When Scott Harris launched his Detroit Tigers tenure with ‘control the zone’, fans immediately jumped to walks and OBP. That’s a great start, but there’s more to hitting than just walking. Like him or not, Harris is undeniably a smart executive, so something as simple as sorting a stats page by OBP is probably not his end goal. Some great hitters, Pete Crow-Armstrong, Teoscar Hernandez, or Jackson Merrill, to name a few, have walk rates well below average. Meanwhile, Ryan McMahon and Michael Conforto are struggling despite walk rates north of 13%. Sometimes, you can be too patient and miss hittable pitches while waiting for a walk.
Gleyber Torres is hitting like SEAGER in 2025
