For generations, baseball fans have loved talking about batting stances, the stranger the better ¨C even if, as the 2024 Brewers reminded us, most of the stances aren¡¯t quite so strange anymore.
We¡¯ve never really had a way to compare and contrast the various stances across the game, though, to really see just what¡¯s going on out there. With the latest Statcast release on Baseball Savant, now we can.
Tomorrow, we'll get into all the analytical value to be gleaned from where hitters are making contact. But for now, let's have some fun. Let's look at where hitters stand, and how they set up for the pitch. What are the most extreme stances we saw in 2024? Who stands in the oddest places? What does Rafael Devers do to more of an extreme than anyone else?
Who, to put it another way, has a stance that is nearly six times wider than the narrowest stance? These are the most extreme and interesting stances and batter positions we¡¯ve found with the new data. (Each section is with a minimum of 100 tracked swings; unless otherwise noted, each data point is the batter¡¯s center of mass, taken one second before pitch release.)
The closest and deepest batters in the box
The average Major Leaguer stands 28 inches behind the front edge of home plate. (Not, to be clear, behind the front of the batter¡¯s box. It's the plate which is the real navigational anchor for hitters.)
Most hitters, as you¡¯d expect, are clustered within a few inches of that point. But there¡¯s also a more than two-foot gap between the shallowest hitter and the deepest hitter, at the extremes.
- 11.2 inches deep // Jose Altuve
- 37.2 inches deep // Matt Vierling
Put it this way: If home plate was a perfect square, without the two corners taken out, it would be 17 inches on each side. Vierling is a home-plate-and-a-half deeper than Altuve is.
It¡¯s all a good reminder that ¡°60 feet, 6 inches,¡± as hallowed a figure as it might be, is somewhat of a suggestion. While the rubber and the plate never move, pitchers have a wide variety in release points, depending on their extension ¨C some pitchers let go of the ball close to 53 feet away from the plate ¨C and batters, too, get to choose how close they are to that pitch being thrown.
The closest and furthest batters to the plate
Conveniently for us, the average batter is also 28 inches off the inside edge of home plate, which makes it all easy to remember. When looking at who hugs the plate ¨C and who does not ¨C we find, once again, only one half of a switch-hitter is doing something extreme.
- 17.6 inches deep // Ozzie Albies, but only as a right-handed hitter.
- 36.0 inches away // Jason Heyward
As with Clement, lefty Albies is extremely different, which we¡¯ll learn more about below.
Now: You¡¯re probably wondering about Anthony Rizzo, somewhat legendary for being hit by pitches. (He¡¯s eighth all-time, with 222.) He¡¯s not quite at the top of the closest-to-the-plate list, but that¡¯s more about Albies than anything, because while Rizzo is seventh-closest, spots 2-11 are essentially one big tie. That¡¯s where Rizzo is.
The widest stance and the narrowest stance
- 8.8 inches wide // Steven Kwan
- 45.3 inches wide // Ryan McMahon
Now we¡¯re talking. The average stance width ¨C that¡¯s inches between the player¡¯s feet ¨C is 30 inches. Kwan, however, stands with his feet mere inches apart, making him the only player with a stance narrower than 10 inches. (Masyn Winn, at 13.3 inches, is the only other hitter even below 14.)
Maybe that makes sense for Kwan, listed at 5-foot-8, and known more for contact skills than big-time slugging. At the other end, five times wider, is McMahon, who is certainly taller, at 6-foot-2, but hardly a Judge-esque giant, either. While we¡¯ll show you how jarring this looks on the data visualization, because it¡¯s incredibly stark ¡
¡ it¡¯s nearly as fun to go back to the time in 2023 when the Guardians visited a rainy Coors Field, comparing the two lefties in a side-by-side look.
Yep. That¡¯s what it looks like.
How, then, does someone get to a stance that extreme? MLB.com¡¯s Tim Stebbins asked Kwan exactly that this spring in Arizona.
¡°Really? That¡¯s cool. I didn't know it was the closest,¡± Kwan was surprised to learn, ¡°but it's definitely intentionally close together.¡±
When asked why, he said he got there in 2021, his final season as a Guardians Minor Leaguer, pointing to the influence of the Cleveland coaching staff, trying to eliminate extra movement in his setup.
