Saturday, April 3, 2010

SPs Dominate Hitting?

Jonathan Neidnagel claims that many of the best hitters in baseball history, like George Brett and Ted Williams, were ISTPs, while an ESFP like Frank Thomas is a great power hitter because the SFs have the best gross motor skills. Additionally, he claims many of the best players across the board are "P"s, because "J"s endurance skills lead them to sports like long distance running, and that you need split second decision making to complete a pass in football, or make a decision about swinging at a baseball heading towards you at 90 mph.

By this reasoning, someone like Casey Kotchman should be xSTP, even though he's not an all-star player. He walks nearly as much as he strikes out, but doesn't have the power or speed to be an elite hitter. He survives with his ability to make contact. Jacoby Ellsbury I'd guess by this reasoning is an ISFP, quiet but with great motor skills, while Niednagel types power hitting David Ortiz as an ESFP.

This all suggest that a disproportionate amount of hitters are xSPs. There are plenty of "J" pitchers, where decision making happens over the 10-20 seconds before the pitch, not the 1/10th of a second after its thrown. There are also plenty of "N" pitchers, where you don't have to be tuned in to each split second to make the right pitch selection.

Something I'll be looking to as I watch the new season. As valuable as Niednagel's insights are, I often find that he can clearly mistype non-athletes. Nonetheless, having reliable ways to identify type could be of great use in coaching younger baseball players, who get flooded with mechanical recommendations from parents and coaches, many of which are probably unhelpful.

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