The Year in High Strikes to Jose Altuve

Jose Altuve accomplished something Tuesday night. He played in a major-league baseball game! Wow! And even more incredible than that, he broke the Astros’ single-season record for hits, previously held by Craig Biggio. There are still another two weeks left to play. Of course, not all hits are the same, and we don’t usually spend much time talking about single-season hit totals, but you might prefer this: Altuve’s been great. The hits are one indication. He’s been something in the vicinity of a five-win player, as a 24-year-old in the middle infield. That’s a long-term building block.

So when some people think Altuve, they think hits. When other people think Altuve, they think short jokes. It’s clear that, in order to become the player he is today, Altuve’s had to overcome considerable adversity. A lot of that is simply that players his size tend to get selected against. They receive fewer opportunities. But then there can also be issues on the field, even during opportunities. Maybe it’s more difficult to turn a double play. It’s certainly more difficult to snare a line drive. And there’s the matter of the strike zone. Umpires aren’t great with unusual strike zones, and Altuve’s, obviously, is lower than most.

According to the PITCHf/x settings, the lower part of Altuve’s zone is lower than the average zone by almost three inches. The higher part of Altuve’s zone is lower than the average zone by almost five inches. So you know where this is going, based on that sentence, and based on the headline. I think I put together this same exact post every season. It’s time now to reflect on the season’s highest called strikes to Jose Altuve.

We can just get right into it. I’ve selected the five highest called strikes. Trust me, there have been several more high called strikes, but I didn’t want your computers to melt.

5

• May 18
• 4.5 inches above PITCHf/x strike zone

4

• April 23
• 4.6 inches above PITCHf/x strike zone

3

• July 19
• 5.7 inches above PITCHf/x strike zone

2

• July 2
• 6.1 inches above PITCHf/x strike zone

1

• July 26
• 6.3 inches above PITCHf/x strike zone

If you just look at the .gifs, these don’t seem so egregious. Everything’s moving fast, and the pitches don’t really seem that high. We’re accustomed to watching the ball and the catcher, and the catchers don’t have to do anything wacky to reel these pitches in. But then, that’s just it. We’re used to watching things one way because most of the time the guy at the plate is somewhere around average-sized. Look at the screenshots. The screenshots really capture how high these strikes were, relatively speaking. That last one is practically at Altuve’s shoulders. To a tall hitter, it’s a borderline strike. To an average hitter, it’s an unusual strike. To Altuve, that’s as much of a ball as a pitch around Michael Brantley’s shoulders.

This is just something Altuve has to deal with. He’s had to deal with it his whole baseball-playing life. So at least in that sense, it’s an obstacle he’s grown used to, but it still puts him at something of a disadvantage, considering what should be his reality. It’s hard enough for an umpire to call balls and strikes with a normal hitter by the plate. Pitches move really really fast, and they break in ways umpires don’t anticipate, and then catchers are right there in the way. It requires a lot of focus to have a good idea of the strike zone, and that’s before you try to keep in mind a particular hitter’s individual zone dimensions. You can make a little mental adjustment, but ultimately you can factor in only so much.

Let’s have a look at a table, powered by StatCorner. Has Altuve’s zone been getting better? In the table, zTkB% refers to the rate of taken pitches in the zone called balls, and oTkS% refers to the rate of taken pitches out of the zone called strikes. You’ll also see league averages, and Altuve’s rank in oTkS%, since that’s what we’re thinking about:

Year	zTkB%	Average	oTkS%	Average	Rank
2011	16%	15%	12%	7.3%	6th-highest
2012	13%	14%	12%	7.5%	highest
2013	13%	14%	12%	7.0%	3rd-highest
2014	13%	13%	9.2%	7.6%	38th-highest

Used to be, Altuve had a ton of strikes called outside of the zone. It seems like that’s gotten a little better in 2014, although he’s still gotten a higher rate than average. So that could be interpreted as a positive step. But now let’s use Baseball Savant to check Altuve’s rates of high called strikes, out of the zone:

2011: 47%
2012: 42%
2013: 37%
2014: 44%

Those are strike rates on pitches taken over the plate, in a rectangle six inches tall beginning with Altuve’s zone’s upper boundary. The league average this year is about 12%. Altuve does see slightly fewer low strikes than the average hitter, but this is more than offset by the high strikes, and the high strikes haven’t gone away. Probably, they’ll just remain a part of his life.

But I suppose Altuve’s had a whole career to adjust. He’s never known any way but this way, so it’s just something that’s kind of particular to him, and the rest of the population of littler hitters. Jose Altuve plays baseball with a bigger strike zone, relatively speaking, than the average baseball player. That’s one of the reasons it’s terrific he’s blossomed into an above-average baseball player.