SPOILER alert: the answer to our question is not going to be particularly surprising.
But we thought this sub-category of hitter performance would be intrinsically interesting: it's part of the seemingly endless array of "splits" breakouts, but is one that's been systematically overlooked in favor of more specific "situational" notions.
While it's a bit nebulous compared to such other breakouts, the "ninth inning" has its own aura, a kind of romantic resonance that conjures up the game's more consciously structured narrative--it's the kind of thing that semi-fabled faux-phenomenoligst Sam Miller might swoon over (though there's probably too much data available to provide those "Husserlian goosebumps" he seems to covet most).
It's that "last chance" thing that injects something at least akin to romance into the limbic systems of baseball fans--a longing for drama, for clutch performance, for the twist ending. And it makes some of us hope for empirical results within the data that create surprise and wonder (even if the odds of such occurring are even more remote than the prospects of a last-minute change of fortune).
SO we now present to you the hitters who hit well in baseball's "end state"--the active hitters, that is. (We'll return shortly with a similar list for those who are no longer playing.)
We've limited the list to those with at least 150 plate appearances in the ninth inning, with color coding that breaks at various OPS levels (.975, .900, .875, .850, .800). (The full list contains nearly 250 active players, though we're obviously not going to display it all.)
The two names at the very top--Shohei Ohtani and Juan Soto--are, as noted earlier, quite unsurprising (but impressive nonetheless). Pete Alonzo's presence in the topmost reaches of this ninth-inning pantheon might be more of an eyebrow-raiser, though. (As might also be the case for Christian Yelich, whose .323 batting average is noticeably more robust than his overall lifetime BA.)
And what about Tyrone Taylor? (We suspect sample size will rear its head in his case...but you never really know, now, do you?)
The romance of the ninth inning injects a twinge of sorrow when we see the performance level of Anthony Rendon--the possessor of the highest ninth-inning BA of anyone still currently on (or at least adjacent to) a 40-man roster.
WE can also see why the Dodgers would feel confident that they might create what was called "four o'clock lightning" in the Bronx during the late 1930s/early 1940s as Yankee hitters (led by guys named Joe DiMaggio, Charlie Keller and Tommy Henrich) would often turn around ballgames in their latter stages (with a good bit of it happening in the ninth inning). The elevated ninth-inning performances of Ohtani, Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman (#1, #8 and #9 on the list) suggest that a similar "late lightning" effect has descended upon Chavez Ravine.
(Though we should note that there's no current way to look at ninth inning performance in terms of home vs. away games--one of the lingering limitations in the data readily available at
Forman et soeur, etc. Which is odd, because given the romance of the "ninth-inning turnaround" you'd think that its occurrence would be more definitely documented--how many times does the visiting team turn the game around in the ninth? (We know that it is quite rare--but since we track "walkoff wins," why don't we have the analogous quantification of the "visitor turnaround" inning?)
THE surprises in this "ninth inning data" are to be found far from the top performers. The more pedestrian performance of Aaron Judge, for example, raises at least one eyebrow. More shocking, though, is the discovery of big-name hitters who seem to crumble in the ninth inning, as shown below:
Cal Raleigh, currently tearing things up in the AL with a homer spree eclipsing even the mighty Judge, looks much more like his old self in the ninth. And it's surprising to see stalwarts like Nolan Arenado and José Ramirez down in this region, along with sluggery types such as Jorge Soler, Anthony Santander and Kyle Schwarber.
YOU are now officially encouraged to ponder who will be at the top of an all-time "ninth inning hitter" list (for those who are more definitively retired than Anthony Rendon). That will be coming to you soon...
