There are 499 baseball players (non-pitchers) who have at least 50 plate appearances this year. I sorted them by height. What follow are the correlations between height and various offensive statistical measures. Of course, correlation does not equal causation etc etc et cetera.
For fun.
- Batting average: .04
- OBP: .10
- Slugging percentage: .29
- Isolated power: .37
- HR rate: .41
- Walk rate: .14
- Playing time: .11
- Stolen bases/game: -.23
- Sacrifice bunts/PA: -.31
If you eliminate the fuzzy middle—the guys who are between 5' 11" and 6' 2"—and just focus on the very tall and the very short, the correlations get stronger, as they would: .55 for home run rate, -.43 for sacrifice bunts.
Oh what fun that was.
Thank you for reading
This is a free article. If you enjoyed it, consider subscribing to Baseball Prospectus. Subscriptions support ongoing public baseball research and analysis in an increasingly proprietary environment.
Subscribe now