PHILADELPHIA –Typically, the pitcher plunks the hitter. Not with Nick Williams.
During his imposing second-half debut, the Phillies’ greenhorn outfielder dealt out three bruises and one near miss to pitchers in his first three months of major league play. The 24-year-old made his mark on the Phillies with a .288 average and .473 slugging percentage, while leaving marks on the bodies of opposing National League pitchers.
In his second game, Williams pounded a one-hopper off Erik Goeddel’s right hip, forcing the pitcher to retrieve what came off the bat at 99 mph and, some seconds later, trickled to a stop five strides into foul territory down the third-base line. He knocked Jacob deGrom out of a start with another 99 mph laser, this one catching deGrom’s tricep flush. In late August, he smoked a ball 107 mph at Ty Blach’s head — it glanced off the pitcher’s glove at the last possible moment. The next day, he caught an outside cutter even more flush — this time the ball traveled 108 mph off the bat, per MLB’s Statcast, and ricocheted off Madison Bumgarner’s left shin. Williams only hit four balls harder all season.
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“A lot of my hardest hit balls went up the middle,” Williams told The Athletic. “I think I’ve hit the pitcher four times this year.”
Not just his hardest hit balls went back up the box — about half of his balls in the air (fly balls and line drives) this season did too, a higher percentage than all but one other player in baseball. Williams produces when turning around pitches, and whether they paint bruises on pitchers or runs on the scoreboard, that combination — lots of balls in the air up the middle, and immense success on them — produced a statistically historic accomplishment.
Williams hit .480 going up the middle in 2017, the second-highest mark in baseball dating back to 1989, when directional batted ball data begins on Baseball-Reference.com. Only Joey Votto in 2015 fared better (.491), among those who have hit at least 75 balls up the middle in a season. In a first season in the big leagues, no one had ever even hit at a .460-clip up the middle. Williams set the new bar more than 20 points higher.
The left-handed Williams pulls his share of ground-ball outs, but doesn’t love pulling the ball in general. For him, it’s much less productive.
“When I feel too pull-happy, even times when I’m getting a lot of hits on the pull side, I feel like I don’t like pulling all those balls, it doesn’t feel right,” he said. So, almost everything in the air is destined for center field or left, including his first two big-league batted balls.
Williams’ advantage has always come from his supreme athleticism and lightning-quick hands. The pistons in his swing, Williams’ turbo-charged hands also allow him to punch balls up the middle and the opposite way with authority.
“For him the most important thing is just to stay on the ball longer,” Phillies hitting coach Matt Stairs said. “… The biggest thing is still thinking middle. If he thinks middle, if he’s a little late he drives it to left.”
The hits heat map depicts 90 Williams hits, two-thirds of which went up the middle. The rightmost plot reveals just four of his 30 extra-base hits pulled to right field. Of the remaining 26, 20 went up the middle, six went the other way.
Among the 305 players who hit 25 balls to the opposite field and 50 up the middle this season, Williams posted the second-highest combined batting average, .458, and the third-highest slugging percentage, .774.
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Unhealed bone, unrelenting wind
Hidden between gulf gusts, a precarious ball field orientation and a middle school injury, lies the genesis of Williams’ extraordinary success sending the baseball back where it came from.
His quick hands and up-the-middle/opposite-field mentality both started at a young age. For a while, Williams didn’t know why. Recalling a lifetime’s worth of homers, he said “it was always left, left-center.”
His hometown of Galveston sits on a thin coastal island off southeastern Texas, subject to brutal winds whipping off the Gulf of Mexico.
“Our high school was a block away from the beach and the wind was blowing in from right field all day,” Williams recalled. “You had no chance to right.”
As a 12-year-old, Williams fractured his right clavicle and returned to play too early.
“I was hitting everything back here,” Williams said pointing back in his stance. Pulling the ball would have engaged more of Williams’ unhealed right side as he made contact further around in his swing. Instead, he waited on the ball. “Honestly I think that’s when it started — when I started hitting oppo home runs like crazy.”
A response to internal pain and external forces sharpened Williams from a young age into an up-the-middle monster in the majors.
Free hands
It starts with his hands, which afford Williams extra time to see pitches longer before deciding to swing, while their excessive speed through the zone makes up for the power typically lost when not pulling the ball (and making contact further around in the swing). Williams’ generated bat speed is so quick that it allows the 6-3, 195-pound Phillie to power balls to the opposite field in the same manner as Joey Gallo, a 6-5, 235-pound behemoth whom scouts tagged with rare perfect 80-grade power. Gallo held one of two better slugging percentages than Williams’ this season hitting the ball up the middle and the other way.
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Former Phillies manager Pete Mackanin puts Williams’ raw power “right up there at the top” on the club. In batting practice, Mackanin was privy to power showcases where Williams routinely punched balls out over the batter’s eye.
