MLB Hitter Rankings: Mookie Betts, Jose Ramirez and Aaron Judge All in MVP Form
After getting off to what was by his MVP standards a slow start to the season, Dodgers outfielder Mookie Betts has reestablished himself as the most feared hitter in Major League Baseball. But if he slips even a little bit, guys like Aaron Judge, Jose Ramirez and Manny Machado are right there, ready to take a seat on that throne.
Based on a combination of contact, power, plate discipline and what we're calling "pitch immunity," we've cobbled together a ranking of the current 10 best hitters in baseball. A report card grade has been assigned for each of the four categories, and rankings are loosely based on each player's average grade.
When we did this ranking one month ago, baserunning was one of the four categories. That has been nixed in favor of a synopsis of how well the player has fared against each of the major pitch types. In other words, is there a weakness to be exploited, or is the hitter just raking no matter what is being thrown?
Honorable Mentions: Pete Alonso, Jose Altuve, Tim Anderson, Yordan Alvarez, Xander Bogaerts, Willson Contreras, C.J. Cron, Luis Guillorme, Bryce Harper, Shohei Othani, Joc Pederson
10. Ty France, Seattle Mariners
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Previous Rank: Honorable Mention
Contact: A+
Ty France has quietly been the best singles hitter in baseball. Seattle's first baseman is batting .335 with 53 one-base hits, which is three more than his closest challenger, Andrew Benintendi. France recently (May 18 through June 1) had a 13-game hitting streak in which he batted .471.
Power: C
France does have some pop in his bat with seven home runs on the year, but most of that damage came a long time ago. He has just two home runs and nine extra-base hits in his last 163 plate appearances. His .483 slugging percentage is impressive compared to most of the league, but everyone else in this top 10 is at or above .540.
Plate Discipline: A
France isn't looking to walk when he strides to the plate. For his career, he averages around 15 plate appearances per walk. But he doesn't whiff much either (11.8 percent this season), nor is he hacking at pitches outside the strike zone at an alarming rate. He does a good job of finding hittable pitches early in the count.
Pitch Immunity: B+
As of Friday morning, France was slightly below the league average in value returned against both cutters and changeups, per FanGraphs. But so was Aaron Judge, so big deal, right? In his four-season career, France has been a jack of all trades, master of none as far as pitch types are concerned. He's solid across the board.
9. Rafael Devers, Boston Red Sox
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Previous Rank: Honorable Mention
Contact: A
In 19 games played from May 7-28, Rafael Devers went 37-for-83 (.446), recording at least three hits in a game on six occasions. Boston as a whole was red hot at the plate in the month of May, but especially the third baseman in their No. 2 hole. He's currently batting .336 on the year and is leading the majors with 75 hits.
Power: A+
Devers led all players in total bases with 359 in 2019, and he's on pace for a little over 400 this year. That's because nearly half of his 75 hits have been of the extra-base variety, boasting 22 doubles, 11 home runs and a triple. He's slugging .592 and ranks among the best in runs created.
Plate Discipline: B-
Drawing walks is not a prerequisite for being a great hitter, but averaging more than four strikeouts per walk isn't good for a batter. Per FanGraphs, Devers swings at 58.8 percent of all pitches seen, including 45.0 percent of those thrown outside the strike zone. Obviously, he can hit those pitches, though, as evidenced by having the most hits in baseball.
Pitch Immunity: A-
No one has been better against cutters this season than Devers. He's also one of the best at hitting curveballs. Sliders have given him issues, though, which circles back to swinging at pitches outside the zone. But over the previous two seasons, no one in the majors was better against sliders than Devers. If and when he starts identifying that rotation out of the pitcher's hand again, watch out.
8. Mike Trout, Los Angeles Angels
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Previous Rank: No. 2
Contact: A
Mike Trout has been in a funk as of late, going hitless in eight of his last 10 games. But he was batting .328 when that dry spell began and could be one hot weekend away from vaulting back into the mix for the batting crown. He's batting .304 for his career and is seeking an 11th straight season above .280.
Power: A+
After hitting just five home runs in April, Trout picked up the pace a bit with eight dingers in May. And even with the aforementioned recent funk, Trout remains on the short list of players slugging at least .580 for the year.
Plate Discipline: C
While his overall numbers still look good, this is where Trout has recently been uncharacteristically mediocre. From May 2 through June 4, Trout struck out in 34.7 percent of plate appearances and averaged 4.3 strikeouts per walk. When he won the AL MVP in 2019, those numbers were 20.0 and 1.1, respectively. And after opening his career with 10 straight years with a swinging strike percentage of 7.6 or below, he's north of 10.0 for the second straight season.
Pitch Immunity: A+
Trout's strikeout rate is up, but it's not because opponents have all of a sudden discovered some new pitch that he struggles to hit. Save for the rarely seen splitter that has always given him a bit of trouble, Trout is considerably better than the 2022 league average against all the major pitch types, per usual.
