Ryan Braun’s Constantly Improving Plate Discipline
Some idle Holiday Internetting has compelled the author of this piece to point his web browser in the direction of National League MVP Ryan Braun’s player profile, which in turn has compelled the author to discover something about Braun’s plate-discipline numbers — namely, that they have improved in a decidedly regular fashion since his rookie season of 2007.
Here we can see that improvement in graph form:
In each of his four seasons since that rookie year, Braun has struck out less often and walked more often than the season prior.
It makes sense that striking out less often and walking more often would aid a player’s offensive production. By how much?, is the question.
Using Bradley Woodrum’s Should Hit Calculator, we can find out such a thing. Woodrum found back in August that hitting (as defined, in this case, by wRC+) was informed almost exclusively by four inputs: walks, strike outs, home runs, and BABIP. This is, more or less, FIP for hitters — except for that hitters are much more likely to have signature home-run and BABIP rates.
To find out exactly what sort of effect Braun’s plate discipline improvement has had, I’ve recast all five of his seasons with his career home-run rate (5.1%) and BABIP (.339). This allows us to isolate the effect of his improved plate discipline on his overall offensive production.
Here are those seasons (again, using career numbers for HR% and BABIP):
There are some caveats to make here. For one, Braun’s home-run rate has been up and down over the course of the past five years. For two, the changing offensive environment could possibly affect the Should Hit numbers.
Those comments made, however, it’s still very likely the case that Braun’s plate approach has both (a) improved and (b) improved Braun’s offensive production relative to the league by about 25%.
Carson Cistulli has published a book of aphorisms called Spirited Ejaculations of a New Enthusiast.
Clearly, I should not trade Braun to you, Sir Cistulli.
No, that’s exactly what you should do. I can’t explain it, Albert, but it’s for the best.
Trust me.
Miguel Cabrera’s done something similar twice in his career. First with the Marlins for 5 years he had fairly steady declines in K% and increases in BB%. Then those dropped off his first year in Detroit only to improve every year (both K and BB) since as he has adjusted to AL pitchers. This past year his BB rate actually surpassed his K rate for the first time. It will be interesting to see if he further improves next year.
He learnt off the best.
I love watching Braun hit. It’s a thing of beauty.
It’s rare to see Braun have a poor AB… battles back from pitcher’s counts, fouls off bad pitches until he gets something he likes, can pull or hit the other way… a very complete batter.
I’m a big fan of watching hitters who always swing with purpose. He seems to have a good understanding of the situations when he can cut loose and do damage, as opposed to when a strikeout would be more damaging than a groundout. The highest compliment I can give is that I can’t stand the Brewers, but still love to watch Braun swing the bat.
We will see how well he does next season without Prince Fielder.
I’m a good driver when Prince Fielder is sitting shotgun right next to me, but I suck when I drive by myself.
it’s less of a constant progression, but his fielding seems to be improving, too. UZR picks up some of this, but even observationally, he takes better routes the ball and is generally less of a Manny-type black hole out there than he was when he first made the switch from 3B.
The idea of batting protection was shown to be statistically insignificant by Bill James like 20 years ago and every time it has been tested since.
The idea of batting protection exists though. If pitchers publicly talk about pitching to hitters differently when he has “protection,” it exists.
Imagine if he also provided gold glove defense at 3B:
http://www.fangraphs.com/graphs/3410_9368_OF_cseason_full_5_20110928.png
http://www.fangraphs.com/graphs/3410_9368_OF_cseason_full_6_20110928.png
That would be some kind of player.
That player would be mike schmidt. Longoria is not on the same level offensively as Braun and his 176 wRC+.
Longoria isn’t as good as Braun is offensively.
I wonder how many other sluggers trend like this, and what the trends are with age, as well. I wonder if there are indicators of this that we can find in a slugger’s minor league history or overall statistical profile.
Any thoughts?
This is exactly what you want out of a young player with power, to keep improving on the skill aspect that allows you to maximize on your ability.
Unless wRC+ is on a logarithmic scale, I think you mean 25 percentage points, and not 25 percent. The latter is significantly larger given the base is above 100.
If I had to start a MLB team from scratch and I had my pick of any major leaguer… I’d take Ryan Braun. Longoria would be a close second.
What???? You’re not a Jose Bautista groupie too??
PEDs
Ryan can hit, but what is he taking to enable him to hit? He has duped the fans twice, not what we need in MLB. Just give him the boot.