RESEARCH: Hard Contact for Pitchers
Feb 23 2012
In 2011, BaseballHQ.com looked at a new way to assess batters, combining their ability to put the ball into play (that is, to avoid striking out) and to hit the ball hard. The result was a new metric called “HCtX,” short for “Hard Contact Index,” a measure of how each batter compared with the MLB-wide levels of hard contact.
The best hitter by HCtX turned out to be Joey Votto, who seldom strikes out and often hits the ball hard. The worst was Chris Getz. So it passed that test.
As this spring training got underway, it occurred to us that a similar measure might be useful for looking at pitchers.
Method
To make the pitchers’ HCtX calculation, we took these steps, using Baseball Info Solutions’ (BIS) hard-hit ball data from...
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