Archive for Corey Patterson

The San Francisco Giants won the World Series last season in large part due to a fantastic pitching staff. However, the offense provided timely hitting down the stretch of the regular season and in the playoffs thanks to some key acquisitions made before, or during, the season. Oddly enough, three of the key players on their championship squad were picked up off of the scrapheap. Each member of the trio was available to virtually every team either through free agency, outright release, or waivers, yet all three wound up in San Francisco, and boy did they pay dividends.

Aubrey Huff was acquired at the start of the season, after having put together an abysmal 2009 campaign. He produced 1.8 wins below replacement level that year as part of an erratic prime. Pat Burrell joined the team in June after being released by the Rays. Suffice to say, he came nowhere near living up to expectations after signing a two-year deal to DH for the reigning AL champs. Cody Ross was acquired off of waivers towards the end of August, costing only his remaining $1 million in salary.

These three players illustrated the inherent value in scouring different areas of the talent spectrum. Not every move needs to be substantial to make a difference, and sometimes improving in a few smaller areas can reap the same reward.

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On April 14th, I wrote the following in a piece entitled “Busting Out: Corey Patterson”:

Patterson’s early season performance isn’t going to be sustained at this level (a 7% swinging strike rate is impossible to keep up), but there are legitimate reasons to believe that he’s adopted a new approach at the plate, and his continued contact ability could be just the ticket to stardom that people have been projecting on Patterson for most of this decade.

Since those words were written, Corey Patterson is pulling an o-fer. Eight days and 21 plate appearances later, and my fearless call that Patterson might be on the verge of a breakout year looks pretty foolish – he’s now hitting .183 and appears to be losing his grip on the Reds center field job. It’s hard to have a career year while sitting on the bench.

But, at the risk of cramming my foot even further into my mouth, I’m actually even more convinced than ever that Patterson has made significant strides in improving as a player. Despite his 0 for 18 run since the post went up, he’s walked three times while only striking out twice, and his season long K% still sits at a remarkably low 6.7%. That doesn’t happen by accident. If we take the 19% true talent strikeout rate that pretty much every projection system on earth forecasted for Patterson in 2008, the odds of him striking out four times or less in his first 68 trips to the plate was a whopping .0019%. That’s 1 in 500, basically.

Given his current strikeout rate in 2008, it’s remarkably unlikely that Patterson’s true talent strikeout rate is currently 19%. Given that we need to adjust our expectations of how often he’s going to make contact, and that it hasn’t affected his power output, I’m sticking with the theory that increased contact + sustained power = improvement. Call me crazy, but I still think we could look back at year’s end and say that Patterson had the breakout year we’ve been waiting for. Even if it got off to a bit of a rough start.

Corey Patterson has always been thought of as a guy with tremendous potential. From 1999 to 2001, Baseball America ranked him as the 16th, 3rd, and 2nd best prospect in baseball respectively. The physical talents were obvious; terrific athleticism, quick bat, legitimate home run power, and serious speed from a guy playing a premium defensive position well. However, Patterson struggled to refine his approach at the plate, and by repeatedly chasing pitches out of the strike zone, he made himself a fairly easy out for opposing pitchers. If you can’t make contact, it is tough to be an offensive asset. For seven years, Patterson simply didn’t hit the ball often enough to live up to his natural talent, which led to him being bounced out of both Chicago and Baltimore and finding himself as an unwanted free agent this winter.

After an offseason of rejection, the Cincinnati Reds offered him a minor league contract on March 3rd, giving him a chance to fight for a roster spot in spring training. After they decided to send Jay Bruce to Triple-A to start the year, Patterson found himself with a regular job, and with the way his 2008 season has started (.57 WPA/LI and the Reds best hitter to date), he may just have found a home where he can remind people of the player they thought he would be.

It all starts with his strikeout rate. Look at the graph of his contact ability throughout his career.

During his time in Chicago, he was a strikeout machine. As you can see, this is something he’s clearly worked on improving, as the line from his 2005 to 2008 strikeout rate shows a huge decline. So far this year, he’s struck out two times in 46 plate appearances. That’s pretty remarkable for a guy with a career K% of 22.7%. His current K% of 4.8% puts him in a group with noted contact kings Casey Kotchman and Placido Polanco. When you look at the pitch data summary from his Baseball-Reference page, you can see the difference. Even though he’s seeing less strikes than in any other season, he’s only swinging at 72% of those pitches in the strike zone, compared to a career average of 81%.

By being more selective in which pitches to swing at, Patterson has managed to put himself in positions to hit pitches he can do something with, and that’s been manifest in his performance. Of his 11 hits, five are doubles and four are home runs, giving him a .405 Isolated Slugging Percentage that ranks fifth in all of baseball. Patterson’s early season performance isn’t going to be sustained at this level (a 7% swinging strike rate is impossible to keep up), but there are legitimate reasons to believe that he’s adopted a new approach at the plate, and his continued contact ability could be just the ticket to stardom that people have been projecting on Patterson for most of this decade.