Swing Kings: The Inside Story of Baseball's Home Run Revolution – How Maverick Coaches and Analytics Transformed Hitting with Launch Angle

"The best baseball book I’ve read in years." — Sam Walker • "An exhilarating story of innovation."  — Ben Reiter • "Swing Kings feels like a spiritual successor to Moneyball." — Baseball ProspectusFrom the Wall Street Journal’s national baseballwriter, the captivating story of the home run boom, following a group ofplayers who rose from obscurity to stardom and the rogue swing coaches whohelped them usher the game into a new age.We are in a historic era for the home run. The2019 season saw the most homers ever, obliterating a record set just two yearsbefore. It is a shift that has transformed the way the game is played,contributing to more strikeouts, longer games, and what feels like the logicalconclusion of the analytics era. In SwingKings, Wall Street Journal national baseball writer JaredDiamond reveals that the secret behind this unprecedented shift isn’t steroidsor the stitching of the baseballs, it’s the most elemental explanation of all:the swing. In this lively narrative romp, he tracks a group of baseball’sbiggest stars—including Aaron Judge, J.D. Martinez, and Justin Turner—whoremade their swings under the tutelage of a band of renegade coaches, andremade the game in the process. Thesecoaches, many of them baseball washouts who have reinvented themselves asswing gurus, for years were one of the game’s best-kept secrets. Amongtheir ranks are a swimming pool contractor, the owner of a billiards hall, andan ex-hippie whose swing insights draw from surfing and the technique ofJapanese samurai. Now, as Diamond artfully charts, this motley cast has movedfrom the baseball margins to its center of power. They are changing the wayhitting is taught to players of all ages, and major league clubs are scramblingfor their services, hiring them in record numbers as coaches and consultants. AndDiamond himself, whose baseball career ended in high school, enlists thetutelage of each swing coach he profiles, with an aim toward starring in theannual Boston-New York media game at Yankee Stadium.Swing Kings isboth a rollicking history of baseball’s recent past and a deeply reported,character-driven account of a battle between opponents as old as time: old andnew, change and stasis, the establishment and those who break from it. JaredDiamond has written a masterful chronicle of America’s pastime at thecrossroads. Read more