Sunday Notes: Revere, Hutchison, Ortiz, Chemistry, more

Ben Revere puts the bat on the baseball. His 4.0 swinging-strike% is fourth lowest among qualified hitters, with only Michael Brantley, Daniel Murphy and Ben Zobrist whiffing less often. His 97.2 Z-Contact% is topped only by Murphy’s 97.7.

Putting balls in play is working out well for the left-handed-hitting former Phillie. Revere is hitting .342/.390/390 since joining the Blue Jays at the trade deadline, and last year he led the National League with 184 hits.

Revere has a low walk rate – 5.5% – but not because he lacks discipline. His Z-Swing% is 58.4, which is 12th lowest among qualified hitters. Speedy and lacking power, he isn’t a hitter you want to issue free passes to.

“I’m not going to get pitched around,” Revere told me last weekend. “Pitchers are like, ‘Don’t let this guy get on with an easy ticket, ’cause he ain’t gonna beat you with the long ball.’ Whether it’s off-speed or fastballs, they’re going to go straight at me.”

Revere went deep yesterday for just the fourth time in over 2,500 big league plate appearances. He was told to hit the ball the other way coming up through the Twins system, and his approach has essentially stayed the same.

“It’s always good for somebody with foot speed to put the ball in play,” said the 5′ 7” outfielder. “I need to hit nice easy line drives and get on first base. In the minor leagues, there were times I hit .330 and only had one or two home runs. I’ve always been that guy who hits line drives and steals bases.”

A career .305/.330/.348 hitter, Revere has 174 stolen bases, included 29 this season. Last year he swiped 49.

Revere professes to know his strike zone very well. Reading between the lines, he feels he knows it better than the men in blue. Much as pitchers don’t need to respect his power, umpires don’t always give him the same benefit of doubt they afford to accomplished sluggers.

“Sometimes they’ll call pitches that tell me to hit,” said Revere. “I try to be patient, but it’s one of those deals where I still need to play my game and put balls in play. I may have to fight, man. It’s the type of deal where I’m batting .300 with what they give me, and I wish I had that strike zone where maybe I could bat .320 or .330 every year. I have to keep battling, battling until I get that respect.”

Revere is hitting .399 when ahead in the count, and .246 when behind in the count, so it goes without saying that a favorable call here and there would pay big dividends. As it is, he’ll continue settling for strikes that are simply good enough to square up.

“He’s not searching for his power,” said Blue Jays assistant hitting coach Eric Owens. “A majority of power hitters are looking one location – one spot – and if it’s not there, they’ll check off on it. If a pitch is in the strike zone, Revere is going to go ahead and hit the ball. He does that very well.”

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Avisail Garcia has the highest swinging strike percentage so far this year: 17.2. Marlon Byrd has the highest Z-Swing%: 83.9. Pablo Sandoval has the highest O-Swing%: 48.2.

Perhaps more notably, Kris Bryant (75.4), Chris Davis (75.5) and Alex Rodriguez (76.5) have the lowest Z-Contact% of the 152 qualified hitters on our Leader Board. The trio has combined to hit 95 home runs.

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Eric Owens was the Dodgers minor league hitting coordinator when Dee Gordon was splitting time between Los Angeles and Triple-A Albuquerque. Each has moved on. Owens is now in Toronto and Gordon is an All-Star second baseman for the Miami Marlins.

Advice from Owens helped turn the speedster into the hitter he is today.

“In the big leagues, they were telling him to just hit the ball on the ground and go the other way,” explained Owen. “He was trying so hard to do it that he lost who he was. When he went down to Triple-A, I said to him, ‘Hey, just go ahead and hit the ball hard. If it goes in the air, that’s OK. It’s going to happen.”

“When I saw him earlier this year, he told me that helped him out a lot. Instead of worrying about hitting the ball the other way, and manipulating his swing to do that, he could just see the ball and hit the ball.”

Gordon is slashing .327/.354/.406 and leads both leagues with 174 base hits.

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Last Sunday’s column included a pair of young Phillies – Alec Asher and Jerad Eickhoff – weighing in on data usage in their initial big-league starts. Each professed to pitching primarily to his strengths, and simply going with what the catcher called.

According to Philadelphia pitching coach Bob McClure, that’s the preferred approach – but only if the catcher is putting down the right fingers for the individual pitcher

“A catcher needs to learn how the pitcher pitches,” said McClure. “It’s not the pitcher having to learn how the catcher calls a game. What happens with catchers and young pitchers is that they get it reversed. Young catchers often try to impose how they think it should be called, yet they’ve never caught the guy before. That’s not how it works. You don’t want to end up with a guy not throwing to the strengths that got him here.”

Young catchers also need to be deferential with veteran hurlers. Boston’s Blake Swihart experienced a learning curve when he was called up in early May. His familiarity with the older pitchers on the staff was limited, and it showed.

“There was a lot of shaking going on the first couple of starts,” admitted the Red Sox rookie. “Not really knowing their strengths, I would call what I thought was a good idea, and they’d either go with it or shake to something else. That was OK, because I wasn’t about to come in here and tell guys ‘No, we’re doing this.’ That’s not my job. My job is to make them feel comfortable on the mound.”

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At first blush, it would appear that Drew Hutchison has been far worse than his record. The Blue Jays right-hander is 13-4 with a 5.33 ERA. His .765 winning percentage is the best ever for a pitcher with at least 25 starts and an ERA of 4.50 or higher.

If you delve a little deeper, you’ll find that the chasm between Hutchison’s W-L and ERA comes with a few caveats. His FIP is 4.24 and his BABiP is .338, while his hard-contact rate is lower than it was last season when he finished 11-13, 4.48 . He’s also drawing more soft contact and inducing more infield fly balls than he did in 2014.

