Best of BP 2025: How Attack Direction Drives Offensive Production

When we dig deeper into Attack Direction, beyond our surface-level or intuitive understanding as coaches, analysts, and fans, we start to uncover real insights into what’s actually driving success for certain players. It’s not just about what we see on the field—it’s about understanding the underlying process that makes a hitter effective, unique, or even vulnerable.

Attack Direction is only one piece of the overall puzzle, but it’s a meaningful one. It gives us a window into the forces at play beneath the surface. Last time, we explored what Attack Direction means for batted ball outcomes. Today, I want to extend that conversation—because there’s still relatively little public information connecting attack direction to specific hitter outcomes, or how those outcomes might feed back into shaping a hitter’s identity and development.

Just a quick reminder: in this context, a positive Attack Direction means the hitter is working toward the opposite field, while zero represents a completely flat path—parallel to the pitcher—and negative means the swing is directed more toward the pull side. For simplicity, I’ve standardized all hitters in this article as right-handed, so we can think through these movements more cleanly.

So let’s start by digging into what a player’s Attack Direction actually looks like at the moment of contact—and how that might ripple out across their entire offensive profile.

Right away, we see something that intuitively makes sense to both coaches and players: As a hitter rotates around their axis, the bat naturally starts to move more toward the pull side of the field. Nothing shocking at this point. Barrels that move across the zone in this way show a natural progression in how they should work in our minds. Not that this confirmation bias is what we set out for but I think this instills some confidence that we are on the right track.

When we start overlaying actual run value outcomes and build a simple model using just the batter’s contact point and attack direction, we begin to see clear patterns in where the most productive contact happens. Unsurprisingly, the sweet spot tends to be over the heart of the plate—but the nuances around it are where things get interesting.

Most of the best quality contact happens in front of the plate. This isn’t new information. What’s surprising, though, is how skilled players are at creating situations where they consistently make contact with the best pitches spatially. Even without the plate overlay, you can get a good sense of where the plate lies just by looking at the contact points.

Beyond that, players do an excellent job making contact just off the plate, especially on pitches away from them. This might surprise you, but when you consider how the bat moves through the zone, these away pitches can be highly valuable—particularly when hitters approach them with an opposite-field mindset on select pitches in those locations.

When we break the data down further by attack direction, that alignment between swing intent and contact point becomes even clearer. The most pull-side-oriented barrels show exactly what you’d expect: the highest expected run values come when contact is made out in front, often on the inner third or middle of the plate. This isn’t just theory—it’s execution.

A pull-side barrel gives hitters a proven path to damage. It’s a high-reward approach, and the data backs that up. But it’s not without tradeoffs. This kind of attack direction is less forgiving—it narrows the margin for error and reduces the hitter’s ability to adjust late or cover a wider range of locations. In short: pull-side barrels are powerful, but they demand precision. You better be on time, and you better get your pitch.

While pull-side barrels demand precision, barrels with a more neutral path—still slightly angled toward the pull side—offer hitters a wider margin for error. These neutral-facing barrels can generate expected value across a broader area of the zone, effectively hedging against mistakes. This flexibility allows hitters to handle pitches in multiple locations and adjust to different points in space, providing a practical balance between value and adaptability.

Finally, let’s examine the most opposite-field-oriented approach. Barrels facing the opposite field tend to generate higher value on pitches that are deeper in the zone, but their success is scattered and often comes with a lot of negative outcomes. While opposite-field contact can occasionally produce positive results, these tend to be bailouts rather than reliable pathways to consistent success.

Here are all the bins laid out for your visual reference—this gives a clear picture of how these attack directions actually perform across the strike zone. Seeing the data mapped like this helps make the patterns and tradeoffs impossible to ignore.

We see the same pattern emerge when breaking things down by contact location: pull-side barrels produce the best outcomes when contact is made on the inner half of the plate. But their effectiveness drops off sharply when hitters try to pull pitches on the outer half. In fact, even pitches over the middle tend to generate better results when hit with a pull-oriented barrel.

This aligns with long-held hitting principles—inner-half pitches are best attacked to the pull side. The data reinforces that run values fall when hitters attempt to go the other way on inside pitches, and conversely, that the rare success on outer-half pitches comes from barrels oriented toward the opposite field.

These results aren’t surprising, but they do clarify a useful truth: most pitches are better handled with a pull-side intent—unless they’re on the outer edge, where going the other way becomes a necessity, not a choice.

Now let’s shift our focus to how attack direction interacts with pitch location. In other words, we’re looking at how effective each attack direction is depending on where the pitch is located across the plate. To make sense of the patterns, we’ll break down each attack direction bin.

Starting with pull-side barrels: these are consistently the most productive. Think of the classic pulled line drive down the line—high value contact, most often occurring on pitches over the inner half of the plate. When hitters catch the ball out front with a pull-side barrel on an inside pitch, it’s often the ideal result—this combination is a clear unlock for maximizing offensive output.

Next, we look at more neutral barrels—those that are flatter or more parallel to the pitcher. These act as a hedge of sorts. While they don’t perform as well on inside pitches compared to pull-side barrels, they start to pick up value as the pitch moves toward the outer half. They’re versatile, if less explosive.

Finally, opposite-field-facing barrels show their value on outer-half pitches. They struggle just about everywhere else, but when the pitch is away, this attack direction becomes the most effective. It’s a clear sign that trying to go the other way should really only be a consideration when the ball is on the outer edge. Even then, in some cases, a flatter, more neutral barrel can still produce better results than fully committing to the opposite-field approach.

Bringing it all together, one takeaway stands above the rest: pull-side attack direction drives production. The data is clear—when hitters turn the barrel and attack pitches on the inner half, and even pitches over the heart of the plate, the results are consistently better. This isn’t about guesswork or swing theory. The ability to get the barrel out front and drive the ball to the pull side is the clearest path to damage.

Yes, barrel orientation should adjust with pitch location—opposite-field barrels can squeeze out value on outer-half pitches. But those are the exceptions, not the rule. The rule is simple: if you want to do damage, especially on anything middle-in, you need to be able to pull the ball in the air. And the clearest path to that is getting your barrel working through the zone with a pull-side attack direction.

As Ted Williams said, “The ideal hit is a pulled ball 380 feet because that’s a home run in most parks in the big leagues.” That idea isn’t outdated—it’s a benchmark. And mastering the ability to attack with a pull-side barrel is still one of the most decisive skills a hitter can develop.

Thanks to Stephen Sutton-Brown for assistance with this article.