What I Learned from Rod Carew's 'Hit to Win' - Part Two

[Matthew Trueblood]

More great lessons, and some modern Twins implications, from Rod Carew's handbook to hitting.Last week, I wrote about some of the mechanical concepts that jumped out to me while I was reading “Hit to Win,” Twins legend Rod Carew’s book on the craft at which he became such a master. Carew is no modern swing guru, but while his style was distinct from those of most modern hitters, many nuggets of his wisdom can be applied to current Twins. Today, let’s look at a few such items.

 

The sharp differences between Carew and Ted Williams were a theme last week, but we must return there to begin this conversation, too. Williams and Carew didn’t only differ on how to swing, but at which pitches. Famously, Williams credited much of his success in baseball to his successful adoption of Rogers Hornsby’s first principle of hitting: get a good pitch to hit. Williams believed he could thrive only by having the discipline to lay off pitches low and away from him, and especially, to lay off anything outside the strike zone.

 

Carew mentions Williams by name in refuting that notion. He writes in the book about his firm belief that a batter should be able to make good contact on as varied a selection of pitches as possible, and that if a hitter believed they could hit a ball squarely, they shouldn’t waste any time considering whether or not it was a strike.

 

To modern hitters, that in itself is antithetical. Consider the 2020 Twins. Last year, Mitch Garver swung at just 17.9 percent of pitches outside the strike zone, one of the lowest rates in baseball. Josh Donaldson chased 24.9 percent of non-strikes, but that was compared to a 67.5-percent swing rate within the zone. Garver and Donaldson are exemplars of the pervasive modern philosophy of hitting.

 

Swings are, increasingly, grooved to maximize contact on a certain launch trajectory, within the strike zone, and batters are willingly trading looking bad when they do expand the zone for increased damage when they stay within it. In that regard, the Williams School has won the old debate.

 

In the book, however, Carew provides a road map for hitters to take a different tack, and some of what he teaches can even be put into action by those who eschew his broader outlook. Whereas Williams (whose vision was famously preternatural) emphasized pitch selection, Carew focuses more on pitch recognition, believing that doing that well can allow a hitter to hit a wider array of pitches.

 

Methodologically, what Carew proposes makes sense, and can be done even by those without a fighter pilot’s eyes. He details, in the book, the visual path he would create, in order to pick the ball up right out of the pitcher’s hand. He discusses simple cues for reading spin, but for batters who can’t manage that, he also provides some secondary cues. Pitch by pitch, Carew talks about where to look for the pitcher’s fingertips, in relation to the ball at release, and he frames the idea of pitch selection by encouraging batters to establish a visual tunnel from the pitcher’s hand outward. If the ball leaves that tunnel, it can be a cue not to swing. Otherwise, the tunnel should help the batter read the pitch well enough to put a good swing on it.

 

Unlike some hitters (even modern ones) who emphasize hitting to the opposite field, Carew is adamant that good contact happens out in front of home plate. In that sense, he’s in step with the science of hitting in 2020, even if his objectives and technique are less so. He talks about aiming to hit the top and inner halves of the baseball, but whereas some hitters repeat those old saws as paths to hitting hard ground balls and maximizing contact, Carew makes the concepts fit with what we now know about hitting.

 

In his passage about aiming for the top half of the ball, what Carew emphasizes is the apparent rising action created by the backspin on big-league pitches. He doesn’t actually advocate hitting the top of the ball; he just wants hitters to aim there, in order to hit the center of it and maximize the quality of contact. Something similar underpins his advice to hit the inside half of the ball. It’s not about actually hitting that inner half, but about being sure not to cast one’s hands too soon.

 

Time is not on a hitter’s side, as Carew (and every other hitter) well knows. If a hitter wants to get around the ball all the time, they’re likely to try to rush their hands through the hitting zone, sapping the natural power flowing from their hip and shoulder rotation, and from the forward shift of their weight. A properly executed swing, as described by Carew, will get the barrel of the bat into the hitting zone on time, going at the highest possible speed. To do so, however, the hitter has to be loose, and they have to trust they can do that. If they’re worried about being beaten by speed, they’re likely to use counterproductive movements that will only guarantee that outcome.

 

Nelson Cruz is, then, an almost perfect adherent of Carew’s essential teachings. He has the power to chase homers in a way Carew would never teach most hitters to do, but he, too, contents himself with aiming to hit line drives and stay inside the ball. That approach still begets plenty of quickness and power to the pull field, but Cruz doesn’t have to wait out pitchers as excruciatingly as do Donaldson or Garver.

 

Obviously, the hitter in the Twins’ prospective lineup most reminiscent of Carew is Luis Arráez. It’s not even close. Arráez lives Carew’s most important principles, especially when it comes to picking up the pitch as early as possible and being ready to swing until it becomes wholly clear he shouldn’t. Arráez’s weight transfer and hands also look more like those of Carew than like those of his current teammates.

 

Because he was never a true slugger, it’s easy to remember Carew as a pure singles hitter, reliant on exceptional contact skills and irreproducible in the modern game. In reality, though, Carew had the same relative strikeout rate, given his league and era, as Jorge Polanco has thus far in his career. Polanco is a fine contact hitter, but what made Carew special wasn’t avoiding strikeouts like Polanco; it was that he had the highest era-adjusted BABIP in baseball history.

 

Polanco is unlikely to replicate that, but as we’ve noted in the past, it’s possible that Arráez could be that kind of high-BABIP guy. Moreover, to this point, he’s been a much better pure contact hitter than Carew was. He won’t match the modest power or the impressive walk rates Carew had, but if there’s a hitter in the modern game ideally suited to the things Carew wrote about in “Hit to Win,” it’s Arráez, and if there’s a person in baseball ideally suited to give Arráez guidance in developing his unique skill set, it’s Carew.

 

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[Doctor Gast]

Sano is so strong that after the 1st strike he could shorten his swing & be more selective to cut down his SO.

[DocBauer]

Me trying to sound smart about hitting would be about as intelligent as saying I believe I could enjoy a conversation in Portuguese. (I do not speak Portugese).

 

The take that I find most interesting is the point of a batter "tunneling" the pitch on its way, striking if it is in that tunnel and laying off if not. Makes complete sense and not necessarily at Odds with the William's thought process. In theory, a batter should know his own zone, and SHOULD be able to make good contact even if the pitch isn't a "good pitch to hit", in converse to the William's approach in that regard.

 

The problem I see with that...not including all hitters KNOWING their hitting zone or always trusting it...is simply having the inate ability to adjust during their swing. To so degree, I think he is describing what is often referred to as being a "bad ball" hitter. Oliva and Puckett had that ability. And while Arraez is a more patient hitter, he also seems to have that special ability to adjust and put the bat on ball and hit it somewhere.

 

Rosario, to me, is very reminiscent of Puckett, though not quite with the same results. Hits or XB hits or HR, he has an insane ability to barrell up on balls that others just can't. It's what makes him a good and sometimes great player. Of course, Eddie also thinks he can do that all of the time, which nobody can. And while it's cruelty to dead animal carcasses to continue beating the same one, just imagine how good he could be if he could hold back just a little, reign in his aggressiveness just a bit, and "tunnel" those pitches just a little more.