Sunday Notes: Adam Jones, Kinsler’s Glove, Price’s Cutter, Britton’s Sinker, more

What is the best way to attack Adam Jones? The answer would seemingly be to avoid the strike zone. The Orioles outfielder walked just 19 times in 682 plate appearances – that’s a 2.8 walk-rate, folks – and his 56.5 Swing% was the highest in the American League. His 42.1 O-Swing% was topped only by Salvador Perez.

Unfortunately for the opposition, while Jones chases pitchers’ pitches, he also chases pitchers by getting hits on some of those pitches. His 63.0 O-Contact% isn’t particularly high, but that says more about his proclivity to sometimes chase pitches in a different area code. If it’s close enough to the zone, he has a knack for getting knocks.

In the words of David Price, “I don’t think there’s a pitch Adam Jones doesn’t think he can hit, and he might be right.” An American League pitching coach offered a similar perspective, saying “Adam Jones will swing at a ball that bounces in the dirt and he’ll also swing at a ball that’s neck high. The difference between him and other guys who do that is he’s like Vladimir Guerrero – he can hit those pitches. One time this year he lined a ball back through the middle on a pitch that was six feet high. It was ridiculous.”

Pitchers clearly try to avoid challenging the Orioles’ three-hole hitter. Jones saw 51.3 percent fastballs this year, which was seventh from the bottom among qualified hitters. That doesn’t mean he can’t do damage on a breaking ball. Jones has hit .280 or better each of the past five seasons and has averaged 31 home runs over the past three.

“There’s not one specific pitch with him,” said the pitching coach. “It’s not just fastballs inside or sliders away. The thing you have to exploit is that he’ll swing at virtually everything. You can beat him inside, bounce a breaking ball or climb the ladder. The caveat is, he can hit every one of those pitches.”

It’s not just the opposition who is confounded by his out-of-the-zone exploits. Jones will often shake his own head after a bad-ball base hit.

“When I hit a pitch like that, sometimes I’m standing on base like, how did I reach that?” admitted Jones. “I amaze myself at times. I have no idea how I do a lot of things on the baseball field. I just leave it in the hands of my athleticism, and sometimes that athleticism helps out. Other times it hinders me.”

Like many hitters, Jones looks fastball and middle, and adjusts from there. He told me he knows pitchers aren’t going to groove anything against him, so he just looks for something he can handle. He said he can’t wait for the perfect pitch, because there’s a good chance it won’t come. When I asked if trying to rein in his free-swinging ways would do him more harm than good, he addressed a different facet of discipline.

“When I get myself in trouble is when I try to do too much,” said Jones. “Trying to hit the ball out of the ballpark makes me do everything I do not want to do. What I need to do is concentrate on just squaring the ball up. That keeps me locked in – keeps my lower half locked in – so I just try to hit the ball hard, and wherever it goes, it goes.”

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Ian Kinsler didn’t have an opportunity to make any stellar defensive plays in the first two games of the ALDS. He made plenty in the regular season. His 20 Defensive Runs Saved was tops among second basemen and he committed just nine errors while ranking second in assists and putouts. Unlike many of his Tigers teammates, Kinsler flashed some pretty impressive leather.

Kinsler – acquired in an off-season trade for Prince Fielder – was a great fit in Detroit. Defensively, he was usually in the right place at the right time. A lot of that had to do with his instincts. Some of it was Matt Martin.

First base coach Omar Vizquel may be the Tigers’ infield guru, but Martin is its mastermind. His position is Defensive Coordinator and positioning is what he’s all about. In his mind, Kinsler is a poster boy for his philosophy.

“Ian looks at the information — the pure data – and he also has great instincts,” said Martin. “It’s a big pie and we think the most important element of that pie is the individual player. We allow our guys to read and adjust. With everybody, it’s ‘We want you on X spot,’ but it’s not a hard line. It’s also, ‘Ian, what are you seeing? What are you feeling?’

For Kinsler, Detroit is different from Texas, and he’s not complaining.

“[Positioning] was more on feel last year,” said Kinsler. “This year it’s a little more mathematical. I have spots to start from, but I have the freedom to move off those points depending on the situation and what I’m seeing.”

According to Martin, there’s a lot more than meets the eye when it comes to to Kinsler’s web gems.

“When Ian takes hits away, fans just see that three-second play,” explained Martin. “But there’s so much he did before that, from the data we gave him to adjusting before the pitch. He’s also working on his footwork every day and studying how the ball comes off the bat. Those things allow him to make plays.”

Martin feels Kinsler should win a Gold Glove, as does Rick Porcello. Given his historically-high ground-ball rate, it’s no surprise the righty values his second baseman.