“It’s baseball – things happen – and I guess I’ve had an extremely weird season,” Hutchison told me prior to being shellacked in his last start (six runs in three-and-a-third innings). “My numbers… I guess it depends on how you look at them. I know I haven’t pitched nearly as well as I expect to, especially on the road. My splits are the exact opposite of last year.”

That’s especially true in regard to handedness. Last year he had a better OPS against righties (.605) than lefties (.817). This year he’s .733 against lefties and .878 against righties. His home and road splits – relatively neutral a year ago – are extreme. Hutchison has a 2.91 ERA at Rogers Center. On the road, his ERA is a red-faced 9.44.

As for the stat he has arguably the least control over, he’s not complaining.

“I’m obviously happy with my Won-Loss record,” said Hutchison. “Our offense is the reason it is what it is, but that’s not what I’m concerned with right now. We’re in first place, so I mostly I want to throw them out the window and focus on helping us get to the playoffs.”

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Cody Allen, who was featured here a few days ago, saw Chris Sale before the White Sox southpaw developed into a star. The two played against each other in high school and were on the same travel team for a summer in Central Florida.

Allen remembers his A.L. Central rival as “an upper-80s guy with a really fast arm” and “one of those guys you’ll look at and say is very projectable.” He also remembers a different delivery.

“He was a little more over the top in high school,” recalled Allen. “His arm slot started coming down a little bit in college, and a lot more in the big leagues. The lower he got, the better his slider got. It was good before, but now that he’s low-three-quarters, it’s coming from behind a left-handed hitter. So is that 98-mph fastball, which can make him impossible to hit.”

According to the Cleveland closer, Sale possesses another attribute that contributes to his dominance.

“He’s one of the most competitive people you’ll ever see on a mound,” said Allen. “He’s always had a good mound presence to go with his raw stuff. Add that together with a couple of adjustments, and he’s a beast.”

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The Dodgers have stolen 51 bases this season, one more than Dee Gordon, whom they traded to Miami last December. Meanwhile, Bill Shaikin of the Los Angeles Times wrote the following line one month ago:

“If Drexler plays in the World Series this year and in rookie ball next year, that would be a win-win situation.”

Shaikin was writing about Edwin Drexler, whom the Dodgers drafted in the 38th round this year out of Grambling State University. Drexler is switch-hitting outfielder, but more than anything he’s a speedster. Used primarily as a pinch-runner in the Arizona Rookie League and the California League, Drexler came to the plate just 19 times in 18 games. He stole 12 bases in 15 attempts.

Would the Dodgers dare to put Drexler on their post-season roster, to serve solely as a running threat, much like the Royals did with Terrance Gore a year ago? Given Drexler’s inexperience, it would be a huge gamble. It would also be fun to watch.

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The subject of clubhouse chemistry came up when John Gibbons met with the media at Fenway Park this week. The Blue Jays manager downplayed its importance, but not before saying that players like Josh Donaldson and Russell Martin have helped it change for the better. According to Gibbons, “You want some character guys; The last couple of years, it wasn’t necessarily a cohesive clubhouse.”

Gibbons acknowledged that winning enhances chemistry. He then proceeded to explain what enhances winning.

“Good players help you win games,” said Gibbons. “That’s the bottom line. You can have a lot of great character guys out there, but if they aren’t as talented, you’re not going to win. There’s no substitute for talent.”

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Some David Ortiz factoids — and a few quotes from baseball’s newest member of the 500 club — on the heels of his milestone achievement:

Ortiz joined Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle and Reggie Jackson as the only players with 500 home runs and three or more World Series titles.

Ortiz hit his 499th and 500th home run in his 50th multiple-home-run game. He’s never hit as many as three in any one game.

Tomorrow will mark the anniversary of Ortiz’s first big league blast, which came as a member of the Minnesota Twins on September 14, 1997. He hit it in Texas, against Julio Santana.

Ortiz has a dozen regular season extra-inning home runs, tied for 10th all-time. (Willie Mays is the all-time leader with 22.) He also has two post-season extra-inning home runs, both walk-offs in 2004.

Ortiz has 11 regular-season walk-off home runs, tied for seventh all-time. (Jim Thome leads all hitters with 13.)

Ortiz has hit 201 home runs at Fenway Park and 299 on the road, including 39 in Toronto’s Rogers Center and 33 in Tampa Bay’s Tropicana Field.

A quote from an interview I did with Ortiz in 2012: “I don’t try to hit the ball 500 feet. It looks good when you hit it 500 feet, but as long as it goes over the fence, it‘s a home run.”

A quote from a conversation I had with Ortiz earlier this season: “You’re never going to see that again. You’re not even going to see 500 homers much. Pitching is unbelievable in today’s day. Back then, you pretty much faced the same pitcher all day. Now, after the fifth inning… this game, you might face four different pitchers and it’s not even extra innings. Different angles, a lefty; everybody has three lefties now. How many at bats – just to give you a name – did Ted Williams have against lefties back then? Those ridiculous numbers from back in the day, they’re long gone.”

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RANDOM FACTS AND STATS

Joey Votto has 11 stolen bases and has been caught three times. Mike Trout has 10 stolen bases and has been caught seven times..

Prior to Thursday’s extra-inning loss against Milwaukee, Pirates relievers had won 19 consecutive decisions.

Javier Lopez’s pursuit of history ended when he was credited with a win on August 28. The Giants reliever has made 66 appearances this year with just that one decision. As noted in my August 16 column, Trever Miller holds the record with 76 decision-less appearances in a single season.

Mark Buehrle has made a combined 27 starts against the Mets and Yankees and has a record of 2-17.

On this date in 1965, Willie Mays hit the 500th home run of his career. On this date in 1971, Frank Robinson hit the 500th home run of his career.