Giancarlo Stanton Gets Pitched Weirdly
“When you’re pitched away, take the ball to the opposite field.” It’s a training mantra that seemingly exists everywhere. I heard it in Little League. I hear it on major league broadcasts to this day. The data show that hitters do it, and it’s just a natural swing. I can think of few hitting sayings I believe more than this one.
Of course, just because you can hit the ball the other way doesn’t mean you have to. Over the last two years, the list of righty hitters who have pulled the ball most when they swing at away pitches (from right-handed pitchers, just to standardize the sample) probably matches your intuition:
| Player | Away Pull% |
|---|---|
| Gary Sánchez | 51.4% |
| Eugenio Suárez | 46.7% |
| Patrick Wisdom | 45.8% |
| Jonathan India | 44.9% |
| Marcus Semien | 44.5% |
You basically understand the kinds of hitters on here. The guys ranked sixth and seventh are similar types: Salvador Perez and Mike Zunino. It’s big boppers who try to lift and pull the ball no matter where they’re pitched, as well as guys like Marcus Semien who sell out to pull in an attempt to juice their power. If you do the most damage on the pull side and accrue most of your offensive value through power, it’s a natural approach. You think anyone’s coming to the ballpark to see Patrick Wisdom slap a well-placed cutter the other way? They want dingers!
The list of the hitters who pull the ball least often when pitched away is mostly who you’d expect, and also not who you’d expect at all. Feast your eyes on the top five:
| Player | Away Pull% |
|---|---|
| DJ LeMahieu | 5.2% |
| Ke’Bryan Hayes | 5.4% |
| Myles Straw | 7.1% |
| Jean Segura | 9.1% |
| Giancarlo Stanton | 11.8% |
The top four are contact-oriented hitters with elevated groundball rates… and the fifth might be the most powerful baseball player in history.
Yes, despite having muscles on his muscles, Giancarlo Stanton doesn’t over-commit to pulling the ball when he’s pitched away. It’s more than that: when he does pull the ball on an away pitch, he’s been ineffective, to the tune of a .293 wOBA since the start of 2021. That’s meaningfully worse than average contact quality, and again, we’re talking about Giancarlo Stanton, the king of hard contact.
In fact, since the advent of Statcast in 2015, Stanton’s power numbers when he pulls away pitches are quite poor. He’s hit for a .275 wOBA and a .322 xwOBA. That’s a .280 batting average and .360 slugging percentage; not a particularly high BABIP (these are all balls in play), and a minuscule power output. That’s mishits and grounders, mostly, with the occasional laser-beam line drive mixed in. When he takes those same away pitches the other way or back up the middle, he does so with authority: a .450 wOBA (.453 xwOBA), .378 batting average, and .689 slugging percentage.
As it turns out, this has been a long evolution in his game. Here are his pull rates on away pitches from righties over the years:
| Year | Batted Balls | Pull Rate |
|---|---|---|
| 2010 | 42 | 28.6% |
| 2011 | 65 | 32.3% |
| 2012 | 44 | 34.1% |
| 2013 | 58 | 32.8% |
| 2014 | 65 | 20.0% |
| 2015 | 28 | 10.7% |
| 2016 | 66 | 18.2% |
| 2017 | 86 | 16.3% |
| 2018 | 75 | 13.3% |
| 2019 | 8 | 12.5% |
| 2020 | 8 | 12.5% |
| 2021 | 60 | 13.3% |
| 2022 | 16 | 6.3% |
Early in his career, Stanton pulled a roughly average number of away pitches. But over time, he’s taking what the pitcher gives him more often, and he’s been at roughly the same low pull rate on these pitches since joining the Yankees in 2018.
Does this strike you as strange? It struck me as strange. I know that Stanton isn’t a stereotypical power hitter – he’s far stronger than even that archetypical bopper, and thus doesn’t have a power hitter’s swing because he doesn’t need one to leave the park – but being one of the least likely hitters in baseball to pull an away pitch just seems shocking to me. Even stranger is that when he does turn on an away pitch, he has below-average power. Below. Average. Power. Giancarlo. Stanton. I’m just repeating the words over and over in my head trying to make sense of it.