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7. Taylor Ward, Los Angeles Angels
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Previous Rank: No. 10
Contact: A
At the end of the day on May 1, Taylor Ward was batting .400 for the year and was one of the most surprising success stories of the season. And though he has tapered off in the month-plus since then, the 28-year-old has hit a more-than-respectable .286 since May 1 to keep his year-to-date mark at .333.
Power: A+
Ward doesn't quite have enough plate appearances to qualify for the MLB leaderboards right now—he's at 2.9 per team game, shy of the 3.1 threshold—but he would be leading the majors with a 1.087 OPS if he did qualify. He has 10 home runs and averages an extra-base hit for every 8.3 trips to the dish.
Plate Discipline: A+
You would think with Shohei Ohtani and Mike Trout typically batting directly behind him, Ward would rarely get any free passes. Instead, he walks once every six trips to the plate, rarely swinging at anything outside the strike zone. He has a .443 on-base percentage and has done a masterful job as the leadoff hitter for this potent Angels offense.
Pitch Immunity: A+
Ward entered this season as a below-league-average hitter against all pitch types except for sliders, but lo and behold, he is now as unfoolable as they come. He is absolutely destroying cutters and splitters, and he entered Sunday at least 1.30 runs above average per 100 pitches against all six pitch types. As unexpected as his dominance has been this season, there's no good reason to anticipate a substantial fall from grace at this point.
This is quite the report card, but because of the plate appearances caveat and because Ward just landed on the IL with a hamstring injury, we opted to keep him out of our top five. Had to rank him ahead of Trout, though, because Ward has been the Angels' best hitter when he's in the lineup.
6. J.D. Martinez, Boston Red Sox
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Previous Rank: Not Ranked
Contact: A+
From May 11-26, J.D. Martinez had a 13-game stretch in which he hit 28-for-52 (.539) with 10 multi-hit performances. And he was already hitting just a shade below .300 prior to that torrid run, so that elevated him from "having a solid season" to "may well win the batting crown." Martinez was a .307 hitter from 2014 to 2019, so this type of prolonged success at the plate is nothing new for him.
Power: C-
What is new, however, is the relative lack of home runs. Martinez still has an impressive .543 slugging percentage thanks to 18 doubles, but he's only on pace for around 15 home runs after mashing them at a 48-per-162-games pace from 2017 to 2019. If that power ever resurfaces, he could jump into the AL MVP conversation in a hurry.
Plate Discipline: B
Martinez is seeing more pitches per plate appearance (4.05) than ever before in his career. He isn't drawing any more walks than usual, but he does a great job of fouling off pitches until getting one that he wants. He does strike out in one out of every four trips to the plate, though.
Pitch Immunity: A-
Martinez struggles a little bit with cutters, but he has been well above average against four-seamers, sliders, curveballs and changeups. We'll see how well that all holds up when his unsustainable .463 batting average on balls in play comes back to earth, but over the course of his career, Martinez has been able to hit pretty much any pitch.
5. Manny Machado, San Diego Padres
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Previous Rank: No. 1
Contact: A+
Manny Machado has cooled off a bit since his scintillating start to the year. After batting .383 through the first 32 games, he has settled into much more of his career norm, hitting .274 over his last 19 games. Which is still solid and still leaves him with an NL-best .342 batting average on the season.
Power: B+
Machado did launch a homer off Corbin Burnes on Friday night, but that was just his second home run since Cinco De Mayo and brought his year-to-date total to nine. He does, however, average roughly one extra-base hit for every two games played and has a strong .565 slugging percentage on the season. It's just really hard to give him even an "A-" for power when juxtaposed with the likes of Mookie Betts and Aaron Judge.
Plate Discipline: B+
As we also noted in last month's hitter rankings, Machado isn't particularly patient, ranking 141st among 165 qualified batters in pitches seen per plate appearance. But he has respectable rates of roughly one strikeout for every six trips to the plate and one walk for every nine plate appearances.
However, opponents are clearly aware of both Machado's affinity for swinging and the current lack of protection in San Diego's lineup, because he is seeing even fewer pitches in the strike zone in 2022 than Juan Soto. Pretty remarkable that his batting average is what it is given that information.
Pitch Immunity: A
Machado is raking against everything except for the cutter, which is weird, because prior to this season, that was the pitch type he had the second-most success against (trailing only the four-seamer). If at some point he starts seeing that ball as well as he did over the past three seasons, the NL MVP race might be history.
4. Paul Goldschmidt, St. Louis Cardinals
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Previous Rank: Not Ranked
Contact: A+
Two weeks into the season, Paul Goldschmidt was batting just .146. But he's sitting at .392 since then and just had a 25-game hitting streak snapped Saturday. No one in the National League has a higher batting average than Goldy's .342, and no one expects the career .295 hitter to crash and burn anytime soon.
Power: A
Goldschmidt has hit between 31 and 36 home runs six times in his career, and he's on a similar pace this year with 12 home runs about one-third of the way through the campaign. Ten of those 12 home runs have come since May 13, though, during which time Goldy's OPS has skyrocketed from .801 to 1.037.
