O-Swing% and GMs

When you think of the standard cliches about “Moneyball” teams that have hired statistically inclined GMs over the last few years, what’s one of the first one’s that comes to mind? Patient hitters who draw a lot of walks has to be at the top of the list, right?

Well, with the new team pages here on Fangraphs, I decided to look at the teams rankings in our Plate Discipline stats, just to see if the stereotype holds. I figured the easiest way to judge approach was by O-Swing%, or the amount of times a team swings at pitches outside the strike zone, since laying off bad pitches is one of the fundamentals of the “sabermetric hitting approach”. The results were… well, just look for yourself. Sorted by lowest O-Swing%:

1. Tampa, 22.63%
2. Boston, 22.85%
3. Oakland, 23.88%
4. Cleveland, 23.25%
5. Arizona, 23.50%
6. Yankees, 23.62%
7. Toronto, 23.64%
8. Colorado, 23.81%

and the bottom eight:

23. San Diego, 26.83%
24. White Sox, 27.44%
25. Dodgers, 27.66%
26. Kansas City, 27.88%
27. Houston, 27.97%
28. San Francisco, 28.02%
29. Seattle, 28.49%
30. Anaheim, 28.87%

Among the top eight, the only team that you could argue doesn’t employ a sabermetric GM would be the Yankees, but they’ve still shown a clear affinity over the years for patient hitters. In fact, the five teams with the lowest O-Swing% are basically The Big Five stat-friendly organizations in baseball right now. Likewise, the five teams with the lowest O-Swing% are five franchises that have essentially looked at statistical analysis and said “nah, that’s not for us.”

The correlation between a team’s statistical bent and the players rate of chasing pitches out of the strike zone is pretty strong. Now, some of that is due at least in part to the selection processes of the players by the GM (Oakland is way more likely to give a job to Jack Cust than Seattle), but teams like Tampa and Arizona are mostly built upon position players developed from within. It seems clear that the emphasis of plate discipline as an approach can manifest itself in on field results. Perhaps the Royals, Astros, Giants, Mariners, and Angels might want to consider preaching a bit more patience at the plate – it’s not like their offenses are much to write home about anyway.