Ted Williams has a special place in my heart. As one of the all-time Red Sox greats and a favorite of my Dad, he is best known as the last major leaguer to finish the regular season with a batting average (BA) of .400 or better. He accomplished this feat in 1941 with an average of .406 marking the 28th occurrence of this rare accomplishment (including competing pro leagues in the late 1800s).
Over time, the .400 batting average has gone the way of the dinosaur. It’s been over 75 years since it was last accomplished. In the 1890’s it was achieved 11 times, including 5 players who had a BA over .400 in the 1894 season. Through the first 65 years of pro baseball, its occurrence has risen and fallen, eventually being snuffed out since Ted Williams made it happen.
Why?
It’s certainly not true that players have gotten worse over time. Advancements in technique, player development, athletic ability, performance psychology, and equipment support that argument. So why is it that we don’t see players bat .400 anymore? As with most things on this blog, it all comes back to basics.
In order to get on base (ignoring walks) a batter has to hit the ball delivered by a pitcher. If a batter is significantly better than the pitcher he will hit more of his pitches and hit them harder. This leads to better odds of getting on base via hits. Conversely, when a pitcher is materially better than the batter, his odds of getting on base decrease.
There is an interaction of skill levels between pitchers and hitters. This interaction tilts the odds of success in favor of the owner of superior relative skill. Consequently, as both pitchers and hitters improve over time in an absolute sense, their improvements relative to each other can and do cancel each other out.
So, based on the frequency of .400 hitters in the early days of baseball, batters were able to exploit relatively weak pitching. Subsequently, pitchers improved over time to achieve more parity between themselves and hitters. Increases and decreases in the number of .400 batters in the early 1900’s are at least partly a function of the arms race between pitchers and hitters. This is the paradox of skill popularized by Michael Mauboussin. (For the sake of simplicity I’m counting changes to equipment specifications and field dimensions as “skill” for both batters and pitchers.)
The Paradox of Skill
As the absolute level of skill in a given activity increases the relative differences in skill among competitors tends to decrease. Reductions in competitive edge lead to reductions in the distribution of outcomes. This can be seen in the data on the history of MLB batting averages (source: “Alpha and the Paradox of Skill“, Mauboussin & Callahan).
In a nutshell, when everyone is equally “good”, results fall close to the average. In order to outperform, you have to be more skilled, but as everyone improves over time this becomes more difficult to do. So how, specifically, did Williams do it?
A Student of the Game
The first half of the 1920s saw eight .400 BA seasons by the likes of Rogers Hornsby, George Sisler, and Ty Cobb. In 1925 pitching was aided by the introduction of the rosin bag affording a better grip on the ball. From 1930 to 1940 shutouts pitched rose from 7% to 11% and the league batting average dropped from .295 to .268. This created the need for batters to raise their game.
Early in his career with the Red Sox, Williams was assigned to the double-A Minneapolis Millers where he met a multi-.400 hitter, Rogers Hornsby, now a coach for the Millers. As the story goes, Hornsby gave Ted a piece of advice he went on to implement rigorously, “get a good pitch to hit”. Speaking with the games great hitters became a repeated pattern in Ted’s travels where they’d discuss the philosophy and strategies they’d use in the batter’s box.
Williams was regarded as an obsessive student of hitting. He was an early adopter of lighter bats in order to produce a faster swing speed. Philosophically, he believed in strict strike zone discipline, a strategy he took heat for in his day. His cumulative knowledge was eventually outlined in The Science of Hitting, which in 1970 showed he was still thinking of ways he could have been a better hitter. Tens years after his last at-bat.
“I’ll also tell you why left-handed pull hitter T.S. Williams does not think a pulled ball is something to strive for, and why he may have been a better left-hand hitter if he had not been a natural right-hander.” – Ted Williams in The Science of Hitting
The most recognizable image from the book is his analytical work on dividing the strike zone into 77 baseball sized segments. Each segment shows his BA in that specific location and helped him identify his “happy zone” (red and orange) and cold zone (low and away).
Digging into the details and methodically strategizing allowed Williams to improve without any changes in his physical skills. Analysis like this may seem obvious now with the proliferation of baseball analytics in today’s broadcast, but few, if any, were doing this in the mid 1900’s.
“I think hitting can be improved at almost any level, and my intention is to show how… from the theory to the mechanics to the application… I feel in my heart that nobody in this game ever devoted more concentration to the batter’s box than Theodore Samuel Williams, a guy who practiced until the blisters bled, and loved doing it, and got more delight out of examining by conversation and observation the art of hitting the ball.” – Ted Williams in The Science of Hitting
Ultimately, Ted took the act of hitting a baseball to the next level. His objective was to be the best hitter of all time. To achieve that goal, he studied and thought through every aspect of the hitting process. And he enjoyed the journey.
Pulling it All Together
I have a picture in my house of Ted Williams’ last at-bat that my Dad had framed when I was a kid. As best I can remember, it was one of maybe three things he ever insisted on having framed. This was a clear signal to me how special it was to him.
As my worldview evolves over time, Ted Williams continues to pop up in unexpected ways.
His place in baseball history provides a rich example of the paradox of skill. A mental model too few decision-makers appreciate. If you’ve ever wondered why professional active stock picking doesn’t, in most cases, yield the results it used to, this explains it really well. If the services your organization provides have been commoditized, this helps explain why.
Focusing less on “what” he accomplished and more on “how” he accomplished it leads to additional insight. Studying his predecessors, questioning dogma, and diligent practice raised his performance. He had a goal and put all of his efforts into it because he was intrinsically motivated to do so. It’s a playbook for elite performance and developing a competitive edge.
Finally, Williams was a continuous learner, a true student of the game. The world is a dynamic and evolving place. Your edges erode as your competition improves. To maintain or extend your competitive edge one must find ways to improve strengths or reduce weaknesses.
With all of the reminders and meanings attached to the picture above, it is one of my most prized possessions.