If you really think about it, there's a lot of sports about hitting a ball with some sort of stick.
Golf.
Hockey.
Lacrosse.
If you bristled at me calling hockey or lacrosse stick sports, I'm sorry
(But I'm right)
Anyway, let's talk about the one you were probably thinking of...
Baseball
Welcome to Atlanta's Truist Park
Home of the Braves and 2023 MLB MVP Ronald Acuña
He's been playing baseball for basically his whole life
What if he hadn't?
Cricket is amongst the most popular sports in the world, what if Acuña was not a batter, but a batsman instead?
Before we get to stats and highly manipulated data analysis, let's start with some obvious questions:
Why Acuña?
Because he's probably the best pure hitter in baseball right now, with a blend of power hitting and good on base frequency.
How will you account for wickets or fly outs? How will you account for overs vs. at bats?
Would you believe me if I told you I'll tell you later?
How much of this concept is taken from Jon Bois' "What if Barry Bonds played without a Bat"?
Around 43%. Jon has never commented on cricket!
DATA TIME
Here's every single trackable time Acuña's bat made contact with the ball in his career
not super helpful huh.
ok. Let's do this year by year.
2018
Acuña breaks into the major leagues, promptly tallies 127 hits with 26 home runs, and wins Rookie of the Year in a landslide.
2019
Acuña makes his first all-star game, was voted Silver Slugger (best offensive player in baseball) by his peers, and finishes 5th in MVP voting.
2020
...
2021
After COVID shut down the MLB in 2020, Acuña steped back into an All-Star campaign as the Braves won the World Series.
2022
While the Braves failed to defend their title and lost in the first round, Acuña was once again an All-Star and had 127 hits.
2023
In a career best year, Acuña won MVP with 217 hits and became the first player to ever have over 30 homers (41) and over 60 steals (73).
2024
On May 26th, Ronald Acuña tore his ACL.
God, what a terrible way to end this.
Let's watch him absolutely destroy cricket.
I'll just start with a quick look at what some of these balls would look like in a cricket field...
Okay, for those of you who don't know cricket, allow me to give you the basics.
If the ball is hit straight out of the field of play, it's worth six runs. It is functionally the same as a homerun, hence the color choice.
The orange circles likely would've bounced out of the field, resulting in four runs. It's basically like a ground rule double.
The purple dots are where the ball is hit into play. This is where risk comes in. Batsmen can run between the two stumps to gain more runs but risk getting their wicket hit. This is more reminiscent of trying to steal and risking getting caught out, but there's no real one to one comparison.
Lastly, the maroon territory is the "don't even try it territory". It requires Rickey Henderson levels of charisma, confidence, and obsene shows of speed.
By my tally, this is:
773 Sixes,
173 Fours,
and 1,066 twos
(it's not a perfect science)
That would give us 7,462 runs across 2,818 at bats.
Or a run rate of 2.65 per at bat.
Let's compare him to the goat of the sport.
May I introduce you to...
Virat Kohli
(I had wanted to get his hit chart and overlay it here but ran out of time)
At the most recent World Cup in the United States, Kohli led India to the title. He scored 4,188 runs across 3,056 balls.
That's 1.37 runs per at bat.
Huh.
This fails to account for any of Acuña's outs...
and considering how much Acuña likes chasing pitches to the corners and sitting on pitches down the middle, it feels like his eye is built for disaster in terms of wicket protection.
But, still...
Goddamn.