Jeff Sullivan of
FanGraphs.com offers
an interesting explanation for the success of this year's Red Sox offense:
"selective aggression". The team's new philosophy is not so much an abandonment of their "patient" approach of years past, but the adoption of a more "disciplined" path to the ball. For example, players like
Mookie Betts have not really cut down their overall swing rates—just their "out-of-zone" swing rates. As a team, the Red Sox are swinging at fewer
bad pitches (i.e., balls out of the zone), and squaring-up more
good pitches (also known as strikes). The result has been selecting more "hittable" pitches, and, well,
hitting them. For all the sabermetric analysis of baseball these days, it's still pretty much a simple game—see the ball, pick a good pitch, hit the ball.
