Hanser Alberto is Baseball’s Biggest Free Swinger

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Baltimore Orioles infielder Hanser Alberto is baseball’s biggest free swinger.

In Moneyball, they talk about how each pitch changes a hitter’s chance of getting on base. If a batter gets a strike against him, his chances go down, and if they get a ball called, it’s the opposite. Simple stuff, right?

They also talk about the discipline it takes to learn such a skill, to actually take these calculations seriously and implement them into each at-bat. Miguel Tejada, in the book, could never learn — you can’t walk off the island, after all — and finished his career with a six percent walk rate, according to FanGraphs.

By comparison, Nick Swisher, a Moneyball subject lauded for getting on base, finished his career at 13 percent. That’s a big discrepancy and sets up my main point that the Baltimore Orioles currently have a player who’s a legendary free-swinger, like all-time type stuff, and that’s Hanser Alberto.

If you’ve watched him play this year, you know this; the O’s announcers frequently comment on Alberto’s inability to take pitches and he never makes them look silly. The guy swings at everything — low, high, out, in, it really doesn’t matter, Hanser is getting his hacks in.

After a simple FanGraphs number-crunch, Hanser didn’t let me down either. Of all MLB players with at least 100 plate appearances, Alberto has the lowest walk rate at 2.1 percent, almost a full point below Kevin Pillar, the No. 2 free swinger right now.

So I crunched them a little deeper and found that in the last decade (2009-19), no player with at least 300 plate appearances (about half of one full season) has a lower mark than Alberto, who has the same walk rate for his career (2.1%) as he does this season.

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Crazy stuff. We’re witnessing the biggest free swinger in baseball every night.

For all of his swinging, though, Alberto is in the middle of his best season as a big leaguer. He’s hitting .302 in 41 games, earning himself an everyday spot in Brandon Hyde‘s lineup. And recently, Hyde has him batting leadoff.

Will his free-swinging ways catch up to him? They could. Have they yet? Not really. He’s been a huge surprise in Baltimore. While we wait and see what comes of his future, let’s just enjoy the base hits off pitches two feet outside. No one is doing it more effectively.