If I told you there was a Major League Baseball player with one of the highest chase rates, some of the worst hard contact metrics, and never walked, what would you expect his batting average to be?
Somewhere near the Mendoza line? Perhaps if he was lucky and had a super high BABIP, he could sneak into the.250 range? What if I told you he was batting nearly.350? That player, who has no bat control, has the 11th highest batting average in the Major League.
The Athletics shortstop Jacob Wilson has always been an above-average hitter. After all, he hit more than.400 over two minor league seasons. However, his method of approach is perplexing.
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Plate discipline? What’s that
Many of the best contact hitters in baseball exhibit similar characteristics. Steven Kwan, Luis Arraez, and Jung Hoo Lee all have low strikeout rates, hit the ball to all fields, and are extremely patient at the plate. Wilson follows the first two rules but ignores the third, as a five-year-old would ignore a “No running” sign at the local pool.
Steven Kwan’s on-base percentage in 2024 was 76 points higher than his batting average from the same year. Luis Arraez’s score was 32 points higher. While we haven’t seen much of Jung Hoo Lee since he was injured for most of 2024, his OBP in 2025 is currently 72 points higher than his average.
Wilson’s batting average and OBP are very close together. In fact, they are the same number. That’s correct. Wilson has not walked once in 61 plate appearances this year. Wilson has a walk rate of 0.0%, while Kwan and Lee both have at least 6%. Whereas Kwan, Arraez, and Lee each swing at less than 50% of pitches, Wilson takes his bat off his shoulder 59.1% of the time.
It’s particularly bad outside of the zone. Wilson is chasing an incredible 38.4% of pitches thrown out of the strike zone to him. This is in the eighth percentile among MLB players. For more context, Javier Baez, who is known for his lack of plate discipline, is chasing 32.2% of pitches outside the zone. However, while Baez strikes out 22% of the time, Wilson has only struck out three times this season, for a 4.9% rate.
Contact metrics
So, if Wilson is chasing so many bad pitches and still getting hits, he must be making excellent contact, right? In a normal world, that would make complete sense. In Jacob Wilson’s world, that is a ridiculous assumption, and we should be ashamed of ourselves.
In today’s MLB, a hitter’s potential is frequently determined by their bat speed and hard-hit rate. Wilson doesn’t excel in either category. He has a 29.3% hard-hit rate, which places him in the 16th percentile of MLB hitters. He is in the ninth percentile, with an average exit velocity of 85.1 mph. But these aren’t even the most shocking statistics.
Jacob Wilson has the slowest average bat speed in the MLB. This man is the antithesis of everything MLB scouts look for in a hitter, but he’s hitting.344 with an.852 OPS.
Is he outpacing little dribblers with his blazing speed? No. In terms of sprint speed, he ranks in the 48th percentile of MLB players. Is he getting very lucky? Not really. His expected batting average is.338. He’s unlike anything else in the MLB right now.
What to make of Wilson
The world’s cynics would probably argue that Wilson is destined to return to Earth, but he’s done this his entire career and has never fallen off. Wilson only walked 20 times in two years in the minors, but he had a.401 batting average and eight home runs.
Some people break all of the rules and still achieve success. Wilson is a weirdo, a freak, an anomaly that shouldn’t work but does. His Baseball Savant page is chaotically magnificent. The man is not average at anything. He’s either one of the best or worst players in the league; there’s no in-between.
But that is what makes baseball so incredible. As much as statisticians and analysts like to reduce the game to numbers, all that math doesn’t always add up. Sometimes people are simply ballers.
By the way, I’m not sure where to bet on the AL batting title or what Wilson’s chances are, but it’s something I’d keep an eye on as the season progresses.
