Why Tony Gwynn is Overrated

There is an unfounded Tony Gwynn love affair in baseball instruction that has lasted for decades, and it's time to expose it for what it truly is - a mistake. Let’s break this down and see why Tony Gwynn is not one of the greatest hitters of all time and his swing is not ideal. It's all based on one of the things that Bill James revealed about our culture as far back as the late 70s - that our baseball culture drastically overrates the value of batting average as a statistic that accurately describes the value of a hitter. This actually goes way back in our baseball history. I don't want to get too deep into this but, in summary, the owners of baseball clubs back when professional baseball first started in this country in the 1800s had a harder time "controlling" the power hitters, as they tended to be guys who were more mercurial and wild in personality, and got along better with, and therefore favored, the scrappy, team-first, high average hitters. So naturally, when Henry Chadwich, a sportswriter in the late 1800s invented statistics, he invented something called "batting average," essentially siding with the owners and forever giving our culture an unfair bias towards consistency over power. 

Today we have a stat that locks onto the most valuable hitters like a rooftop sniper zeroing in on a kill shot. It's called OPS+, and it doesn't just measure consistency, it measures power as well. Going by OPS+, John Kruk, Todd Helton and Danny Tartabull are all better than Tony Gwynn. So lets not even attempt to compare him to guys like Frank Robinson, Mike Schmidt, Juan Soto, or Shohei Ohtani. These are guys that are many levels above Gwynn in terms of value at the plate.  And please don’t even put him in the same sentence as Ruth, Williams, or Judge.

Now let’s talk swing mechanics, and why Gwynn is not someone you want to emulate. We can do this with a quick comparison to Joe Morgan. Tony Gwynn and Joe Morgan had an equal career OPS+ of 132, so they essentially gave you the same value at the plate. But Gwynn achieved his value with an average bodyweight of 210 pounds and Morgan achieved the same value weighing just 170 pounds, forty pounds lighter than Gwynn. Morgan got more out of each pound of bodyweight, which means he’s most likely displaying a more efficient and effective swing. Did he have as much consistency as Gwynn? No. He had very good consistency - he hit .293 in 1974, .327 in 1975, and .320 in 1976, and batted a respectable .271 for his career. The key difference is that Morgan had much higher levels of power, hitting a home run at twice the rate that Gwynn did, despite weighing 40 pounds less.

There is one simple goal when it comes to swing mechanics - hit the ball as hard as possible, as squarely as possible, as often as possible. Morgan’s swing is much better for doing that. When we look at the best pound for pound hitters of all time, they tended to have the characteristics of Morgan’s swing much more than Gwynns.

The reason swing coaches have loved Tony Gwynn’s swing is because consistency has always been glamorized and overrated in baseball. People just see that Gwynn was one of the best high average hitters of all time, and because they have this cultural bias built in them that going for power is foolish and having a high average should be the only goal, they assume that Gwynn did it perfectly and he’s got the perfect swing.

The reason I bring this up is not to bash Gwynn. I grew up loving Tony Gwynn just like everyone else. This is an issue that is very relevant in today’s game because it shines a light on a blindspot in conventional swing instruction that to this day has resulted in a less than ideal swing being taught.

Ted Williams was always saying that these slap hitters should be trying to increase their power. If they’re able to touch the ball that much, why not hit it harder each time they touch it? It makes coaches feel like they’re doing the prudent and cerebral thing when they advocate for more consistency and less power. It’s not just baseball, all sports instructional industries fall victim to this ideology - that power is foolish and consistency is all that matters. Additionally, they don’t know how to teach power plus consistency in the swing, so they pretend it’s not important. When structuring your swing, you have to design it to have both. That’s what the best hitters had - a swing that produced power and consistency.

So what really separates Morgan’s swing, and the swing of the pound for pound greats? What’s apparent is that they have many elements of more of a lead side pull action. Morgan slots the bat at the start of the forward swing by dropping it on a flat plane. At contact his lead arm close to his body and his back arm is well bent, and there’s no flip in his swing, as seen by how wide his bat travels into the finish. Oh, and Morgan was dominant in his lead arm, and Gwynn was not.

To learn how to make your swing more lead side dominant, check out my book Swing Like Griffey.