“The biggest thing is that Ian has so much range,” said Porcello. “He’s able to get to a lot of balls and make a lot of plays that a lot of other second basemen aren’t able to. He’s made a big difference for our staff.”

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Justin Verlander is no longer a strikeout pitcher, which was evident in Friday’s game. Against a free-swinging team that had the fifth-most Ks in the American League, he fanned just four. Lacking the put-away stuff of his dominant days, he labored through 101 pitches in five-plus innings.

Interestingly, Verlander pays little or no heed to where his defense is positioned behind him. Given his career-low 6.95 K-rate, and his team’s new and improved defensive scheme, I assumed he would.

“I’m not the right guy to ask about that,” Verlander told me on Wednesday. “Once the ball is out of my hand, I just hope it’s hit at somebody. I can’t say I see a huge difference with [our positioning], but again, I don’t pay much attention to it. I maybe see a little more shifting, but the entire league is doing that.”

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Earlier this week, ESPN’s Mark Simon Tweeted some interesting shift data (thanks to MLB.com Tigers beat writer Jason Beck for alerting me to this). In a nutshell, the Tigers don’t shift often – 205 times on balls in play, third-least in MLB — but they’re effective when doing so. To varying degrees, pretty much everyone is. The only team with a negative Shift Runs Saved was the Marlins.

The numbers, which Simon got from Baseball Info Solutions, show the Astros had the most shifts on balls in play, by a wide margin. They had 1,341, while Tampa Bay was behind them with 828. Bringing up the rear were the Rockies [114] and Nationals [201]. The Orioles had 705, which was fourth-most.

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David Price will be throwing cutters against the Orioles today. Just how many, and how effectively, will be worth watching. The Ray-turned-Tiger utilized the pitch 14.4 percent of the time this year with an average velocity of 87 mph.

In the opinion of Ryan Hanigan, who caught Price in Tampa Bay earlier this season, too many cutters could lead to trouble. It’s the pitch he pointed to when I asked what tended to be the issue when the southpaw struggled.

“When he’s got his fastball command and is pitching in to righties, and hitting the corner, he’s really tough,” Hanigan told me. “Every once in awhile he throws a few too many cutters and gets hit. A lot of the balls I was watching get hit were cutters – the mid-speed pitch.”

His current catcher claims to have seen no evidence of that in Detroit. That doesn’t necessarily mean he considers it Price’s best secondary offering.

“It’s one of his better pitches,” Alex Avila told me earlier this week. “It’s one of the pitches he uses to get outs with. We’ve mixed it up pretty good, using his cutter and his changeup. One thing I hadn’t realized is how good his changeup is. We’ve used it as much, if not more, than his cutter.”

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Well-known to Orioles fans, but less so to others, is Zach Britton’s fastball history. The lefthander came up through the Baltimore minor-league system relying heavily on a power sinker that he threw close to 80 percent of the time. In his 2011 rookie season, that number dropped to 52.9 percent. The following two seasons it fell below 40 percent.

Britton was a starter back then and not a very good one. Now he’s a dominant closer – and back to his worm-killing ways. According to PITCHf/x, he threw his two-seamer 89.3 percent of the time this year. His ground ball rate climbed accordingly, from the high 50s to 75.3.

Earlier this week I asked Britton about the reasons behind the changes, referencing a 2011 conversation in which he explained the move to more four-seamers.

“At the time, our pitching coach was talking to me about getting ahead with the four-seam fastball,” said Britton. “When we brought Dave [Wallace] and Dom [Chiti] in, it was completely opposite. They told me to learn to command my sinker to both sides of the plate for a strike. It was basically ‘Don’t go to a four-seamer, because if you can command that, why can’t you command your sinker?’ That was the goal, to learn to command my sinker on any count and not have to lean on something that wasn’t my best pitch.”

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A few weeks ago, I wrote about third basemen and the Hall of Fame for the forthcoming issue of Baseball Digest magazine. The primary focus is on why it is the most-underrepresented position in the Hall, and the article includes perspectives from players, managers and coaches. When putting it together, I inadvertently neglected to include quotes from Kansas City Royals manager Ned Yost. This is what he told me:

“You’d probably have more guys in the Hall of Fame as third basemen if they played better defense. They ended up moving somewhere. I’ve seen a lot of guys who can really swing the bat, but not really able to play third, so moved to first or maybe to the outfield. That might have something to do with why there are so few third basemen in the Hall of Fame.”

There are good examples to back up Yost’s point. Harmon Killebrew and Tony Perez each played over 700 games at third base early in their careers. Miguel Cabrera had 696 games at the position before changing corners. Other notables are Edgar Martinez, Gary Sheffield, Jim Thome and Albert Pujols.