As pitch velocity across the league steadily climbs, fast hands even the advantage. Williams’ hands are his great equalizer. Trusting them to react leads to positive outcomes. Trying to make them react leads to disaster.
“I get in trouble when I’m trying as opposed to just reacting,” Williams said. “A starter for the Marlins threw a pitch 97 and I hit a [homer] dead center, and I thought, ‘See, just use your hands.’ … It gives me a reminder that I have more than enough time no matter who it is throwing.”
That long ball off the Marlins’ Jose Urena, projected at 445 feet, was his longest of the season.
In another memorable blast, Williams pasted a 95 mph fastball out to left-center at Marlins Park, prompting infielder Derek Dietrich to tell him, mid-home run trot, that he’d never seen a lefty put one there before.
But Williams’ personal favorite homer this season came in his 13th game, a costly mistake from Brewers left-handed reliever Tyler Webb, who was called in to face Williams with the bases loaded. “The best feeling,” Williams said. As Caddyshack’s Ty Webb would say, a flute with no holes is not a flute, and a hanging, get-me-over curveball is a grand slam.
“If the pitcher makes mistakes, he hits them more often than not, and that’s the key to good hitting,” Mackanin said. Big hitter, the Lama.
Championing one of the toughest skills to harness from a young age, Williams wasn’t always aware just how special his hands were despite frequent compliments from players, coaches and scouts alike.
“I’ve never been one to swing as hard as I can,” Williams said. “So hearing that, it kind of took me a while.”
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He got older. He studied tape more. He learned what everyone already knew. “Now I see what you’re saying,” Williams thought, finally laying eyes on the controlled chaos of his hands effortlessly flicking his bat through the zone. “How does someone even hit consistently when their hands are flying?” he asked rhetorically.
Tread quietly
Having a steady head helps. When Williams joined the Phillies from Texas in the 2015 Cole Hamels trade, his leg kick was more pronounced, nearly raising his thigh parallel with the ground. In his first season on the job, Stairs quieted Williams’ leg kick to improve his vision, pitch recognition and ability to wait back and spray balls to all parts of the field. It’s hard enough to hit a 97 mph pitch. It’s even harder when your head, and by extension your vision of an incoming projectile, is bouncing around.
Here are freeze frames of a late-season double in 2016, highlighting Williams’ head positioning at four distinct parts of his swing. 1) the height of his leg kick, 2) foot retouching the ground, 3) mid-swing, 4) and contact.
Now here are these same positions from his aforementioned Aug. 22 homer off Urena, a 455-foot bomb into the bullpen elevator shaft.
Then and now, Williams has no trouble keeping his head still from when his foot touches the ground (frame No. 2) through the point of contact (frame No. 4). But between clips No. 1 and 2 is where we see the difference — these show his head at the top of his leg kick and its location after placing his foot back on the dirt. In 2016, his head begins so far to the left that the entire No. 1 is visible throughout all phases of the swing. Compare that to his 2017 homer, when the No. 1 is obscured completely after returning his foot to the ground.
A spring training spent gingerly stepping on Stairs’ foot to practice a calmer leg kick paid off, honing a shining illustration of the famous hitting mantra “fast hands, slow feet.”
After seeing the light with the help of Stairs, Williams’ old swing baffled him. “My head was moving so much, I don’t know how I ever got hits,” he told MLB.com’s Todd Zolecki.
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While he still would have hit some home runs without the tweak, Williams said his more stable head positioning increased his consistency and helped generate a career-high 27-homer total between Triple-A and the majors this season.
Outfielders are taught to chase after fly balls running on their toes so their head and vision aren’t jumpy. The same philosophy, but for hitters, unleashed Williams. With a bobbing head, 90 mph looks like 94 and 96 looks like 100. Clear vision does the opposite — it still surprises Williams sometimes when he checks the video board after a pitch.
“I’d auto-take on a pitch … and look at the board and say, ‘That was 96?’” Williams said.
When the year gets crazy and the swing feels out of balance — like September when, he said, you try too hard to “juice the stats” — Williams, still growing as a hitter, always returns to his bread and butter.
“I try more up the middle when I feel like I’m getting too big, swinging too hard, so I try to keep it simple and stay up the middle,” he said. Music to Stairs’ ears.
“He’s learning his swing, it’s just nice to see that it took him 300 at-bats, compared to some guys it takes three years,” Stairs said.
In his impressive debut, Williams thrived by tweaking a swing that had never been changed, trusting his coaches and a skill set forged early in his youth. A determined Williams, focused on hitting up the middle, is pushing forward by staying back on the ball.
Top photo: Eric Hartline/USA TODAY Sports
