Gary’s Q&A

Listener question & Gary’s response · Transcript passage

I’m going to end with a question from Jesus Chan who asks, Why has no one since Ted Williams been able to hit over .400 in MLB?

Jesus, this is a very good question and one I could probably talk about for an entire episode.

For those of you outside of the United States or who don’t follow baseball, a batting average is the percentage of times you get a hit based on your number of at bats, which doesn’t include base on balls.

If you get a hit 2 out of every 10 times, you are probably going to be released or demoted to the minor leagues. If you hit .200 and remain on the team, you must have something else good goin on. If you get a hit 3 out of every 10 times, you are one of the best players in the league.

Hitting .400 means getting a hit four times out of every 10 at bats, or to look at it a different way, it means failing 60% of the time.

Hitting .400 is extremely rare and if someone could do it, it means that are having one of the best seasons in all of history.

A .400 batting average has always been a major accomplishment, but it was more common before the Second World War.

The last player to hit .400 was Ted Williams of the Boston Red Sox, who hit .406 in 1941. No one has done it in over 80 years.

The closest anyone has come was Tony Gwynn, who hit .394 in 1994, and that was in a strike-shortened year.

So, why has no one been able to do this for the better part of a century, and why is it so hard?

There are a host of reasons, but basically, the game isn’t played the same way it used to be. This mainly has to do with better analytics and statistics.

For starters, batting average isn’t as highly valued anymore as is home runs and total bases. Through analytics, people eventually realized that a .250 hitter with power was more valuable than a .300 hitter without power.

Pitchers have become more specialized. They throw harder and are replaced more often, which means that pitchers can throw their best stuff more often than they would if they had to pitch a full nine innings.

Also, every .400 hitter played under a 154-game schedule. Eight fewer games means more opportunities to fail and regress to the mean.

Finally, anyone who were to flirt with .400 nowadays would be the center of a media storm. Not only that, but every team would try to get this guy out every game they played against him.

All of these things have conspired to work against having another .400 hitter.

That being said, could it happen? I think yes, but the odds are obviously slim. There are things that happen in baseball every year that are unprecedented or that haven’t happened in decades.

I think the most likely scenario would be for baseball to implement some sort of rule change that would make it easier for hitters. Something like limiting the number of pitching substitutions in a game.

So, it is possible that someone could just put together an amazing season, I just wouldn’t bet on it.