Older And Wiser: Torii Hunter Continues To Hit

As he nears the end of his second decade in baseball, what has allowed him to continue to be a viable contributor has been his unquenchable and relentless work ethic.

“Me hitting is just a lot of heel pain,” Hunter explains as the reason that at his age he is able to keep pace and evolve in an young man’s game. Endless amounts of work with the bat in his hands. Tee work. Front toss. Pitching machines. Batting practice. Hunter says he goes through this routine until something is bleeding. When he’s not swinging lumber, he is visualizing his at-bats.

In discussing what has allowed him to remain relevant at the plate for almost 20 years while the game has chewed up and spit out countless other talented athletes, Hunter sounds like one part hitting coach, one part life coach.

“I just kind of know what guys are trying to do to me. I make adjustments a lot quicker than I did when I was younger of course. You can say that in life as well. In baseball, if you don’t make adjustments, you don’t succeed. Just like in life: If you don’t make adjustments in life, you don’t succeed.”

Sure, it is an oversimplified look at the game (and life) -- make adjustments and you will succeed -- but a glance at the Twins lineup will show several young hitters who need to follow that instruction. Of course, it is not that simple. Players in the early stages of their career can be told to make adjustments but they lack the experience to understand how -- like a soldier who hasn’t seen combat. Meanwhile, Hunter’s been in the trenches for years now.

“I was that type of guy that couldn’t have a weakness,” he confesses, sounding dangerously close to an applicant spouting a cliche in a job interview. “If I had a weakness on a slider away I’m going to work on it so much that I can take that weakness and make it a strength.”

Had it really become a strength or was it rhetoric? Since 2009 Hunter has hit .352 as a right-hander on sliders from same-sided pitchers down and away in the strike zone. The rest of MLB’s righties hit just .238 on those types of pitches. Only Hanley Ramirez (.379) and Vladimir Guerrero (.353) fared better. Whether the success was a product of hard work or a conveniently shared statistic, either way, if you leave a slider at the bottom of the zone, Hunter will figure out how to turn it into a hit.

The reason he worked so hard at improving that aspect of the game is because that is where pitchers were attacking him when he first came up in Minnesota. His free-swinging tendencies earlier in his career created a hole that he set out to close. More heel pain from repetition in the cages.

Over the course of his career, Hunter has seen an ebb and flow of different strategies from opposing teams. One time it might be an abundance of breaking balls or another might be fastballs inside. Three years ago pitchers would try to throw breaking balls down and away, which Hunter said he solved by driving them to the opposite field.

“They were pitching me away in 2012 and 2013 and I just shot the ball the other way. I had to go where they were pitching me and then I saw they were started pitching me in, I made the adjustment as well.”

In those two years Hunter accumulated 102 hits when going the other way. In 2013 his 57 hits tied him with Joe Mauer for the ninth most opposite field hits. As pitchers began to throw him inside more again last season, Hunter's rate for driving the ball to right field dropped too.

Does he have a sense for how pitchers might approach him this coming season?

"This year I don’t know. I don’t know where they are going to pitch me or what style they are going to pitch me, might get more off-speeds because I think I’m gonna hit fourth and fifth and maybe sixth sometimes so you get in those power positions, you are going to get more off-speeds so I might have to go the other way.”

With a younger player, the response might have ended at "I don't know”. Hunter doesn't know but that's because he knows the circumstances change depending on the situation. It’s much more complicated than that.

"There’s a lot more to baseball than just hitting. You have to know what is going on, what count, what inning, who’s on the mound, who’s on base for you, is it a speed guy or is it a slow guy -- if it is a slow guy you are going to get more off-speed, if it is a speed guy you are going to get a little more fastballs. Who’s hitting behind you, is it a lefty or righty or is it Miguel [Cabrera] or [Albert] Pujols or whoever it is. There’s a lot into the game and you just gotta know that and that’s being a good student of the game."

Hunter begins to tread into the territory of lineup protection, a notion that statisticians and the analytically inclined suggest has little effect on the outcome. From the Baseball Prospectus book Baseball Inside The Numbers, former BP writer and current member of the Rays organization James Click said that “there's no evidence that having a superior batter behind another batter provides the initial batter with better pitches to hit; if it does, those batters see no improvement as a result.”

