– Why are there no more .400
hitters in baseball today? Ted Williams was the
last person to hit over .400 and that
was back in the 1940s. Today, no batters are
able to hit over .400. Why is that? Here's a picture
of the distribution of batting averages back
in Ted Williams' day. You can see that the center of this picture was around .260. That's still the case today. This picture is
a distribution of today's batting
averages, and most players are also
hitting .260 today. The difference in
these two pictures is that this picture
has a much wider spread about the center of
the batting averages and this picture has a
much narrower spread. Today's baseball game
is highly specialized. Players who play at their
positions in the defense are extremely skilled and
they play only that position. In Ted Williams' day, there were outfielders who would
come in and pitch, so the fielding was weaker
and the pitching was weaker and Ted Williams
was able to have a chance to bat against weaker defensers and also
weaker pitchers.
Today, the highly
specialized game has kept batting averages highly concentrated around
the mean of .260, which is why you
don't see anymore .400
hitters in baseball..