Leaderboarding: These are the best hitters in baseball on an 0-2 count – CBSSports.com

There is no worse situation for a hitter than an 0-2 count. The pitcher has complete control of the at-bat and the hitter is on the defensive, just trying to stay alive. Forget about having a plan. The plan to protect the plate and hope the ball finds grass.

Unsurprisingly, MLB batters hit a dismal .171/.200/.259 (27 OPS+) after falling behind in the count 0-2 last season. More than 44 percent of hitters struck out after falling behind 0-2, and, to be honest, I’m shocked that number isn’t much higher. I thought it would be well over 50 percent.

Some batters are better equipped to hit in two-strike counts than others, of course. Big strikeout guys like Chris Davis and Mark Reynolds tend to get chewed up after falling behind 0-2. Other players are quite productive, relatively speaking. Here are the best hitters in baseball after falling behind in the count 0-2 last season (min. 50 PA).

Giants second baseman Joe Panik is the only player in baseball to rank among the top 10 in batting average, on-base percentage, slugging percentage, and OPS+ after staring down an 0-2 count last season. He had a 20-point gap in batting average. It wasn’t close.

So this means Panik is a great 0-2 hitter, right? Well, no, not necessarily. It means he was a very successful 0-2 hitter in 2015. Panik hit .231/.250/.256 (42 OPS+) after falling behind in the count 0-2 back in 2014. We’re talking about a relatively small sample — Marte led baseball with 164 0-2 plate appearances in 2015 — and weird things happen in small samples.

On paper, Panik appears to have the skill set you’d expect to see in a good two-strike hitter. He makes contact and he knows the zone, so he’s good at protecting the plate. At the same time, stats when hitting in 0-2 counts are not all that predictive. Marwin Gonzalez led MLB with a 298 OPS+ after falling behind 0-2 in 2014. Last year he had a 23 OPS+ in those spots.

Panik and the rest of those players in the table all did a tremendous job hitting after the pitcher jumped ahead in the count 0-2 last season. Allowing the hitter to reach base after getting ahead 0-2 is demoralizing for any pitcher. These guys were great at in 2015. Will they be great at it in 2016? That remains to be seen.