Good stuff. Regarding the "whiffing", swinging for slug is going to lead to more whiffing because you are making your swing decisions earlier, meeting the ball out in front of the plate....as opposed to staying back and waiting for the pitch to break, and then slapping it oppo for a single or taking the walk. Some of the whiffing is approach. BTW , we are above average in whiff metrics.
But I honestly dont know how much of the whiffs we do have are from a slug approach or how many are from just not having good hitters. And its not like Im saying that one should never go the way. 2 strikes outer half, you gotta go with the pitch there. Line drive into shallow right (assuming righty batter) is a win there. But how did you get to 2 strikes? Were you trying to draw a walk or take pitches? Because an 0-0 count is a fastball count. And MLB hitters should be looking to punish fastballs and we dont. Thats different us vs rest of league. Great article, Yirsandy.
To me, and Im sorry IVe said this to you before, its about the "why" , the mentality. The thought. When you are a good hitter and you decide to hold back on a pitch, it should be because its not crushable. Not because you want to walk but because thats just not a pitch you can crush. Being selective isnt necessarily about drawing walks. Its about getting to the mistakes. And we let too many mistakes go by. Now if we start swinging for some slug which means hunt fastballs, swing earlier, meet the ball in front, drive it....That pull-air approach will come with more whiffs. But maybe we can offset those increased whiffs by frankly jsut getting better hitters and reading pitches better. And we dont need to exclusively pull-air. It depends a lot on the situation, the pitch, the batter....Many factors. WHen I play video game baseball, I dont love going oppo but theres a time and a place to do it. And its frequent. When I play real-life baseball, I have a different approach that is kinda old school. Aim up the middle so if you are a little early you hit a monster homerun and if you are a little late you hit a line drive single oppo. Maybe xtra bases into the corner if you really smash it. But most of my homeruns wound up being to center lol.