Plate Discipline: B
In the season opener, Goldy went 1-for-1 at the dish with four walks. Since then, he has averaged roughly one strikeout per game and roughly two strikeouts per walk. And according to FanGraphs, he's swinging at a higher percentage of pitches outside the zone and a lower percentage of pitches inside the zone than ever before. Still, a year-to-date strikeout rate of 20 percent and walk rate of nearly 13 percent aren't bad.
Pitch Immunity: A-
Goldschmidt is mashing fastballs and has been well above average against sliders, cutters and changeups. But Ol' Uncle Charlie has given him some issues this season. He's not exactly Pedro Cerrano up there flailing at every curveball he sees, but he has struggled with it. Something to keep an eye on as teams desperately try to figure out how to retire this red-hot hitter.
3. Aaron Judge, New York Yankees
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Previous Rank: No. 7
Contact: A+
This is where Aaron Judge has become downright terrifying to face. Over the previous six seasons, he was a top-notch slugger with a good-not-great career batting average of .276. This year, he's a top-notch slugger who is also batting .316. Even when his hard-hit balls aren't leaving the yard, they're still avoiding gloves like never before.
Power: A+
I mean, 21 home runs in 51 games. Need we say more? Judge is well on his way to becoming the first player with at least 60 home runs in a season since Barry Bonds and Sammy Sosa in 2001.
Plate Discipline: B+
Say this much for Judge: He's swinging and missing less frequently than he used to. His swinging strike percentage is at 9.8 compared to a career rate of 13.0. He does still strike out in more than 25 percent of his trips to the plate and averages 2.5 strikeouts per walk. But he's also near the top of the MLB leaderboard in pitches seen per plate appearance, forcing opponents to do quite a bit of laboring on the mound.
Pitch Immunity: B-
Judge ranks among the best in the majors against both four-seam fastballs and sliders, routinely depositing both pitch types into the outfield bleachers. But would you believe he's below the league average against cutters, changeups and splitters? Not drastically below average, mind you, but it's astounding that guys keep throwing him fastballs when there are three pitches against which Judge is just OK.
2. Jose Ramirez, Cleveland Guardians
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Previous Rank: No. 6
Contact: A-
Twenty games into the season, Jose Ramirez was hitting .360 with 28 RBI. He has come back to earth considerably since then, batting .252 dating back to April 30. But he's still hitting quite well, boasting seven multi-hit performances in his last 18 games.
Power: A+
No one is keeping pace with Aaron Judge in home runs, but Ramirez is still very much in the hunt for the slugging percentage crown. He's sitting at .646 with 14 home runs, 12 doubles and an MLB-best four triples. And when he's up with men on base? Forget about it. Ramirez has a 1.396 OPS in those 100 plate appearances.
Plate Discipline: A++
Yes, those two pluses are intentional, because Ramirez is doing the nearly unthinkable in today's game by averaging two walks per strikeout. He has whiffed just 15 times in 210 plate appearances. He's actually swinging at pitches outside the strike zone at a higher rate (30.7 percent) than ever before, but he simply doesn't miss.
Pitch Immunity: A+
Good luck figuring out what to throw Jo-Ram. Not only is he above the league average on all six pitch types identified on FanGraphs, but this is the third consecutive season in which that's the case. There's a reason this guy never strikes out.
1. Mookie Betts, Los Angeles Dodgers
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Previous Rank: Honorable Mention
Contact: A+
When we pulled data for this exercise last month, Mookie Betts was batting a career-worst .247. And even that was improvement from a .190 mark 16 games into the season. Since opening May 7 at .247, however, Betts is batting .355 and nearly averaging one extra-base hit per game. That's how you vault from "just missed the top 10" to No. 1.
Power: A+
Betts homered in just one of his first 18 games this season, but he has been a touch-'em-all titan as of late, racking up 14 home runs from April 30 through June 1 with an OPS of 1.201. His career high for home runs was 32 in 2018, but that personal best is liable to be shattered.
Plate Discipline: B+
Betts struggled with strikeouts early in the year, culminating in a four-whiff disaster in a 10-inning loss to the Padres on April 23. Since then, however, he's barely averaging one strikeout for every eight trips to the plate and nearly one walk per strikeout. His year-to-date K rate is still the worst of his career at 16.6 percent, but he has done well over the past month-plus to bring that down.
Pitch Immunity: A+
Betts' ability to hit any pitch type is largely what has made him so consistently great over the past decade. This season in particular, he ranks among the best in the majors against both cutters and curveballs. As of Friday morning, he was worth at least 1.0 runs above average per 100 pitches against fastballs, sliders, changeups, cutters and curveballs. The only other players in that club were Mike Trout, Taylor Ward, Jose Ramirez and Tim Anderson. But the sum of his "scores" against each of the five pitch types was a major-league-leading mark of 23.6.
Unless otherwise noted, statistics are current through the start of play on Sunday, June 5.
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