In the sixth inning of Monday’s game between the Blue Jays and the Cardinals, George Springer hit a ball, a hanging curve ball that splits the center of the strike zone. He was late and fouled:
His behavior after swing showed that he thought it was a missed opportunity and clearly saw the reason. With such a tone, he is thinking about the extra foundation. Instead, Andre Pallante strikes for his troubles. Now Springer’s back is on the wall. Pallante returned 1-2 with a better court, but Springer was spoiled:
Unlike the previous lady, this seems to be a calculation behavior to me. Springer was late on the court, but was too close to comfort, so he made a defensive cut, encountered the ball in his swing, and played harmlessly.
Welcome to the chaotic world of analyzing foul rates. Springer’s two swings produced the same results, but the first swing was a bad result for him and the second was an ideal result. You can argue that if he doesn’t sway, the second ball will be a ball, but he is certainly not sure when he promises to sway. It is a good result to fight a course with such a good location.
You might not be surprised to learn that Luis Arraez, Nick Allen and Brice Turang were leaders in early foul-rates (fouls per swing). They waved a lot, made a lot of contact and sprayed their contacts into all areas, including foul territory in all directions. On the other side of the coin, you already have guys like Bryce Harper, Judge Aaron, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. These guys don’t wield often, which means a few things. First, they wield on average on a better court so that they can get better contact. Second, they keep less contact on average, and less contact means fouls, even if the foul rate is the same for each contact.
I would rather be in the second camp than there. Early foul balls are a waste, and are actually the same as swing strikes. They could be worse, even – the basemen cannot steal, the catchers cannot stop bad, and allow passes. 46% of Arraez’s total swings – 48% of league leader Wilyer Abreu’s ended up being a foul ball. Of course, contact is great, but when half of it is considered a strike, it has much less appeal.
But things change with two strikes. When the foul ball extends the bat instead of ending with a strikeout, it becomes valuable rather than harmful. Have you ever seen Jake Cronenworth hits? With two strikes, he became a hockey goalkeeper, trying to redirect everything near the strike zone. He won’t try to hit himself unless the pitcher actually catches him. He especially hopes to avoid strikeouts. Cronenworth had the highest baseball rate, with two strikes of 51.2%. It worked – he still made a lot of money due to his preference for running, but he had 16% of his time because the pitcher ended up missing the area.
On the other hand, the bottom of the two-hit foul rating list is full of easy strikeout types. Javier Báez only fouled on his two-shot swing. The judge still went on strike, and even though he rewritten the record, he was still at the bottom. The same goes for Jackson Chourio, Shohei Ohtani, Fernando Tatis Jr., Kyle Schwarber and all the properties of the excellent Sluggers. If you hit like those guys, you can get rid of it, but Andrew Vaughn, Brenton Doyle, Miguel Andujar and Michael Toglia struggled with weight that they couldn’t play. In other words, this is not a disqualified statistic, but it is certainly a bad thing. This directly leads to a higher strikeout rate, and unless you have light tower power, many of the courts you swing two strikes aren’t the kind of ball you can hit the extra base.
I think the high foul rate was high before two strikes, and the high foul rate for two hits was good. In the early days of counting, fouls were wasted, while in the late days of counting, they were a free card. Assuming these two events are comparable to me, I don’t make much sense. The batsmen behave differently, and if we don’t praise them for this different behavior, then we lack the importance of the bats.
To measure this, I have to put everything on the same scale. I first counted the number of swings of each batsman in the early or above, found the average foul ball per swing, and then normalized the foul ball rate for each player to a Z score. I did the same for every hitter who swings with 100 or more balls with two hits. This gives me two points for each batsman: early foul rate and two hit foul rate. I flipped the signs of early foul rate scoring – lower – and then summed up both.