Here’s another way of thinking about it. On pitches on the inner third of the plate, Stanton is the fearsome power hitter you’d expect, with the eighth-highest wOBA and sixth-highest slugging percentage in baseball since 2015. On pitches away, his success is muted; even with all that opposite-field power, his complete lack of pull-side damage relegates him to 19th-best in wOBA and 23rd-best in slugging percentage. That’s still good, but come on: he’s Giancarlo Stanton, god of power! Pitch him away, and you might survive.
Here’s a list of the right-handed hitters with the lowest rate of away pitches seen (at least six inches away from the dead middle of the plate) so far this year:
| Player | Away Pitch% |
|---|---|
| DJ LeMahieu | 27.3% |
| Giancarlo Stanton | 29.2% |
| Starling Marte | 30.9% |
| Lane Thomas | 31.0% |
| Andrew McCutchen | 31.3% |
Wait… what?
This isn’t some new way of attacking Stanton. Since 2015, he’s in the eighth percentile of away pitches seen from righty pitchers. The book on him is to come inside early and often; he has the fifth-highest rate of inside pitches over the same time horizon.
Want to know the really weird part? We’ve been looking at production on contact, but even his swing-level numbers make it seem like pitching inside so often is a mistake. Since the start of 2015, Stanton has swung at 1,002 pitches that were six inches or more towards the right-handed batter’s box from the middle of the plate (thrown by righties — sorry for the pile of qualifiers). These are, in other words, inside pitches thrown by righties to a righty. He’s come up empty on 25.9% of them.
When he swings at away pitches – six inches towards the left-handed batter’s box from the middle of the plate, the same definition in reverse – he does far worse. He’s swung at 1,028 of them and come up empty 51.8% of the time.
That sounds worse than it is, because all batters swing and miss more frequently at away pitches. It’s a sampling thing; breaking balls disproportionately end up away, while fastballs disproportionately tail in. In righty-righty matchups as a whole, batters whiff on 19% of their inside swings and 39% of their outside swings.
But overall, I don’t quite get pitchers’ approach to Stanton. All things considered, he’s excellent at handling those inside pitches they love so much. He hits fairly well against pitches away – he’s a very good hitter, after all – but he adds three times as much value per pitch seen when facing inside pitches relative to away pitches.
If I had to guess at one culprit, it’s everyone’s favorite culprit: the shift. I don’t quite understand righty shifts, but teams have shifted against Stanton – either a strategic shift where the infielders are shaded but remain in a 2-2 configuration or a full overshift – on a third of the pitches he’s seen from right-handers as a Yankee. Righty-righty matchups as a whole have only been shifted 22% of the time.
Righty shifts don’t really work. They especially don’t work against hitters who are likely to hit the ball the other way. And Stanton is most definitely that guy – if you pitch him away, he almost never pulls the ball, whether in the air or on the ground. If you’re going to shift against Stanton – and teams are, oh boy, they are – you can’t afford to pitch him away. It’s just asking for a shift-enabled single.
Even though teams are clearly aware of the difficulty in shifting against Stanton – they pitch him inside extremely frequently, and I don’t think that’s on accident – he’s been a better hitter against the shift than against a standard defense. He’s batting .279 on grounders against an unshifted infield since 2018, as opposed to .337 against strategic shifts and overshifts. Teams want to shift Stanton, so they throw him the ball where he can pull it in the air – and those shifts don’t even take away groundball singles effectively.
So what’s up with Giancarlo Stanton’s complete lack of pull power on away pitches? I have no idea. Maybe, probably even, I’m missing something here, because the numbers just don’t add up. But it seems to be doing him a huge service – by making teams pitch him inside, despite the fact that he’s a great hitter there, in an attempt to shift against him. The shifts don’t even work! It’s a great situation for Stanton, and a puzzling one for the teams that face him.
Ben is a writer at FanGraphs. He can be found on Bluesky @benclemens.
Super Interesting!
Perhaps could be psychological?
Anecdotally, I recall seeing him absolutely smash opposite field homers so often and with such ease that I kind of expected that to be his preferred location.
Perhaps because his away power is sooo much better than the average player, and displays of it so shocking and frequent, that those memories dominate normal human consciousness.
He does hit a lot of opposite field home runs, that’s not anecdotal. Ben is just saying that he drives the outside pitch to the opposite field and pitchers prefer not to pitch him there because of exactly what you’re saying.
This was my question also. If he’s strong enough to hit the ball out anywhere why bother pulling? Also Yankee Stadium is shorter to RF
This was my instant reaction too. I actually thought the article, from the title, was about about why going away to him is dumb (because of all those highly gifable oppo HRs – I don’t watch whole NYY games). Those lasers to rf really stick out,.
I wonder if LeMahieu has had any impact on Stanton’s approach (or vice versa), just from being teammates talking hitting. Although totally different capabilities and outcomes, they appear to make similar choices with the bat
No mention of his closed batting stance? He doesn’t open up at all when he swings. It’s like he’s set up to drive the outside pitch.
You beat me to it. I was wondering if pitchers and catchers see his extremely closed stance and feel like he just *must* be more vulnerable inside than outside.
Also, I wish we had similar data for Mike Schmidt. Another big power hitter with an extremely closed stance and stride.
It seems like Ben is stuck on the wrong thing here. Because in the final paragraph he says, “So what’s up with Giancarlo Stanton’s complete lack of pull power on away pitches?” to which I would say, “who cares?” Because he showed in a table that Stanton hits away pitches to the opposite field, and if you look at the stats he frequently DRIVES them to the opposite field.
I think you’re overindexing on the puzzlement being about Stanton’s approach. The article’s title refers to how pitchers approach him, given the fact that he doesn’t try to pull/drive outside pitches. It does seem relevant to understand how he performs when pushing the outside pitch – maybe I missed it in the article, but if he just pushes outside pitches for power, then this means that he “rolls over” on the outside pitch less.
Why is it surprising that pitchers pitch him inside when he shows that he hits the outside pitch where it’s pitched? He does drive outside pitches, he just doesn’t pull them. From 2021-22 Stanton has a .374 wOBA on BIP on outside fastballs vs .361 on inside fastballs. Of course you’re going to pitch inside to a player with an extreme closed stance who will hit the ball the other way.
This is one where I’d love to see an opposing pitcher or catcher interviewed about their game plan for him. Because I agree, it seems strange when you look at the numbers Ben presented.
A big part of it is the closed stance. That promotes going away on outside pitches, and would sap any power if he tries to pull those pitches
That’s what I’m thinking too. It also makes sense to pitch him inside with how closed he is.
This is a case where we need not look for a statistical answer, but instead a biomechanical one. Stanton has an extreme closed stance, maybe more than any other hitter in baseball. It sets him up to drive the ball oppo, and he does this for two reasons. One, because pitchers want to throw huge power hitters nothing but breaking balls away if at all possible.
Reason two: Guys like Semein sell out for pull power because biomechanically, hitting pulled balls hard enough to leave the yard is much easier than hitting them as hard to the opposite field. Stanton’s strength is game-breaking: he has no need to do that because achieving sufficient exit velo for homers for him is relatively easy; he’s so strong (and the Yankee Stadium RF porch so short) that elevating the ball with merely decent barrel accuracy will send it out very often. Hitters hit more fly balls to the opposite field, and Stanton is so strong that it makes more sense to focus on hitting the ball where it’s already easier to elevate oppo than to try and pull everything in the air, which with his huge levers mean that he‘d get a steady diet of sliders away.
This deliberate go-oppo approach also means that when he is pulling the ball when it’s away, it is usually what he is trying to do; it’s going to be when he’s fooled and out in front of a pitch, so that means lot of rolling over on breaking balls and beating them into the ground.
The closed-off stance is definitely real, but it’s instructive to think back to Stanton’s early career, back when he went by “Mike” and not “Giancarlo” (so, yeah, this is a super long time ago). A teammate noticed that he never, ever sold out for power–he was super conservative. He asked Stanton why, and Stanton said “I’m pretty sure if I sold out for power I would injure myself.” I wish I could find it so I could get the exact quote.
Stanton is very, very aware of his strength (which is literally his strength), and also his weakness–that he is just too strong for his body. We’ve talked about this more and more lately, with other super explosive muscle-bound guys seeming to break down more often, but that article way back when was the first time it clicked for me. It’s not just about going oppo, it’s about him not swinging so hard his arms come off. But it certainly helps!
Also, it’s worth noting that Aaron Judge also broke out when he realized that if he could only get the bat on the ball (which is not his strength) no matter what happened he’d swing with enough power to get a hit. This was documented back in March of 2017, with “Aaron Judge Has Found the Right Track” here on Fangraphs. This was the adjustment he made. If you have 80-grade raw power, the key isn’t translating it all into game power when you make contact, it’s getting contact more often.
Yup, more contact and particularly more semi-decent air contact with that much raw pop means absurd homer numbers
Anecdotally (in watching games) this is what it seems like Pete Alonso has been trying to do more this year.
The thing is, Pete Alonso was already pretty good. He didn’t have the massive holes in his swing that Judge did. Maybe Alonso was already doing it before and now it’s more noticeable.
In any case, Alonso is one of the few guys who might be able to get away with that. He’s very likely got 80 raw power, just a tick behind Stanton and Judge. Sano could get away with it too, although he’s fallen apart both literally and metaphorically.
^this
Really great comment. Stanton is the perfect example of how hitters with legitimately elite raw power should really have no need to sell out and pull the ball all the time. It’s like a magic stick: all he needs to do is put the barrel on the ball and no matter where he hits it, it’s going for extra bases. Judge and Acuña hit in a similar way. And this is one of the things that truly frustrate me with Joey Gallo. The dude has all the power in the world yet is exclusively a pull hitter, making him extra vulnerable when taking a cut against non fastballs.
Selling out to pull should only be done by guys with average raw power who are trying to maximize their game power, if that’s how they choose to hit (Semien, Didi, Bregman, etc). Players with 70 raw or higher have no need to be looking to hook all the time. There’s thunder in that bat, use it.
Another possible reason to consider: Yankee Stadium’s super short RF…
Stanton seems to be pulling the away pitch to RF substantially less since joining the Yankees (~12% vs. ~24%), perhaps because he’s tempted by the short fence out there. And pitchers would be aware of it too – worried about him easily poking a ball 310 feet to RF and getting a HR out of it.
If this is true, they’d be pitching him in-in-in especially at home, with an infield shift to match it.
Maybe the pitching sin here is not having a different book on him home vs. away? Maybe the way to manage facing him is to pitch him away when he’s, well, away?
For the 2014 season, I’d love to know Stanton’s pull rate on away pitches before and after his June 18th homer against the Cubs’ Jason Hammel.
This is RH on RH so he wouldnt have come up, but where does Jose Ramirez rank in pulling outside pitches?
Stanton started his career with an open stance. Now he has a closed stance. I wonder if he’s continued to close it the longer he’s been with the Yankees, who teach their righties to go the opposite field, or they acquire right-handed hitters who have that ability. Makes sense. Take advantage of the short porch. That said, Stanton’s power plays best straight away and to left, but he purposely wants to go more to RF knowing that’s the shortest path to the seats.
Visually, it seems the way to get Stanton out is to get him to fish on breaking pitches down and away. That’s probably true for all hitters, but it seems extra pronounced with Stanton. When he goes on one of his scorching hitting streaks, he spits on the outside pitches. When he goes cold, he expands the zone and swings wildly at pitches a foot off the plate. He knows that, so he tries to stay away from those pitches, which perhaps impacts the quality of contact when he does swing. Pitchers also have to pitch him inside to try and set up the outside pitches; otherwise, it will be difficult to get him to swing.
Well, I’ve written two paragraphs and it’s quite clear that…I haven’t a clue what Stanton’s doing and why pitchers are pitching him weirdly!
