BATTERS: HctX drivers and dribblers

Hard contact isn't everything for a hitter, because if it was, owners wouldn't need to pay attention to hit rate. The fact is, defensive shifts, park effects and just plain dumb luck can intervene and prevent even some of the hardest hit balls from finding purchase in the outfield. Yet while hard contact isn't a guarantee of success for a hitter, it can be a very useful indicator for future production.

Hard Contact Index (HctX) was created as a tool for BaseballHQ.com subscribers to measure the quality of contact each hitter makes in relation to his peers. While there is a lot of nuance to the recipe, the basic ingredients for the metric are as follows:

• The jumping off point is each player's ct%.
• Contact rate and Hard-hit...

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