Daily Graphing – A.J. Pierzynski

by
December 19, 2005

A.J. Pierzynski will remain with the White Sox after agreeing on a 3 Year, $15 million dollar contract. Last year, he was 6th in home runs among all catchers, and only 4 home runs away from the leader, Jason Varitek. Despite the career high in home runs, his batting average dropped to a career low of .257. Up until two years ago he was a career .300 batter, but things have slipped the past couple years. Let's see if his current power will continue, and if his batting average will remain in the dumpster.

SBBK

Oddly enough, his walk to strikeout ratio (BB/K) has been a bit on a rise, but what's going on against lefthanded pitchers? His BB/K against lefties really has been zero the past two years. In the past four years he's only had 3 walks against lefties in 433 plate appearances. This pretty much gives him the honor of being the least disciplined batter against lefties in all of baseball over the past four years. His league worst on base percentage of .258 isn't even a good batting average. Lefties aside, his overall rise in BB/K doesn't explain why his batting average has tanked the past two years, but his batting average on balls in play (BABIP) does.

BABIP

The year his BABIP dropped was the year he left the Twins. There's nothing in his home/away splits to suggest he played better at the Metrodome, so we can rule out a change in scenery. He did however experience a drop in line drive percentage and an increase in fly balls in 2004. From 2002-2003 he hit a very high 25% of his balls for line drives. Then in 2004-2005 he hit only 20% of his balls for line drive, while he showed an increase in his fly balls by about 5%. Chances are in 2005, while playing at U.S. Cellular Field, a few of those extra fly balls became home runs.

LDFBGB

You Aren't a FanGraphs Member
It looks like you aren't yet a FanGraphs Member (or aren't logged in). We aren't mad, just disappointed.
We get it. You want to read this article. But before we let you get back to it, we'd like to point out a few of the good reasons why you should become a Member.
1. Ad Free viewing! We won't bug you with this ad, or any other.
2. Unlimited articles! Non-Members only get to read 10 free articles a month. Members never get cut off.
3. Dark mode and Classic mode!
4. Custom player page dashboards! Choose the player cards you want, in the order you want them.
5. One-click data exports! Export our projections and leaderboards for your personal projects.
6. Remove the photos on the home page! (Honestly, this doesn't sound so great to us, but some people wanted it, and we like to give our Members what they want.)
7. Even more Steamer projections! We have handedness, percentile, and context neutral projections available for Members only.
8. Get FanGraphs Walk-Off, a customized year end review! Find out exactly how you used FanGraphs this year, and how that compares to other Members. Don't be a victim of FOMO.
9. A weekly mailbag column, exclusively for Members.
10. Help support FanGraphs and our entire staff! Our Members provide us with critical resources to improve the site and deliver new features!
We hope you'll consider a Membership today, for yourself or as a gift! And we realize this has been an awfully long sales pitch, so we've also removed all the other ads in this article. We didn't want to overdo it.

It looks like A.J. Pierzynski has sacrificed his average for power. Playing the next three seasons for the White Sox is only good news for his power numbers. His batting average on the other hand doesn't look like it's going to recover without a loss in power unless he can improve his plate discipline, especially against lefties. I'd suggest the White Sox sit him against lefties, but their backup catcher Chris Widger isn't any better, that is unless prospect Chris Stewart becomes a viable option.





 

David Appelman is the creator of FanGraphs.

Comments are closed.