speaking of swing decisions, I had meant to post this article about Ben Williamson earlier, an analytical look at his offense. For all the debate about if he could manage to get stronger, here it says the issue isn't strength, its swing decisions. He is strong enough to drive a baseball, and its true he is good at making contact. The problem is he puts too many poorly hit balls into play by swinging out of the zone so often. He could be better off actually missing them and keeping at bats alive. He can crush strikes when he swings at them but he is basically a swinging slut. He needs to concentrate on swinging at pitches he can drive rather than trying to make contact with whatever the pitcher tosses
In any event, it turns out the extra contact Williamson is making is not good, and is actually making the situation worse. Because he puts so many of these balls in play, he’s getting a lot of weakly hit balls that end with outs rather than merely whiffing and ending up with a strike and living to fight another day. He’s getting an xBA of just .187 and an xSLG of a pathetic .212 on pitches outside the zone. To paraphrase Dr. Ian Malcom, Ben Williamson was so preoccupied with whether he could make contact, he didn’t stop to think if he should.
Williamson is digging that hole deeper by not swinging at enough strikes, pitches he can and has been crushing, swinging at just 64.8% of pitches in the heart of the plate, compared to an MLB average of 72.1%. However, Williamson makes more contact than the average player. So when you look at it a different way, Williamson is making contact with 57.4% of pitches in the heart of the plate, which is in line with the league’s 59.1%. Thus, it’s more of a missed opportunity than it is a weakness. That’s another way of saying, there’s a lot of room to grow if he swung at more hitter’s pitches, especially since as noted above, the contact he makes on these pitches tends to be good contact.
But for now, the problem with his profile is that he’s gobbling up trash while avoiding cookies like he’s a rat on the Atkins Diet. This is basically the quantification of your observation that Williamson has looked lost at the plate lately. But it’s also a profile that suggests that he has a lot to gain simply by getting a better sense of the zone. Can he do that?
terms of fixing it, seems its not necessarily easy to fix. Its not something that tends to change a lot over a career. But we shall see, he is a hard worker
https://www.lookoutlanding.com/2025/5/1 ... year-maybe
