This piece dives into MLB’s growing obsession with high fastballs through a playful new idea: the “Kit Keller Award.” Inspired by the character from A League of Their Own who just can’t lay off riseballs at her eyes, the award goes to the 2025 hitter most helpless against high heat.
We dug into Statcast data and the weird relationship between swing decisions, whiffs, and player height. In the end, we land on one clear “winner”—and a reminder that pitchers almost never need three straight heaters at the letters.
What Is the Kit Keller Award?
The Kit Keller Award is a tongue-in-cheek, analytics-driven honor for the 2025 MLB hitter who truly can’t hit ’em and can’t lay off ’em when it comes to high fastballs. It’s not just about chasing; it’s about swinging and missing in the worst possible way.
To build the award, the analysis zeroes in on pitches in the top third of the strike zone and just above it. That’s the modern pitcher’s playground for high four-seamers and cutting fastballs that look tempting but explode past the barrel.
The Statcast Foundation: 308 Hitters Under the Microscope
We used Statcast data to track four-seam fastballs, sinkers, and cutters in upper attack zones. The sample covers 308 players who saw at least 1,000 such pitches in 2025.
That’s a huge pool. It’s more than enough to separate random noise from real tendencies and show which hitters get exposed up in the zone.
The core metrics were simple, but pretty revealing:
Why Height Matters Against High Heat
One factor that jumps out is player height. The geometry of the strike zone means that what’s “high” for one guy might be totally different for another, and pitchers know it.
Taller hitters like Aaron Judge rarely see heaters truly above the zone. The top of Judge’s strike zone is already sky-high, so pitchers don’t have to go much farther north to challenge him.
Shorter hitters, though, see way more pitches that are physically above their eyes—and those are tough to resist.
How High Fastballs Play Differently by Body Type
The data backs up what scouts have guessed for years. Shorter hitters face a hard choice more often: do they attack a high pitch that might just clip the zone, or hope it sails out?
For a lot of them, that gamble goes badly. They end up chasing more and whiffing more. Taller hitters, meanwhile, often see “high” pitches that are still totally hittable strikes.
Why Swinging More Doesn’t Always Mean Whiffing More
Here’s something weird: there’s almost no overall correlation between swing rate and whiff rate on high fastballs across all hitters. Chasing more heaters up doesn’t automatically mean you’re missing more.
The relationship only gets a little negative when you look at pitches truly above the zone. That kind of fits what you’d expect from big-league hitters.
Chasers vs. Whiffers: Different Kinds of Vulnerable
In the data:
The Kit Keller Award isn’t about just one stat. It’s about the combination of swinging too often at high heat and missing those swings at an ugly rate.
Josh Naylor: The Anti–Kit Keller
Before naming the “winner,” let’s talk about a fascinating outlier: Josh Naylor. On paper, he looks like a perfect target for high fastballs. He swung at a wild 66% of them in 2025, one of the highest chase rates out there.
But here’s the kicker: Naylor makes consistent, loud contact on those pitches. Instead of getting exposed by high heat, he punished it.
How Naylor Turns a Flaw into a Weapon
Even with that sky-high swing rate, Naylor’s results on high fastballs were elite. He’s not the Kit Keller type at all—he’s the opposite. Pitchers who tried to go upstairs against him paid for it.
It’s not just aggressiveness that’s the problem. It’s bad aggressiveness—chasing and missing—that really sinks hitters.
Gabriel Arias and the First Kit Keller Award
When you blend swing rate and whiff rate on high fastballs, one name jumps ahead of the pack: Gabriel Arias of the Cleveland Guardians. His 2025 profile against high heat was a textbook case of how not to handle the top of the zone.
Arias swung at nearly 60% of high fastballs and whiffed on about 54% of those swings—a rough combo that made him the clear Kit Keller Award winner.
Why Arias Is a Cautionary Tale for Hitters and Pitchers
People have worried about Arias’s pitch recognition for years. In 2025, those worries finally caught up with him.
His career-high 34.4% strikeout rate didn’t just happen out of nowhere. It’s what you get when a hitter both can’t lay off and can’t catch up when pitchers challenge him up in the zone.
For hitters, Arias is basically a warning sign. Pitchers today love attacking at the top of the zone, and if you can’t make the adjustment, your offensive numbers are going to tank.
Pitchers, on the other hand, should remember that you don’t need to throw three high fastballs in a row to expose a flaw. If a hitter starts showing Kit Keller tendencies, one or two well-placed heaters usually get the job done.
This high-fastball era is all about controlling that upper edge of the strike zone, both in terms of skill and mindset. The first Kit Keller Award just gives us a name for the hitters who lose that fight in the most obvious way.
Here is the source article for this story: And the 2025 Kit Keller Award Goes To…
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