Ted Williams vs Aroldis Chapman

It would most certainly be a historic at bat. A dominant flame throwing left handed pitcher from Cuba vs the left handed hitting American War hero Ted Williams.

Ted Williams played from 1939-1960, but had to sacrifice the prime of his career to fight in World War II. Williams held a career batting average of .344 and hit .406 in 1941. With over 2600 hits in his career Ted Williams is considered one of the best players ever. The picture to the left is a display at the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. It displays the batting average of Ted Williams if a pitch is thrown in a specific location. Click on the photo to enlarge it to see the numbers better. Ted Williams worst location is down and in at .230. National's outfielder Rick Ankiel has an overall batting average of .228 in 2012 and is getting paid $1.25 Million. You can now put into perspective how valuable Ted Williams would be today.

Aroldis Chapman is only in the third year of his Major League career. His fastball has clocked in at 106 miles per hour and on average is over 100 miles per hour. The video to the above explains why he throws so hard and is so dominant. 88% of the time his blistering fast ball is going to come over the plate. Against left handed hitter Aroldis Chapman's fast ball lands most often in the upper right hand quadrant of the strike zone. Now Chapman also throws his slider 12% of the time you must take that into consideration. The slider wasn't use very much in the 1940's, but is virtually used by every pitcher today. I'll handicap the experiments and use only Chapman's fast ball in the at bats.

This season against Chapman left handed batters have a .109 batting average against him. In 1941 they didn't keep statistics for batting average against left handed pitching, but Ted Williams had success against 1941 all star left hander Thorton Lee. I don't think Williams was neutralized by left handed pitching.  Chapman is still dominate vs all batters with an over .126 batting average against.

In 1976 the fastest pitch ever record was clocked at 100.0 miles per hour by J.C. Richard. So until 1976 there had never been a pitch faster than 100 miles per hour. It's safe to say that Ted Williams never faced a pitcher throwing that hard in 1941. Ted Williams did face pitchers who doctored the baseball (Using illegal substances to enhance the pitch.)

There are so many intangibles and unavailable statistics involved in this experiment. Its safe to say it is close to impossible to determine if in four at bats Aroldis Chapman can get Ted Williams, but I am not going to leave you without giving you a number. In 1941 Ted Williams was on track to get 406 hits in 1,000 at bats, so his chances of getting a hit can be represented by the fraction 406/1,000. So far in 2012 Aroldis Chapman gives up a hit 126 times out of 1000 at bats. That can be represented by the fraction 126/1000. By multiplying the two fractions together you can get the probability of a hit in one at bat. This results in 51,156/1,000,000. This can be represented as 5.1%.

In one at bat against Aroldis Chapman Ted Williams will have a 5.1% chance of getting a hit, but the bet was in 4 at bats. In 4 at bats the percentage increases to 20.4%, but in 19 at bats the percentage increases to 96.9%. In 8 at bats the percentage would be 40.8% and his batting average in 1941 was 40.6%.

To put this in perspective in 4 at bats Ted Williams will have a 20.4% chance of getting a hit. In 20 at bats it is safe to say he will defiantly have a hit. Remember there are a lot of intangibles and unavailable statistics. Vote in the poll to your left on whether you think the same of differently