This allowed me to separate batsmen who always had a higher foul or always had a lower foul rate – they didn’t prove the trick of changing their approach in measurable ways. Arraez, for example, made foul contacts on 46.2% of his early swings and 46.3% of his two-strike swings. This is the same approach, as the swings throughout the league were reduced and more fouled with two strikes, Arraez’s ratio was below average in this metric. His two standard deviations are above average in the earlier foul rate, while the two-hit foul rate is only above average, with a net ratio of -0.4 for his “foul score”. Allen was even worse – he had foul contacts on 47.1% of early swings, but only 39.3% of double-shock fluctuations. When the pitcher tried to throw the ball on him, they succeeded. His foul score was a tragic -2.15.
It’s one of the worst marks in a Grand Slam event, but the worst hitters are worse than that. That would be Andujar, who is making a lot of foul contact early (44.6%) but has almost never had to keep his life (27.4%). The result is a foul score of -4.2. If you’re wondering why a person with his own skills – stable bat speed, elite contact rate – has never been cancelled in the profession, this may have something to do with it. Again, if you’re troubled by trying to bother this year’s Xander Bogaerts, he fouled 39% early, but only 30% later, to no avail, with a foul score of -2.2.
Most major leagues are not outliers of this level. More than 60% of fouls in the league score between -1 and 1, while 93% of fouls score between -2 and 2. The top ten bats in the metric are 20+20 points higher than the bottom 10, but most players fall into the wide, undifferentiated middle. I’m not saying it’s a skill that everyone in baseball uses or should use, but I do think it’s measuring real abilities.
This brings us back to the exemplary Springer of adaptability. Early in the count, he was allergic to foul balls and stained the ball just 30.6% of the time. However, putting him in two hits, he entered protection mode, defeating the ball with 42% of the hackers. In fact, he has shown some version of this skill throughout his career. The worst two years he has adjusted his foul rate were 2023 and 2024 – perhaps not by chance, it was the worst offensive period of his career.
Another outstanding performance in this field? Springer’s former teammate Carlos Correa was about Springer’s foul score this year, and it was even better in his career. Is this part of Astros’ famous hitless transformation? I obviously can’t say with certainty that they may be doing some other things to tilt their support, but such a solid approach wouldn’t hurt.
This is not all the astronauts before. As time goes by, Harper learns this skill. During his national tenure, he did not change his approach at all during two strikes. However, since joining the Phillies, one of the differences between his early foul rate and hit foul rate throughout the major leagues. Hey, will you take a look, he’s also very high in foul scores this year – his 28% advance foul rate and 37% two-hit foul rate are fourth in foul scores.
When fans and analysts talk about smart batsmen with bat control, I think they describe the skill implicitly. The ability to swing differently depending on the context – prioritizing loud, fair contact, then suffocating and delaying defense – stimulates old-fashioned and new school fans. This adaptability is more valuable than the ability to always slap on the ball or always try to get it from the park.
If you are like me, you have a big question: is this a sustainable skill, or is it a flash from one year to the next, bringing noise into the batsman’s production? Outliers here are obviously obviously advantageous – Harper, Springer and Correa do it consistently. Allen and Andujar maintained greater foul contact with the two strikes compared to the two strikes. They never had this skill. Still, I want to check that this is a talent (or obstacle) for only a few people.
To do this, I started getting data from 2023 and 2024. I identified the top 10% and the lowest hitters in 2023 and then compared it to 2024. The top 10% of batsmen scored an average of 2023 in 2023, with a score of 1.7 in 2024 and a 10% rate in 2024. The lowest 10% for batsmen in 2023 and 2024 is 25%, and 25% for 2024. In the top 25% in 2024, -1.6 in 2023 and -1.4 in 2024, the bottom is 25% at 0.3. There is a 0.3 correlation between year-on-year foul scores and year-on-year foul scores. It’s a real skill – not as powerful as home run rate or swing strike rate, but despite this, batsmen who are good at it in the next year are good at it in the next year.
So the next time you see George Springer foul, early blasting ball foul, you know: It’s a rare event. Next time you see Bryce Harper turn the 0-2 count into a full-blown foul hit, and yes, it’s years of training. These guys are good at their jobs, and it’s a good thing you, the fans, know implicitly. Isn’t baseball cool?
