Contact hitter

Rod Carew is another example of a contact hitter who turned into a dominant MLB player, notching 18 all-star game appearances throughout his hall of fame career.

One of the earliest known uses of the phrase "contact hitter" was in a 1966 Bradenton Herald report about Manatee Junior College players Whitey Whiten and Mark Sprunger.

[2] United Press International possibly was the first news agency to record the term in reference to a Major League Baseball player as Royals general manager Cedric Tallis gave recent acquisition Lou Piniella the title in a quote from a story that appeared in a 1969 edition of The Tampa Tribune.

Rod Carew was one of the first contact hitter superstars of this era, claiming the 1977 American League MVP with a .388 batting average for the Minnesota Twins.

This decade saw the rise of Tony Gwynn of the San Diego Padres, considered by many to be the greatest contact hitter of baseball's modern era.

[9] Despite the growing acceptance of strikeouts, the league still has many notable contact hitters, such as Juan Soto, Michael Brantley, Yuli Gurriel, Jeff McNeil, David Fletcher, and Luis Arraez.