All or Nothing Luke Raley

Luke Raley took the big hack. Then he took another.

Raley struck out 36.6% of the time in 2026, the third most of any hitter with at least 100 plate appearances. He walked just 5.9% of the time, well below the median. His 0.16 K/BB average is one of the 10 worst in baseball this year. That’s usually not a recipe for success.

But this:

Raley has six homers so far in 2026, moving him to a 132 wRC+. He hits the ball a lot (51.8%), to the pull side (50.0%), and in the air (60.7%). His .595 xwOBA on contact is third in the majors. The hitters who connected best with Aaron Judge and James Wood, put Raley ahead of Ben Rice, Munetaka Murakami, Mike Trout, and Yordan Alvarez. It’s impressive company to keep.

But Raley also has the league’s highest rate, and by a lot. He has missed 46.9% of his swings this year, three percentage points more than second-placed player Murakami. That’s because Raley tends to chase the pitch, but mostly because he also struggles to connect with pitches. His 39.3% whiff rate in the zone is the highest in the league, edging out Murakami, for second, by five points.

This whiff-for-contact trade makes Raley the most outfield player in the majors this year:

Now, I’m obviously not the first to show the relationship between the amount of whiff and the quality of communication. That’s one of the central tenants of modern baseball: Home runs are great, and to go yard, you need to swing hard, but swinging hard also leads to more hits. But I’m curious how extreme Raley can get and be net-positive with his swing.

I developed a crude study. I thought any swing that didn’t put the ball in play (whiffs and fouls) was worth -.066 runs. Next, I changed xwOBACON to run above average, to put it on the same scale. Finally, I created a breakeven curve to determine the xwOBACON needed to justify each BIP ratio.

That gives us the following plot, with BIP rate on the x-axis and xwOBACON on the y-axis:

And yes, Raley is well clear of the dividing line. His quality of contact relative to frequency is still one of the 10 best in the majors. He’ll need to cut his average BIP in half before he finds himself on the receiving end of that trade; or on the other hand, he would need to cut his contact quality down to about .425.

The plot also gives more reasons why hitters tend to sell barrels and such. The slope is not too shallow, and not too far from the xwOBACON center line. More power always costs less contact, depending on the swing profile. Everyone gets out, but not everyone hits the ball far – that’s where the above average value lies.

Let’s run through a series of tables. The first is the best and worst communication quality relative to the BIP level (distance from the line of the plot above):

The top of the list is as you would expect. It’s good to see Wood in the first place, as he often craves his high prices. But the connections he has made so far in 2026 are so good that it doesn’t matter. Adding to the intrigue is that many of those high-level contacts go elsewhere, as I pointed out in last week’s Mailbag column. He is the best slugger in the league, and he does it in a way few players ever have.

Then there’s Judge and Rice who work for the Yankees. But it’s actually Alvarez who stands out on this list, as he makes both the most connections and the most special contact. He leads the league with a .357 xBA because of it.

The caboose here is Raley’s crew, Rivas. This was a happy coincidence because, as Matthew Trueblood recently pointed out Baseball ProspectusRivas is notorious for not skating. His career swing rate of 35.2% is the lowest in the majors since 2024, and that’s probably for the best: No player has reason to leave the bat on his shoulder with this analysis.

Let’s get into the middle of this chart. The following tables show the hitters with the highest xwOBACON falling below the breakeven threshold:

Another Raley partner tops this list. Raleigh is one of the three true scorers in the league, known for making this trade. Last year, it worked well and he set all kinds of home run records despite a 31.5% whiff rate. This year, his timing seems to have slowed down, and he hasn’t found consistent barrels. He’ll probably get better over time, but without last year’s power, his wRC+ dropped to 81. Such is the nature of all or nothing.

Neto is having a strange season. Like Raleigh, the Angels shortstop appears to be striking this balance in 2025, increasing his strikeout rate while raising his xwOBACON to an impressive .447. This year he has hit a lot and lost his strength. But where he once fully relied on this swing, he’s now doubled his walk rate (13.6%), so he’s still sporting a 107 wRC+ despite his terrible contact quality. All or nothing is not always everything.

Finally, let’s look at the batters with the lowest xwOBACON to put over the breaking point:

The bottom line is that the lowest xwOBACON that will result in a net-positive is .372, which is really average. Few if any players are able to put the ball in play at high enough rates to get away with poor contact. Quality is the name of the game.

Now, again, this is very raw. I make all kinds of assumptions to simplify quite complex variables. I don’t think about the situation of the game or the position of the pitch or the batting technique; nor do I agree that whiffs and fouls produce two very different standards. This analysis relies on a vague concept of “relative to average,” or what makes a good swing profile, rather than what makes a good swing. Even Rivas should be swinging at a medium-medium fastball with a two-strike count.

But what this actually means is to show that players like Raley, with big totals and good contact quality, are justified in this approach. It’s a feature, even if it can look like a bug at times.

I wasn’t satisfied with just one crude metric, so I made another one. I got uz walk rate, strikeout rate, and xwOBACON, then added it all up to get a players profile that depends a lot on contact quality. As you might guess, Raley has one of the five worst seasons of the Statcast era.

But what amuses me about Raley is not only that he has power at the plate, he is also an outfielder with poor range and good athleticism. His strength, in fact, is the one area on the field where he contributes in any measurable sense. So I threw Fielding Run Value and Baserunning Run Value into the score as well. (Note that I arranged the z-scores to separate xwOBACON, so that higher scores are given to players with the worst defense and baserunning.)

Raley is ranked second in 2021 by Salvador Perez on this scale. But the first list contradicted the spirit of my question. (Some players were not sluggers and were worse at everything.) The table below instead shows the highest scores of players at least two standard deviations above the mean in xOBACON. In other words, here are the true or false players of the last decade:

We haven’t seen a player do as much and so little as Raley so far in 2026.

Now, it’s early – a line that slows down any freewheeling analysis in May. This will not continue. Raley is probably going to get in a lot of bad contact at some point, and you’re probably going to have a lot of contact with him. That’s right. He posted a 129 wRC+ for the Rays in 2023, then was dealt to José Caballero’s Mariners and posted a similar 129 wRC+ in 2024. He wasn’t that extreme in any season, and his entire line was just as good. A year ago it was a step back, but as Kate Preusser at Lookout Landing pointed out last month, Raley’s power was limited by a hamstring injury. He certainly seems healthy now.

Raley is far from a perfect player. He is limited, raw, and runs like a giraffe. There’s a list of things he can’t do on the field, but he just made it, staking his claim as the league’s next best player. Raley is all or nothing. Isn’t that something.