue Jays, team owner Hal Steinbrenner underscored the value of slugging and contact. He did, however, say the Yankees have been searching for more balance on offense, citing the addition of Jazz Chisholm Jr. in 2024.
“Guys that can put the ball into play,” Steinbrenner said. “I do think you need that. You can’t simply be a slugging home run team.”
In an era in which pitching is better than ever, general manager Chaim Bloom of the St. Louis Cardinals said teams that consistently made contact stood out more. When pitching plans are built around exploiting swing-and-miss tendencies, the Atlanta Braves’ general manager, Alex Anthopoulos, said contact teams could frustrate pitchers more than any other. The Philadelphia Phillies’ president for baseball operations, Dave Dombrowski, noted that the talk of success in Milwaukee and Toronto might have an effect on team building across the league.
“I find that it’s sort of a copycat league,” Dombrowski said. “If it works, people follow it.”
But as the three general managers noted, the issue with building teams geared toward more contact is not necessarily one of desire. Most teams have sought high-contact players through the three-true-outcomes era (home run, walk, strikeout), they said. The skill is not ignored.
“It’s finding the players to do it,” Dombrowski said. “That’s sort of the secret. They’re not always easy to find.”
As power became a premium, productive contact players have become increasingly scarce. In 2015, 82 hitters posted contact rates over 80%. By 2025, that number has fallen to 53. That’s part of what makes replicating the 2025 Jays and Brewers so difficult.
Teams may be able to find their version of Clement or the Brewers’ Joey Ortiz. But filling a lineup with the likes of Brice Turang, Frelick, Alejandro Kirk, Bo Bichette and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is not simple. They were five of just 24 players last year to post a contact rate over 80% and a weighted runs created plus over 110.
The Jays and the Brewers were among just seven teams with multiple players who fit that description; 11 teams had none.
Prioritizing contact at the cost of overall production can go too far. Over the past five years, the Washington Nationals and the Cleveland Guardians ranked top five in team contact rate while ranking bottom 10 in weighted runs created plus. Good contact, bad lineups.
“Really,” an AL executive said, “you just want good hitters.”
While the Tigers may be in search of more contact entering 2026, teams like the Astros and the San Diego Padres now seek more power after embracing more contact. Even for the Blue Jays, general manager Ross Atkins said, bat-to-ball was not a planned team identity. It was just one piece of the offensive puzzle.
Toronto has been a high-contact team for the past three years. The Blue Jays ranked top five in contact rate in 2023 and 2024 as well. But it was the rest of the offensive profile that failed them. In both years, they ranked outside the top 10 in slugging. Not until 2025 did the Blue Jays find the right balance. Toronto led all teams in batting average in the postseason, but also led in on-base percentage and home runs.