Viral Ted Williams, Joey Votto hitting breakdown has a valuable lesson for Mariners

The coolest thing you're going to read today is an article by ESPN's Jeff Passan in which Joey Votto reacts to never-before-seen footage of Ted Williams preaching good hitting practices. Obviously we scrolled through looking for lessons for the Seattle Mariners, ultimately resulting in a double-take on what the two legends have to say about pulling the ball in the air.

Needless to say, listening to the so-called "greatest hitter who ever lived" say anything about hitting is a treat. And in this case, it's remarkable how well Williams' treatises on timing, swing shape and efficiency have aged. He sounds like a modern hitting coach who was somehow DeLorean'd back to the past.

Arguably the star of this particular show, however, is Votto explaining just how hard it is for hitters to pull off Williams' ideal swing, which is one geared toward hitting the ball in the air:

"The face of the barrel gets smaller," says Votto of a swing meant to produced a pulled ball in the air. "Combine that with the speed of the pitching, the complicated nature of pitching -- changes speeds, up, down, all these variables -- to be, like he said, strong enough and quick enough to be able to accurately match barrel to ball and hit it on the easiest side and put it in the air is the trinity."

The gist of what Votto (who could join Williams in the Hall of Fame as soon as 2030) is getting at is that swings meant to pull the ball in the air are high-risk, high-reward. It's an ideal outcome, but also the most difficult outcome to pull off.

Mariners hitters love to pull the ball in the air, and it's not a foolproof offensive hack

It so happens that the Williams/Votto piece is coming out in the wake of another from Adam Jude of The Seattle Times that (among other things) raises questions about the Mariners' offensive philosophy. Since Dan Wilson and Edgar Martinez took the reins in late 2024, there's been an emphasis on trying to make good contact up the middle. It's an old-school idea that might be clashing with the new-school best practice of using pulled fly balls to hit home runs.

“All I know is we tend to win games when we hit homers. And to hit homers, you need to pull the ball,” said one anonymous Mariners hitter to Jude. He also added: “It’s fair to say we are a group at a crossroads.”

Pulling the ball in the air is something the Mariners did well last year, as their 19.6 Pull-Air% was the sixth-highest in MLB and coincided with 238 home runs (3rd in MLB) and 766 runs (9th in MLB). They have actually upped the ante in 2026, improving their Pull-Air% to 19.7 percent.

So, how the heck are they in the middle of the pack with 163 home runs and second-to-last with an average of 3.91 runs per game?

This is obviously a loaded question. What has befallen the Mariners offense in 2026 is one of those "How much time do you have?" things. Injuries have been a huge factor. Likewise for Cal Raleigh's historic downfall. There's also been a little bad luck as well.

But if nothing else, this year has proved that having an offense that excels at pulling the ball in the air does not necessarily correlate to strong overall offense. It's not just a Mariners thing either. Of the top 10 teams on the Pull-Air% leaderboard, only five are also top-10 in runs per game. Only four are top-10 in home runs per game. And only three are top-10 in home runs and runs per game.

To be sure, there's still a very strong correlation between hitting home runs and scoring runs. It must also be said that the Mariners have more incentive than most to pursue the long ball. T-Mobile Park is terrible for hitters, yet not as unfriendly to home runs as one would think.

And yet, there should be a happy middle ground between the new-school and old-school approaches that seem to have created an identity crisis among Seattle's hitters. Swings meant to produce pulled fly balls should not be discouraged, but should also be treated as what they are: unicorn swings best reserved for unicorn hitters.

In other words, the best philosophy is less one-size-fits-all and more holistic. Perhaps it sounds too obvious, but at least it would be an identity for an offense that has lost whatever identity it once had.

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