Over the last few years it’s become pretty well accepted that a strikeout isn’t dramatically worse than any other kind of out for hitters. But that being said, making contact is still almost always better than not making contact. There might be a rare instance in which you’d prefer to swing through a pitch because the next one is going to be right in your wheelhouse, but on balance, making contact when you swing is the goal. As such, a high contact percentage is a valuable trait.

Of course, not all contact is created equal and you don’t necessarily want to maximize your contact rate at all costs if it means you won’t be hitting with the same authority. If you can make contact without it turning into weak contact, that’s probably what you want to do.

Every year, I like to look at the biggest gains and losses in particular statistics and contact rate is always one that’s pretty interesting. You can luck into a nice BABIP or wind up with a few extra home runs without changing your game, but a significant change in a plate discipline stat is usually not occurring at random. The change might not always help you predict the future, but it’s unlikely a big spike in contact rate is simply noise.

Read the rest of this entry »

Matt Carpenter never swings. People with dictionaries might take objection to the use of the word “never” in that context, but relative to his peers, Carpenter essentially doesn’t remove the bat from his shoulder. In 2014, he swung at just 32.8% of the pitches that came his way, which was the lowest mark among qualified hitters by quite a bit. Brett Gardner and Jayson Werth tied for second, swinging at 36.8% of the pitches they saw last year.

Since his debut in 2011, Carpenter’s swing percentage is the lowest in baseball among batters with 1000 PA. Joe Mauer is second and nearly a full percentage point behind. No one has mastered the art of the take like the Cardinals infielder, and that passivity hasn’t hurt his ability to make contact either. Among the same group, he’s 30th in contact rate since 2011.

In fact, last year, Pablo Sandoval nearly swung at a higher percentage of pitches outside the zone than Carpenter did against pitches inside the zone. When it comes to pitches outside the zone, Carpenter’s 17.4% was two percent lower than any other hitter. At a glance, you have to assume that Carpenter almost never chases bad pitches and if he does chase one, there has to be a pretty good reason.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Chicago White Sox have had an interesting offseason. Even if you share Jeff’s view that they aren’t yet a very good team, you can’t deny that they made some nice additions this winter. The Sox added Melky Cabrera, David Robertson, Zach Duke, Adam LaRoche, Jeff Samardzija, and Emilio Bonifacio to a roster that included superstars like Chris Sale and Jose Abreu and very good players Adam Eaton and Jose Quintana.

The problem for the White Sox, of course, is all of those nice additions were replacing talent vacancies. As Jeff noted, the Sox got better but becoming Wild Card contenders or challenging the Tigers for division supremacy was a tall order given where they started. Even after the spending spree, they have serious issues behind the plate, at second base, at third base, in right field, and at the back end of the rotation.

It’s a roster that’s moving in a good direction, but it’s still pretty rare to see teams with that many serious holes make a legitimate playoff push. There’s no doubt the Sox are working to build a winner in the relatively near future. You don’t have the winter they had without a focus on the next one to three seasons, which naturally seems to hinge on Avisail Garcia in the short term to some degree.

Read the rest of this entry »

Dexter Fowler played 959 innings in center field for the Astros in 2014, which is noteworthy mostly because he was traded to the Cubs on Monday, but also because of how poorly the defensive metrics rated him for those 959 innings. By Defensive Runs Saved (DRS) he was 20 runs below average and by Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR) he was slightly worse.

Both metrics dinged Fowler for a poor arm, something that’s followed him for his entire career, but for the third time in his career, UZR gave his range horrible marks relative to other center fielders. DRS had previously been friendlier, but didn’t hold back in 2014 with respect to his range.

Fowler’s defense rates poorly by the leading defensive metrics with his career DRS and UZR per 1,000 innings sitting somewhere between -7 runs and -11 runs. Now this is almost exclusively in center field so Fowler gets a few of those runs back on the positional adjustment, but we’re basically talking about a bad center fielder who might be an average guy in a corner. This is all according to the metrics which, as plenty of people will remind you, are imperfect.

Read the rest of this entry »

This isn’t a hard and fast rule, but if you’re a position player and your team asks you to pitch, it’s pretty likely that they don’t see you as a critical piece for the future. Even though position players usually just walk to the mound and keep it simple when called upon, the risk of injury prevents clubs from letting truly valuable players fall on the sword which is why the Pirates let Josh Harrison toss one-third of an inning in 2013.

Legend has it that it was the first time he had pitched since Little League (although it doesn’t appear that anyone called his high school’s official historian to verify that) and he faced one batter and induced a fly out against the Rockies Corey Dickerson. Harrison was the utility guy the Pirates turned to in order to avoid burning through an arm in a blowout in 2013, but his 2014 went in a very different direction.

Read the rest of this entry »

Often times there is a fine line between framing a piece of information as analysis and framing it as a “fun fact.” If I were to point out, for example, that Clayton Kershaw’s ages 24-26 seasons rank 12th all time in WAR and that names like Cy Young, Pedro Martinez, Johan Santana, and Roy Halladay are in the same range, you could construe that as analysis. I am putting a player’s performance in historical context and implying that he’s on his way to a plaque in Cooperstown.

I could even point out that Tim Lincecum appears slightly below Kershaw on the list to warn the reader that this information about Kershaw is not a guarantee about his future. All of that is useful analytical information.

If, on the other hand, I pointed out that control-pitchers Adam Wainwright and Rick Porcello were in the top 12 in intentional walks in 2014, I’m just calling attention to something that is interesting rather than particularly useful. If we’re being precise, there’s probably no such thing as meaningless data, but there’s a big gap between something like comparing Kershaw’s same age seasons to others in history and calling out a tidbit of information that we might find noteworthy.

Read the rest of this entry »

One of the things you’re supposed to learn about in a literature class is subtext. Subtext isn’t exactly a “hidden meaning,” but it’s the unspoken thematic uncurrent of a particular narrative or conversation. While the following will appear to be another post in a long line of posts about Jonathan Lucroy’s pitch framing (It is!), there’s a broader subtext driving the conversation as well that we’ll discuss at the conclusion.

The essence of pitch framing is well-established and relatively simple. Due to the imperfect nature of human eyes and the lack of a uniformly enforced strike zone, the way a catcher receives a pitch can influence whether that pitch is called a strike. Certain catchers have the ability to make balls look like strikes and to make sure that very few strikes look like balls. And certain catchers obviously lack this ability.

The way a catcher receives the ball influences the call, meaning good framers reduce the number of runs scored against their team and make their pitchers look great in the process. Jonathan Lucroy, catcher extraordinaire, is someone who seems to do this very well.

Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »