Brian Anderson and the Striking of a Delicate Balance

That's a funny term--the art of hitting. Throughout the history of baseball, there's been a constant (if often friendly, or at least tepid) debate about whether its various disciplines are more art or science. In 1968, the greatest hitter ever (Ted Williams) wrote The Science of Hitting, taking an extremely systematized approach to the toughest task in sports. In 1984, Tom Seaver wrote a somewhat less definitional text on his craft, and titled it The Art of Pitching. By and large, those images of the two major skills of baseball have persisted. It's not uncommon to hear good pitchers described as craftsmen, but only one or two hitters in a generation--Luis Arraez types--get that word attached to them. 

The truth, of course, is that there's plenty of both art and science in each thing--a blend of the subjective with the objective; of the continuous with the discrete; and of the quantifiable with the ineffable. At any given time, many of the bright lines and the categorizations we see are products of our societal inclinations. They exist mostly in our minds.

What does any of this rambling have to do with a Brian Anderson RBI single? Fair question. Let's start with a quick look at the at-bat Anderson had. 

Anderson was hitting with two on and two out, and he immediately got ahead in the count, 3-0, as Kyle Gibson tried unsuccessfully to hone in on the outside corner. At that moment, as was noted on the Brewers' Bally Sports Wisconsin broadcast, swinging away on 3-0 made a lot of sense. Gibson was unlikely to want to walk Anderson, with Abraham Toro due next and only third base open. A hit would mean a run, and an extra-base knock would probably mean two. 

Gibson gave in, too. He not only went with the fastball, but gave Anderson a fairly fat one, over the inner third and just above the belt. Anderson, though, let the pitch go. Then, on 3-1, he chased a sweeper low and away, filling the count.

Why did Anderson take that 3-0 pitch and then expand the zone on 3-1? It's not about disorganization or nerves. It's about self-knowledge. Anderson has an idiosyncratic swing, and it leads to unusual coverage of the strike zone. He can do some damage on pitches up in the zone, but it will virtually always be on mistake breaking and off-speed pitches. The way he attacks the ball isn't conducive to doing much with an elevated fastball. 

No, what Anderson does well is to go down and get the ball. One of the things he's worked with Brewers to do this year is to eliminate certain pitches and sectors of the strike zone, according to the count, the situation, and the opponent. He's swinging significantly less often this year, especially late in counts. That's led to his dramatic increase in walk rate, though it's also contributed to his climbing strikeout rate. It's not about blanket passiveness, though. It's about knowing what pitch he might get that he would be able to hit well, and being ready to do so. With that clarity of purpose comes some sacrifice, in the form of more theoretically hittable pitches (often strikes) going by unmolested, but it's been a sound tradeoff thus far.

On 3-2, Gibson threw the hittable pitch Anderson knew he might get. It was a slider below the zone, but because Anderson was looking for a pitch down, it was still well within his hitting zone. That unique swing produced an artist's arcing brush stroke, a flare into left field that had no chance of being caught. It only left his bat at 76 miles per hour, but with the perfect amount of loft. Our highly scientific understanding of the game in 2023 allows us to say that the expected batting average on that ball was .940. Given that Anderson has enough power to force outfielders to play at least at an average depth, it was really 1.000 in that spot.

The 3-0 take was good baseball, because that wasn't Anderson's pitch. The 3-1 swing on a ball well off the plate was good baseball, because he was seeing the right thing. They both made possible that 3-2 single, a sure-thing RBI in a way that not even a long fly ball hit on the fastball would have been. Anderson's approach has been far from infallible this year, but the Brewers have helped him understand the value of locking in on certain pitches and locations, and of being insistent upon getting the right pitch before committing himself.

It hasn't turned him into an All-Star, because Anderson is a limited player whose holes and weaknesses are well-known to the league. Nor is it a finished job. There's a constant tension between knowing oneself and knowing when the opponent also knows you--between waiting for your pitch and needing to be ready to hit theirs instead. That balance is never permanently struck. It's just something one achieves for a bit, with the knowledge that it will soon be lost again, such that a hitter will have to go in search of it all over again.

It's not unlike life itself, in that regard. A human is not done struggling until they're dead. A hitter is not done adjusting until they're retired. Anderson is still very much alive, and very much an active hitter. He will have to change and maintain a new balance soon. On Tuesday night, though, he was in the right physical and mental place to come up with a big hit for the first-place Brewers.