The cheat swing

Another Shohei superlative

Today, I’ve got a follow-up to last week’s bat speed modeling and swing types. If you haven’t seen last week’s post, I’d recommend checking it out here before reading this one.

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How would you describe this swing?

I’d call it a ‘big cut’ - especially given the pitch (a 98 mph Hunter Greene heater) and the location. It might go in Sam Miller’s “Visual Guide To Shohei Ohtani Looking Like He Hurt Himself Swinging.”

Shohei Ohtani’s swing here is a much harder swing than most left-handed hitters would take at this 98 mph up-and-in fastball. The model I put together for bat speed last week (one that contextualizes bat speeds based on pitch characteristics and location) estimates that a hitter with Shohei Ohtani’s top-end bat speed would typically take a 66 mph swing at this pitch. Ohtani actually took a 76 mph swing.

Ohtani doesn’t always take huge cuts at up-and-in heater from a right-handed pitchers, though. In fact, this is the reaction I am more familiar with seeing from him:

Or this:

These last two clips are examples of the ‘Ohtani bail.’ As I wrote back in August of last year, it is possible to get Ohtani out. The path to doing so usually involves a fastball to this effect; one that crowds Ohtani. His reaction there is to topple backward and away from the plate, showing the pitcher that he is (what advance scouts would call) top-heavy. It’s the kind of reaction that tells you he’s looking for something over the middle or outer-half of the plate.

I stumbled upon these clips while looking into a question that emerged out of the bat speed research I started last week. Here’s what I wanted to find out: what do a hitter’s hardest swings show us about where he likes the ball? Do hitters swing hard in the areas of the zone that they’re prone to do the most damage, and softer in the areas where they struggle?

Shohei’s hole

The data agrees with those last two clips: Ohtani doesn’t like the up-and-in fastball. That location (and the area further in and off the plate) is one of the safer areas to attack him with a fastball. It’s a small hole, but it’s there. Here’s Ohtani’s contact rate on right-handed fastballs (dating back to the start of the 2023 season). Note the blue area in the upper left-hand corner (the same location all of the fastballs above were thrown to):

Source: FanGraphs

Does Ohtani take softer swings at fastballs thrown to his hole? No, not at all. The opposite is true, actually:

“Expected” bat speed considers pitch characteristics (speed, break, location) and count. White-ish shading indicates swings that are in line with expectation.

When Ohtani does swing at crowding, up-and-in fastballs, he swings hard. Harder than other left-handed hitters with similar top-end bat speed do. Ohtani’s softest swings at fastballs actually come against pitches in the up-and-away quadrant (an area he does a ton of damage in).

Why is that? Well, as we found last week, bat speed isn’t everything. Even when you account for the situational factors outside of a hitter’s control that affect it, a hitter’s hardest swings aren’t usually his best swings. Ohtani swung hard at that Greene fastball, but he whiffed.

Bat speed might tell us something about hitter intent, though. And I think we can learn something about Ohtani’s intent here.

The cheat swing

You might remember my attempt last week to define a guess swing via contextualized bat speed data. That definition requires a big assumption: that we can use a swing attribute that’s now measurable (faster-than-expected bat speed) to infer that a hitter might be making his decision to swing earlier than he typically would. On a guess swing, that decision might come even before the pitch is thrown.

I’d categorize that first Ohtani swing as a cheat swing. The cheat swing is just a guess swing, but is specific to a pitch that attempts to attack a hitter’s hole. Instead of attempting to cover the entire plate, the hitter gears up to cover the pitch thrown to his blind spot.

To identify quantified tells for cheat swings, we’d need to go to the true start of the swing; we could identify early swing decisions by looking at data on the parts of the body that move when a swing fires (legs, hips, hands, etc.). Absent that data, we can use contextual clues and the bat speed/decision making concept to try to get into a hitter’s head.

Stop picking on Shohei

Here’s an example. On April 13th, Ohtani faced San Diego’s Matt Waldron.

At-bat #1: Waldron missed wide with two knuckleballs. He came back with this 2-0 cutter:

An Ohtani bail. Waldron would try a fastball with the same target on the next pitch and miss high to walk Ohtani.

At-bat #2: Waldron opens by trying to crowd Ohtani again - this time with a frontdoor sinker:

Waldron, having effectively moved Ohtani off the plate, safely lands a backdoor sweeper over the outer edge. If you just looked at Ohtani’s reaction, though, you’d think the pitch was six inches outside:

At this point, Waldron has made his intent clear. He’s got soft stuff (knuckleballs, sweepers) that he’s going to try sneak over the outer-half and below the zone. He’s going to pair that soft mix with a diet of hard stuff thrown up-and-in.

This dual-sided approach from Waldron gives Ohtani a choice: stay caught in between, or pick a side?

The next pitch:

Bam! Ohtani chose to cheat to the up-and-in fastball and got one. He takes an 80 mph swing, which is a difficult speed to achieve for any left-handed hitter to that part of the zone (and particularly difficult for a hitter with Ohtani’s frame and swing).

But Ohtani can cheat. He can eliminate the outer-half of the plate from consideration. He can start to open his hips a little earlier. He can think ‘pull’ instead of ‘middle of the field.’

Here, it wasn’t enough to connect. But would you really want to challenge Ohtani in that spot on the next pitch? Maybe, maybe not. That swing would make me think twice.

Who else is cheating?

To be transparent, I’ve only flipped through the bat speed (vs. model expectation) charts for a few dozen hitters. Here are two more hitters who stood out on an initial look:

It was only two years ago that some thought Cody Bellinger’s inability to reach the high fastball would end his big league career. His bat speed chart looks kind of like Ohtani’s - with more of an up/down contrast. That contrast could indicate some cheating to try to get to that high fastball in 2024.

Marcus Semien’s case is somewhat different. His hardest swings are coming at fastballs across the bottom rail of the zone. I haven’t seen enough to guess at whether or not any of those swings look like cheat swings, though.

A next step could include a systematic review that slices and dices these charts by side of the plate (in vs. out or up vs. down). Finding each hitter’s hole is a bit of a difficult exercise itself, too - not all hitters have as one as notable as Ohtani’s.

If there’s anything to take from these few examples, it might be that a hitter’s swing isn’t one thing. It changes as it is challenged and as a hitter’s intent shifts. That’s pretty cool.

Have a great week!