Maybe it’s to set him up? As a Sox fan, the best way to put away Stanton seems to be on sliders off the outside half of the plate (he can take some AWFUL-looking hacks at those). Running him inside with the fastball seems like it would make him more vulnerable to that pitch
This is a bit off-topic and not sure anyone will see it but here goes:
So far this season, Stanton has scored a grand total of 4 runs that weren’t the result of his own home runs. He has 29 singles, 3 doubles, 14 walks, and one reached on error. So that’s 47 times on base with only 4 runs scored. Sure, most of those times he was on first base but still… that seems really low.
Part of the reason is that Stanton is usually pulled for a pinch runner or defensive replacement late in games, so his runs scored are artificially low.
Thorough and interesting.
As someone who’s seen hundreds of Stanton’s at-bats, I’d have to say that he has a very closed stance that makes it seem that he’s ready to drive outside pitches and might have a harder time turning on inside pitches. It’s at least partly true – he crushes outside pitches, only he crushes them to the opposite field.
He probably performs worse on outside pulled pitches because he’s never trying to do that – it just means he’s been fooled, and his timing is off.
Another factor to consider is that the best way to get him out, if you can get ahead in the count, is to throw breaking pitches that break low and away out of the zone. With two strikes, he’ll swing virtually every time at pitches that appear to the viewer watching television as if they started low and outside the zone (although I’m sure they look different from Stanton’s perspective). I wonder if those breaking pitches from pitchers ahead in the count are dragging down Stanton’s mean performance on pitches on the outer half.
Does this article strike you as strange? It strikes me as strange. The author is surprised that pitchers pitch Stanton inside even though he says Stanton doesn’t pull outside pitches, and hits outside pitches with authority up the middle and oppo, which is evidently most of the time (when he doesn’t swing and miss).
“he adds three times as much value per pitch seen when facing inside pitches relative to away pitches.”
Where are you getting this? My queries showed a ~10% difference (10% higher wOBA on inside pitches on early fairly neutral counts).
I used Savant run values — wOBA doesn’t really work when a lot of Stanton’s problems on pitches away come down to swinging and missing. I believe they’re adjusted for count but not base/out state, but I could be wrong on that — they might consider base/out state as well.
Thanks for getting back to me, I figured there might be a problem with wOBA but didn’t know what else to use. Are the run values from the perspective of the pitcher? It appears they are, the query below shows a negative run value for all righties on pitches middle middle. From my Stanton related queries, his per pitch run values are higher on inside pitches over most samples, meaning better for the pitchers, thus it makes sense that pitchers pitch him outside less often.
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/statcast_search?hfPT=&hfAB=&hfGT=R%7C&hfPR=&hfZ=5%7C&stadium=&hfBBL=&hfNewZones=&hfPull=&hfC=&hfSea=2022%7C2021%7C&hfSit=&player_type=batter&hfOuts=&opponent=&pitcher_throws=R&batter_stands=R&hfSA=&game_date_gt=&game_date_lt=&hfInfield=&team=&position=&hfOutfield=&hfRO=&home_road=&hfFlag=&hfBBT=&metric_1=&hfInn=&min_pitches=0&min_results=0&group_by=league&sort_col=pitches&player_event_sort=api_p_release_speed&sort_order=desc&min_pas=0&chk_stats_run_exp=on&chk_stats_woba=on#results
After doing more queries, I think the run value baseball savant gives you is not accurate.
I don’t relish being that guy but it’s “by accident” not “on accident”
I think “on accident” is more a dialect thing, and is acceptable English (whatever the heck that means). It’s not that crazy to see why it came about, since its opposite is “on purpose”.
Having watched him as a Nats fan he tends to turn his wrist over relatively quickly after contact, so when he pulls outside pitches they tend to be a grounder ( I would guess his groundball rate based on observation on pulled outside pitches is unusually high.) What I’ve seen works best is to come inside once per at bat and then go with sliders away ( Scherzer made him look silly many times doing this, though Stanton did get a hold of some inside fastballs and hangers, then again its Scherzer.) Just from watching him I’d guess he’s elite at hitting fastballs outside and pretty mediocre with off-speed away ( as many hitters are.)