Hitting at the major league level is extremely difficult, to the point that having a success rate of 30% is seen as a good thing. The pitch is thrown at 100 MPH in your direction, with insane movement, and the hitter’s job is to hit it into play and hope to get on base.
Being an elite hitter in the MLB takes a lot of gifted talent and experience. Knowing how to predict the next pitch to get a jump on it is often a crucial aspect of hitting. The reflexes to catch up to a ball coming at you with crazy speed and movement and having the ability to get the bat to it.
Throughout MLB history, there have been some great hitters, and since 2010, some stand out. However, no batter holds every elite trait, so using players from the 2010s, this is how the ultimate batter could look.
Let’s check the latest MLB lines, stats, injury reports, and MLB odds for MLB Batter with players from the 2010s. We’ve plenty of MLB spreads for you to consider.
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Brain: Miguel Cabrera
Miguel Cabrera has been in the MLB since 2003 and has been one of the best players for a large chunk of that time. During the early part of the 2010s decade, he was at the peak of his powers, winning the Triple Crown in 2012. To win the Triple Crown, you have to lead the MLB in batting average, home runs, and runs batted in, which Cabrera did with a stat line of .330, 44, and 139. He was the first player since 1967 to win the Triple Crown. Cabrera won the MVP in 2012 and 2013, as he had a better statistical season in 2013 but was beaten out in the HR and RBI, despite a .348 BA. The last four years of the decade saw injuries and age catch up with Cabrera, but his .330 BA, 237 HRs, and 800s from 2010 through 2016 make him one of the better hitters in history. To still be going strong at 37 years old in 2022 is a testament to how smart of a batter he is.
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Power: Giancarlo Stanton
In the modern MLB, few have the power that Giancarlo Stanton possesses when he steps in the batter’s box. Few players throughout MLB history might actually hit the ball as hard as Stanton. Since the MLB has been tracking exit velocity stats, Stanton either has the fastest ball hit every year or is around that range, with a few others in the top 10. Even though exit velocity only started to get tracked in 2015, Stanton has five of the top 10 fastest hits since, including the fastest ball at 121.7 MPH. Only one of the five was after 2020, showing Stanton has had this power for most of his time in the majors. He has led MLB in home runs twice, with 37 in 2014 and 59 in 2017, winning the MVP that season. Injuries have plagued him most of his career, but none of that has affected his power.
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Contact: Mike Trout
Since entering the league in 2011, it is hard to argue that Mike Trout is not one of the best baseball players of the 2010 decade. If you had to create an ultimate player from the 2010s, Trout might be as close as it gets as a real player. In 2012, his first full season in the MLB, Trout won Rookie of the Year and came in second in Most Valuable Player voting. In fact, from 2012 to 2020, Trout has always been in the top five of MVP voting, winning three. His batting average through the decade, since being called up in 2011, was .304, with 1,380 total hits. Even though he struggled with striking out early in his career, he has improved over time. Injuries have also been an issue with Trout, always having something he is playing through or shortening his season, lowering some of his stats. When healthy, Trout has easily been one of the best overall batters in the MLB for the 2010s.
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Speed: Dee Strange-Gordon
When you want a bag to be stolen, during the 2010s, no one was better than Dee Strange-Gordon. Whenever he got on base, his speed was able to terrorize opposing pitchers on the mound, being able to steal a bag nearly whenever he wanted to. In the first part of the decade, he made a name for himself as a player off the bench with speed, mainly coming in as a pinch-runner. In 2014 that changed, and he began to start more games, leading the league in stolen bases with 64 and triples with 12. Gordon led the league with 58 stolen bases in 2015, making him a back-to-back leader. He led the league in steals for a final time in 2017 with 60 and is the only player in the 2010s to lead the league in steals three separate times.
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Clutch: Pablo Sandoval
Being a clutch batter is being at your best when it matters the most, and in the 2010s, Pablo Sandoval consistently played his best when it mattered the most. Sandoval’s overall career is not extremely eye-catching, but he played a crucial part in two of the three World Series the San Francisco Giants won in the 2010s. Sandoval did not play much of a role in the 2010 World Series win for the Giants, but in 2012 Sandoval won World Series MVP, batting .500 with three HRs and four RBIs. In 2014, he didn’t win MVP of the World Series because of how good Madison Bumgarner was, but with .429 with four RBIs, put Sandoval in the conversation.