Hunter says his experience tells him that effect exists. Hitting ahead of Pujols or Cabrera has given him the opportunity to see better pitches compared to the times when an unproven player follows him. For Hunter this season, if he does hit fourth, fifth or sixth, there is a strong likelihood that he could be batting ahead of some powerful yet unpolished hitters like Oswaldo Arcia and Kennys Vargas or possibly lighter hitters like Eduardo Nunez or Kurt Suzuki.

“In the end, I could hit you out as well so if it’s a guy who is hitting behind me who really is not a power threat or just getting to the big leagues and hasn’t proven himself yet, they are going to pitch more around [me] and try to get me to chase,” Hunter explains. “And if they walk me and it’s like ‘alright I’ll go for the guy who hasn’t done anything yet’. Of course if it is a guy hitting behind me and he’s hitting for power and he’s done some great things in the game, now he has to be careful to both of us and he has to throw strikes and he has to go after me before he goes after this guy who is proven as well. So it makes a big difference.”

Hunter has witnessed his walk rate drop over the last several seasons, going from near 10% in 2011 to 7% in 2012 to 4% in 2013 and finally 3% last year. Did he feel like he chased more? Pressed because he was in the middle of a potent lineup? Just felt that he had to swing to drive in runs? Hunter had a perfectly good explanation for why he rejected free passes.

“My walks went down because of hitting second,” he says. “I think in any lineup you hit second they are coming after you. They don’t want to get to the three-four-five guy I don’t care who it is, they are going to go after that guy -- the number one and number two guy. So I’ve been hitting second since 2012, so of course my walks go down because I’ve got [Mike] Trout at first base who is going to steal so they gotta try to throw a fastball so they can try to throw him out. Then I had Austin Jackson who’s at first base, he’s a base-stealer, gotta throw a fastball to try to get him out. All plays a part of it.”

Hunter’s “you gotta swing” attitude seemingly flies in the face of what the analytics community wants to see out of a two-spot. That particular spot in the lineup has morphed from a light-hitting player who was focused on moving runners over to one who needs to occupy the base behind the leadoff guy. As far as an on-base threat goes, Hunter has compiled a .339 OBP from the two-spot which ranked 50th among 86 total two-hitters with a minimum of 1000 plate appearances since 2000. Hunter has also walked just 66 times (79th out of 86) which pales in comparison to Nick Swisher who drew 239 walks in just 400 more plate appearance in that time.

But Hunter approaches that spot with a run-producer’s mindset. He has registered just four sac bunts. Mentally, he says that if pitchers are peppering the zone in order to avoid putting more runners on for the heart of the order, he will take advantage. His .304 batting average was the seventh highest in that group and his .460 slugging percentage was the 14th highest showing that he can provide punch.

Where the rest of the game has seen its strikeout rates increase as velocity has climbed and the strike zone has expanded, over the last two years Hunter has seen his strikeout rate dip. Again, he attributes this phenomenon to hitting at the top of the order rather than at the middle of it where he was swinging with lethal intent.

“Even before I got to the two-hole with the Twins and all that, the reason why I had more strikeouts is because I was hitting fourth, I was hitting fifth. I had to supply power. All your guys that hit for power they have high strikeouts -- except for Barry Bonds, he’s a different animal. Jim Thome, [Ken] Griffey, Ryan Howard, [Giancarlo] Stanton, I don’t care who it is, if you hit for power you are going to strike out.”

Based on what Hunter sees from his approach by batting order position as well as the hitters surrounding him, the 2015 season might be an interesting mix of power and strikeouts. With manager Paul Molitor’s desire to have Hunter hit cleanup, frequently combined with the probability of having a less than polished hitter like Vargas batting behind him (as he was on Opening Day), then the natural conclusion is that Hunter will try to supply more power but have a higher number of strikeouts as pitchers go after him with off-speed stuff without the fear of having to face Cabrera or Pujols.

Would Hunter rather be the two-hitter or does he have a preference for driving in runs and letting it fly?

“Doesn’t matter. At this stage, I don’t care. Especially over here with Paul Molitor, I told Paul even before I got here I said wherever you need me, I’m there. Because I’ve hit everywhere. I’ve hit leadoff early in my career. I’ve hit second the last three years and had great results, hitting .300 in the two-hole since 2012. I’ve hit third, I’ve hit fourth, I’ve hit fifth. I’ve been a power guy for a whole lineup, I’ve been that guy that wasn’t just a power guy that was the guy who would try to control the game hitting second. It doesn’t matter. I can make adjustments in any position.”

Hunter finishes his thought and pauses. He then flashes his trademark smile.

“Wherever I am as long as it isn’t lower than sixth.”