I Built It My Way: Contact Or Power Hitters?

One of the essential, perpetual questions in MLB is how to construct a roster. General managers have to weigh many factors, including experience, team chemistry and player skillsets. The last one is what I will be addressing, as good players come in different shapes and sizes.

Due to their lineup’s struggles this season, the New York Yankees traded for OF Joey Gallo on July 29 before the trade deadline. Gallo and the also-acquired 1B Anthony Rizzo are lefties who balance out a righty-heavy lineup, but Gallo is a power hitter who strikes a lot like many other Yankees.

One day later, the Chicago Cubs’ primary return for RHP Craig Kimbrel was 2B Nick Madrigal, a young, controllable player who will reliably start for years to come. Unlike Gallo, Madrigal is a small speedster with excellent contact skills who rarely strikes out but hardly walks.

Comparing different players seems nearly impossible to do, but that is the primary purpose of advanced stats. This season, it is pretty clear which one of them is better. Madrigal’s injury aside, his .774 OPS and 114 OPS+ are good numbers, but they are not close to Gallo’s .837 OPS and 130 OPS+. But Gallo’s career OPS+ is 115, only slightly higher than Madrigal’s 112 in far fewer plate appearances. Both of them are excellent defenders, so that washes out.

The best versions of these types of players tell a different story. Position players with low batting averages and lots of strikeouts rarely become stars, let alone all-time greats. Gallo might already be the best three-true-outcomes player ever, and he is nowhere close to the Hall of Fame. Historical examples are few and far between. LF Dave Kingman had 442 home runs and a career .236 average, but he did not walk at an exceptionally high rate. 1B Carlos Peña and OF/1B Adam Dunn are more recent examples of power hitters with low averages and high walk rates.

Contact hitters have much higher ceilings. Many Hall-of-Famers made it behind high batting averages as a carrying trait. Legendary OF’s Tony Gwynn and Ichiro Suzuki each have over 3,000 hits and less than 150 home runs, and they combined for 15 Gold Glove awards. Power might be exciting, but it is not the main recipe to be one of the best.

But focusing on specific people is not the point of this exercise. Since we are discussing roster construction, which type of player helps out a team more? Ideally, a team has players like Madrigal to set up players like Gallo. I am interested in which kind of player is more consistently valuable for their squad. Would you rather have a team full of high-contact speedsters or a team full of Three True Outcomes sluggers?

Ben Schneider, Contributor at All Talk, No Balk!

I would rather have a player similar to Madrigal. Not only are more balls in play more interesting to watch, but contact is more critical in the long run than power. Given how pitchers are doing all they can to strike out batters with high velocity, switching back to making contact is very important. Yes, someone like Gallo walks a lot to get on base, but station-to-station baseball leads to very streaky offenses. I much prefer players who consistently frustrate pitchers and wreak havoc on the basepaths. 

Sebastian Moore, Editor-in-Chief at All Talk, No Balk!

While Ben propels the idea of having a speedy contact team, I will play devil’s advocate and choose the Gallo-like power-hitting team. As Ben pointed out, Gallo is a career .209 batter. However, he owns a .335 OBP. A player like Madrigal might end the year with a much higher batting average but a similar on-base percentage. If these two different players reach base at the same clip, the power addition makes the lineup much more deadly. If Gallo connects with base runners on, the team has a chance to put up a crooked number with one swing, so does it matter if the runners reached via a hit or a walk? In my mind, no.

What say you, readers?

Cover courtesy of Bob Levey/Getty Images