¡°It¡¯s just how I get into my back leg,¡± he said. ¡°The best way I can get into my back leg and then distribute force is if I'm already kind of upright into it. Before, I've had a wider stance, and then I kind of go back, get in my back leg and then go forward. So just thinking in my head, it's like, ¡®OK, if I can eliminate that going back part, I can think less and just preset everything and then just move forward.¡¯ And I guess it just went all the way to where it was, like, I had a toe tap. And then I just did a really slow going back. And then I was like, 'Let's just go straight completely back.'"
He did. There¡¯s almost no further back he could go.
The most open and closed stances
A completely even stance ¨C that is, both feet on the same line towards the mound ¨C would be 0 degrees, and an overwhelming majority of hitters are within some reasonable range of that. (Approximately 40% of batters set up within 10 degrees of even, and nearly 90% are within 25 degrees of even.)
- 67 degrees open // Devers
- 12 degrees closed // Giancarlo Stanton
But then there¡¯s Devers, who sets up with an open stance of a wild 67 degrees, well more open than anyone else with any reasonable playing time. (We¡¯ll note that Mike Ford, in camp this spring on a non-roster deal with the Twins, essentially mirrored what Devers did, though in just 17 games with the Reds last year ¨C not enough to qualify.)
It wasn¡¯t always that way for Devers, who once had a very traditional neutral stance, as this MLB Network reel shows:
It¡¯s not quite Tony Batista, legendary for, well, whatever this was. But it¡¯s as close as we¡¯re going to see in 2025 baseball.
Stanton, meanwhile, many years ago, once had an extremely open stance, as you can see here back in 2010 when he hit his first Major League home run. It had closed ¨C meaning it was easier to see the back of his uniform than the front ¨C considerably by the time he joined the Yankees in 2018. In 2024, it was the most closed of anyone, though of course the extremes here are much smaller than open stances. While Devers was 67 degrees open, Stanton was 12 degrees closed. You can¡¯t really turn your entire back to the pitcher, after all.
Now, given that Stanton is currently injured, with no clear return date, his might not be the most closed stance you¡¯ll see this year. Danny Mendick, who had the second-most closed stance, is currently a free agent. It might be that 2025¡¯s most-closed stance belongs to Houston outfielder Chas McCormick, who lets you see a lot more of the 20 on his back than the ASTROS on the front.
A batter who strides a ton ¨C and one who doesn¡¯t.
Of course, hitters don¡¯t simply plant their feet as the pitcher gets into the motion and then never move them again. There¡¯s a leg kick, or a stride, or, in some cases, barely anything at all.
If we look at the largest distance between original front foot (one second before pitch release) and where that foot goes by the time the bat makes it to the intercept point, the biggest strider is satisfying, because it¡¯s Jarren Duran ¨C who had a monster season last year and, yes, has a large leg kick. You can see just how far he¡¯s moving here.
On the other end? It is, hilariously, McMahon. As we noted before, he starts incredibly wide, and then we suppose it makes sense that there¡¯s only so much further you can go from there.
The stance that most resembles Ted Williams
Wait, what? We don¡¯t, of course, have data on this from even a few years ago, much less many decades ago. What we do have are the words of the original baseball hitting scientist himself ¨C compete with what certainly look like his own accurate measurements.
¡°My front foot was on a line with and twelve inches away from the front part of the plate,¡± Williams wrote in his seminal 1971 book, The Science Of Hitting. ¡°Normally,¡± he added, ¡°my feet at the stance were spread twenty-seven inches apart, about average for my size,¡± which is all a good reminder that if arguably the greatest hitter who ever lived was interested in numbers more than half-a-century ago, then it¡¯s OK if we are, too.
OK, so: left-handed hitter. A stance 27 inches wide. Front foot right at the front line of home plate, and also 12 inches off the inside of the plate. We have the numbers, and we even know what it looked like, thanks to this 1966 instructional film he produced explaining all of his hitting recommendations. It¡¯s clear, even if we don¡¯t have a number for it, that he¡¯s got a relatively neutral stance, neither open nor closed.
The real answer here is that no one looks exactly like Williams, because no one stands that close to the plate. A secondary answer might be new Cubs star Kyle Tucker, who as an Astros Minor Leaguer once impersonated Williams for a 2018 PBS special. But Tucker¡¯s stance is much wider, a full nine inches wider than Williams¡¯ self-reported 27 inches.
But in terms of stance width and front foot placement, the closest modern analogue is Anthony Santander, who signed a five-year deal with Toronto this winter. It¡¯s not perfect, but he stands with his front foot at the front of the plate, with a neutral stance that is 29 inches wide. He¡¯s even almost exactly the same height, listed as one inch shorter than the 6-foot-3 Williams, though he stands up a little straighter. (Williams was more hunched over.)
