Last Thursday, I took a stab at predicting how batter’s swing influences their ground ball / fly ball splits. One of the most important retorts to the research (a retort made both in the comments and on The Book blog) was that pitch location was the determining factor of bat angles — what I was attributing to hitter tendencies (at least for hitters who have big GB/FB platoon splits).

Consider today’s offering a second puzzle piece — hopefully an edge piece — in what is a 1000-piece puzzle of understanding GB/FB splits. Today I offer the case study of two (essentially randomly picked) hitters with large GB/FB platoon — Adam Dunn and Jay Bruce.

The results surprised me, twice, and in the end, it appears these two hitters employ different swing patterns, suggesting there may be traction with my original theory, even though pitch location does have a considerable affect on swing angles.
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Table of Contents
Here’s the table of contents for today’s edition of Daily Notes.

1. Action News Reports
2. Today’s Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Action News Reports
Baseball news, reported with action.

First Player from 2012 Draft Recalled to Majors
The Los Angeles Dodgers have recalled left-hander Steven Rodriguez from Double-A Chattanooga just three months after selecting him 82nd overall in this year’s amateur draft, reports MLB.com’s Alex Angert. The 21-year-old Rodriguez, who attended the University of Florida, posted this line between High- and Double-A: 19.7, 14.6 K/9, 2.8 BB/9, 0.0 HR/9, 0.86 FIP. According to Baseball America, Rodriguez features a “good cutter, 91-92 mph fastball, [and] plus command.” He’s expected to work in relief.

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It’s an all-AL East episode, as Ben and substitute co-host Jason Wojciechowski discuss a counterproductive proposal to fix what ails the Yankees, then talk about the latest Bobby Valentine controversy.

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Tentative rosters for the Arizona Fall League were released on Aug. 29. The fall developmental league is designed to help prospects received extra seasoning and coaching at the conclusion of the minor league season. Each organization contributes players to the six-team league. The league typically shifts in favor of the hitters because teams are generally reluctant to assign top arms to the league – unless they’re attempting to make up for lost innings due to injuries.

We’ve already broken down two AFL clubs:
Mesa Solar Sox
Peoria Javelinas

The Phoenix Desert Dogs club consists of players from five organizations – Oakland, Atlanta, Milwaukee, Tampa Bay and Miami. Below are some interesting names set to appear on the roster. Full rosters can be found here.

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Before we get into the meat of this article, I feel like I need to preface everything, so that the message and significance aren’t unclear. You might find it dreadfully uninteresting to read through this brief preface, but then, just imagine how much better reading the article will feel afterward!

(1) This was originally titled “The Most Indiscriminate Swinger in the World” but then I thought better of that because you people are crude.

(2) This article makes use of PITCHf/x plate-discipline data, which some people might not find to their liking. It forces two bits of that data together in a haphazard ratio, which more people might not find to their liking. There are always going to be sample-size concerns, and especially in this instance. I am aware of how the analysis might be considered insufficient and yet I’m still comfortable with it, because it’s more right than it is wrong.

See, that wasn’t too bad. Off we go.

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Major League Baseball hasn’t publicly released the tentative schedule for the 2013 season, but it has shared it with teams and the players union. And that means some information about baseball in 2013 has leaked out, intentionally or otherwise. There’s some very good news for some teams and some “what, are you kidding me” news for other teams, if good and bad news is measured by the expected effect on attendance.

First, a few reminders about overall changes coming in 2013. With the Astros move to the American League West, there will be 15 teams in each league. Typically, every team plays on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, with Mondays and Thursdays as travel and off days. That means most days of the season will see at least one interleague game. Fourteen National League teams will play each other. Same in the American League. The odd teams out in each league will play each other.

We’ve also heard rumblings that, with the addition of a second wild card, MLB will move to a more balanced intraleague schedule. The idea is that teams competing for the two wild card spots should be on relatively equal footing when it comes to strength of schedule. But the early news suggests that division rivals will continue to play more games against each other than against non-division teams in the same league.

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Rockies hitters have always had a hard time producing above-average seasons once context is applied. As a team, the club has never compiled a season with a 100 wRC+. Outsized park factors continuously knock their stats down a few pegs, as do the adjustments hitters have to make to differing altitudes when the team hits the road. Even with that as a backdrop though, Dante Bichette’s 1999 season was an outlier for the ages — one that is not only historically notorious by itself, but helped the Colorado pitching staffs have one of the worst, if not the worst season in franchise history.

Bichette, who came to the Rockies in a trade requested by manager Don Baylor and executed hours after their 1992 expansion draft, was a fixture in the Colorado lineup for the franchise’s first seven seasons. He ranks fourth in the club’s annals in games played, and the only outfielder who has played more games than him in a Rockies uniform is Larry Walker. He ranks 10th in club history in wRC+ (minimum 1,000 plate appearances) and provided a bevy of memorable moments as one of the original Blake St. Bombers.

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Announcers and hitting coaches love to talk about hitting the ball to all fields, and especially hitting the ball to all fields with power. Not every elite hitter uses such an approach — Jose Bautista uses left field almost exclusively, for example. But Bautista’s way of hitting — pure pull power, with tons of fly balls — has it’s drawbacks; it is a finely tuned system available to a select few specimens.

After the 2010 season, it wasn’t clear Ryan Braun would become the elite power hitter suggested by his explosive 34-homer, .634 SLG, .310 ISO debut season. Every season after he came up, his ISO dipped by at least 34 points until he slugged just .501 with 25 homers in 2010. Braun was never the kind of pull power hitter Bautista embodies, but much of his power away from left field came in the form of doubles (45 in 2010), not home runs.

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Tuesday night, just before the Mariners started playing the Red Sox, ROOT Sports introduced a little graphic showing the Mariners’ record before and after the Ichiro trade, and showing the Yankees’ record before and after the Ichiro trade. If you’ve been paying any attention to baseball, which you probably have, you know that the Yankees haven’t been playing well lately, and you might know that the Mariners have. Why? If you’re a fan of correlation-to-causation alchemy, because of the Ichiro trade. Clearly, Ichiro is toxic. Alternatively, on July 19, the Yankees traded Dan Brewer to the Braves. That could be the problem. There are correlations everywhere. There are correlations everywhere.

Let’s assume, you and I, that it isn’t that simple. There are very complicated reasons behind the relative rise of the Mariners, and there are very complicated reasons behind the relative fall of the Yankees. We’ll stop talking about the Mariners now because they don’t have anything to do with the rest of this article, as we’re going to focus on the AL East. No matter the reasons, there’s no getting around what’s taken place. There’s no changing the standings as they are, and where once the Yankees had a massive lead over everyone else, Tuesday night they dropped into a tie. The Yankees woke up Wednesday without sole possession of first for the first time since June 12. (That was a very long time ago.) (Sort of.)

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