If Santander is not exactly the Splendid Splinter, that¡¯s not a bad outcome. No one is.
The batters who shifted positions the most last year
For the most part, hitters don¡¯t move that much over the course of a season. Bobby Witt Jr., for example, was 28.3 inches deep in April, and 28.4 inches deep in September. Juan Soto was 25.9 inches deep in April, and 25.5 inches deep in September. Overwhelmingly, hitters tend to stay where they are ¡ except for when they don¡¯t.
We already covered Pete Crow-Armstrong, who moved back in the box considerably late last year. But he was hardly alone, either. Let¡¯s give you three other interesting examples.
Jazz Chisholm Jr., Marlins/Yankees
Comparing April to September, no one moved up or back further than Chisholm did, going from 18.6 inches deep in the first month to 29 inches deep in the final month, a massive move of 10 inches.
Given that he was traded from Miami to New York on July 27, it¡¯s tempting to look at his team splits and think: Well, the Yankees strike again.
- As a Marlin // 20.1 inches deep
- As a Yankee // 26.8 inches deep
But before we give the Yankees too much credit, it¡¯s actually clear that he changed his position a week or so ahead of being traded ¨C though it¡¯s not clear if the idea was his, or came from a member of the Miami organization.
Victor Robles, Nationals/Mariners
After a disappointing decline from being the center fielder on the 2019 champion Nationals to being an afterthought on some last-place teams, Robles was cut loose by Washington last summer, landed in Seattle for a no-risk look, and performed so well the Mariners signed him to a two-year extension. As we noted last August, he displayed an increase in swing speed and a decline in strikeout rate, compared to his Nationals days.
What we didn¡¯t know, at the time, is how far up in the box he¡¯d moved ¨C the opposite of Chisholm and Crow-Armstrong, who each moved back.
Keeping in mind that Robles only played a small handful of games for Washington early in the year, no one at all moved up in the box more than he did. No one really came close ¨C Arizona¡¯s Eugenio Su¨¢rez, pushing up 8 inches from April to September, was a distant second.
Addison Barger, Blue Jays
Sometimes the picture is really all you need, and comparing June Barger to September Barger is extremely interesting, because, well, just look at those feet¡.
¡ except, as Shi Davidi wrote recently, Barger ¡°last summer made an adjustment in the big leagues after some initial struggle, moving to a wider stance while scaling back his leg kick, but this spring, at the urging of new hitting coach David Popkins, is working his way back closer to his original move.¡± It was fun to watch Barger move. It might be more fun to watch him move back.
The switch-hitter who does it exactly the same
We have 25 qualified switch-hitters in this set, and so we came up with a quick way to identify which versions of these players were mirror-images of themselves ¨C and which ones were not. There were, fortunately for us, plenty of both.
Among all those switch-hitters, the one who looked exactly alike from both sides of the plate was a somewhat surprising outcome ¨C Cincinnati¡¯s Elly De La Cruz.
Now: Why is that so surprising? Because for as big a star as De La Cruz has become, he¡¯s also shown some pretty massive platoon splits in his brief career ¨C to the point that when the initial release of bat-tracking metrics came out last year, he was one of the first names we focused on due to the massive differences in how he hits from each side. So far in his career, Lefty De La Cruz (.846 OPS) holds a massive advantage over Righty De La Cruz (.600 OPS), to the point that it¡¯s at least worth wondering if he keeps trying from both sides. Whatever the reason for that split is, it¡¯s not his stance.
Honorable mentions: Willi Castro, Jeimer Candelario, Brayan Rocchio, Jos¨¦ Ram¨ªrez
On the other hand ¡
The switch-hitter who does it completely differently
¡ some hitters do look like entirely different people from each side of the plate. Like, for example, Albies, who hit only righty late last season after coming back from a left wrist injury, yet who is fully expecting to be available from both sides once again in 2025.
We have the numbers, but in this case, the picture may in fact tell a thousand words.
Righty Albies has an incredibly open stance, more open than any right-handed hitter, and second only to Devers overall. He¡¯s 20 degrees more open (54 degrees) than Lefty Albies is (34); his stance is also nearly an entire foot narrower from the right side, too. Each change is easily the largest among any regular switch-hitter.
Like De La Cruz, Albies has a massive production gap between his two sides, with Righty Albies slugging .567 against Lefty Albies¡¯s .434 mark. Unlike De La Cruz, he looks a whole lot different doing it.
Honorable mentions: Jorge Polanco, Patrick Bailey, Ketel Marte