Where Is Jason Bay’s Power?
Jason Bay’s status as a prized free agent was primarily based on one skill: his ability to hit home runs. He hit 36 in 2009, and 31 in 2008, cementing himself as one of the games premier power hitters. Indeed, CHONE and ZiPS projected Bay for 34 and 36 home runs respectively, and even the pessimistic FANS saw a 29 home run season for Bay.
Halfway through June, however, Jason Bay has four home runs. With 267 plate appearances under his belt already, that’s a pace for only 13 home runs, putting him on a level with such vaunted sluggers as Melky Cabrera and Pedro Feliz.
It’s possible that Citi Field is part of the issue – only 40 home runs have been hit there all season. Right handers attempting to pull the ball have to deal with a 335 foot left field corner which quickly juts out to 364 foot and then a 384 foot left center power alley. Bay hit 24 HRs to left field last season; through 63 games, he’s hit one.
Let’s compare Bay’s 2009 and 2010, thanks to the excellent data over at Hit Tracker Online
[Click to enlarge]
It’s a sea of red in left field, but no blue to be found. The HR that was classified in left field is close to center field. Bay’s power to left field has simply disappeared. Bay’s ISO to left field is a ridiculous .110 – of the 82 balls he’s hit to left field, only 6 have gone for extra bases. That’s after posting 42 XBH to left in 2009, and 34 in 2008.
To expect Bay to post a ridiculous .466 ISO to left field, 165% of the league average for right handers, for a second time in 2010 would be a mistake even if Bay wasn’t moving from one of the most righty-friendly parks in the league to possibly one of the least. He was about an average hitter to left in his split campaign between Pittsburgh and Boston in 2008 and was well below average to left in 2007. It would be shocking to see Bay put up two of these high octane seasons, especially in his age 30 and 31 seasons.
What we’re seeing with Bay seems to be one of the nastiest combinations of park effects, regression to the mean, aging, and simple poor luck that I can recall a power hitter encountering. It’s certainly possible that Bay has simply lost some of his pop, but right now the most likely scenario is that Bay is working through an extended slump. ZiPS projects him to add 19 more home runs before season’s end, as opposed to the 9 that his pace suggests. It’s too early to dismiss Jason Bay as a power hitter, even if he can’t replicate his awesome 2009.
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Park factor, sure, but he’s only hit one HR on the road. And he does get to play some games in Citizen’s Bank Park, which has a nice right field porch.
Could the optics of having moved to a bigger park (with an unwarranted reputation for suppressing home runs) have affected his swing? I’d imagine, mentally, that the Green Monster is an appealing target for right handed pull hitters. He could be overcompensating for the idea that he needs to swing harder or try to pull more, and consequently making weaker contact.
I wonder how much of it could be just hitting in a weaker lineup and/or trying to do too much to justify the contract.
What else is different between bay’s 2009 and 2010. Just saying that he has hit fewer home runs is quite simply just stating the problem. Analysis is far more than just stating the problem.
I like the graphic, but again, it’s just a fancy way of stating the problem.
We should be discussing why, and whether it is likely to continue (what other players have changed teams/leagues and had decrease HR totals through June, and did this trend continue for the season/career?)
Looking at his stats …
Strikeouts % – down
Doubles – Up
Triple – Up
Walks – Down
Stolen bases – Up
BABIP – Up
LD% – Up
GB% – Up
FB% – Down
IFFB% – Down
Simple, he’s turning into a spedster (bad joke).
OSwing% – Up
OContact% – Up
This seems to be the crux … he’s not as p[atient and walking. He’s swinging at more pitches outside of the zone and making more contact on them. Perhaps these are pitches he does not drive as well, resulting in a higher average, and doubles and triples, but far fewer homers.
It would also be nice to see a spray chart of Bay’s fly balls (and hits). His power is pretty much dead pull, so if he is spraying the ball more (intentionally or not), that could be the culprit.
Looked up his spray chart …
http://mlb.mlb.com/stats/individual_player_hitting_chart.jsp?c_id=nym&playerID=424726&statType=1
When he pulls the ball, he is hitting singles to LF, instead of homers. Not sure if it’s due to hitting more line drives or rolling over on the ball (or both).
His doubles are deep to the LF/CF gap.
Safe to say, he’s not pulling the ball to LF with authority (for whatever reason). I don;t know whether he’s taken a more “hit top the gaps” approach (since he’s no longer in BOS), or if his bat speed has declined, or if he is being pitched outside more often (or swinging at outside pitches more often), all of which could/would result in liners to LF instead of deep flies to LF.
I think the thing that’s often left out of the Citi Field discussion is the height of the left wall. Not only is a deep park in left, that wall is 16′ tall in some areas.
Why would the Mets build a big park with a wall that high? I’ve often thought it was a way to maximize Advertising space on the field of play.
The Mets are a very odd team. Why would you build a park like that when one of the best players the franchise ever developed (David Wright) is right handed? And to compound things you build that stupid “Mo Zone” to take away from his opposite field power. And then why would you go out and spend 66 million for four years on a 31 year old Jason Bay who seems to be the anti-Citi Field type player?
Citi Field seems to be the kind of park where you get a lot of Denard Span type players, high on-base percentage low slugging percentage types.
If he’s only got 6 extra base hits to left, he’s not bouncing a lot of balls off the wall either.
Of course that’s got nothing to do with why they’d build a park that way. I don’t really have an answer to that, besides the fact that the park will greatly outlast any of the current players’ careers anyway.
I called this before the season, and Mets fans bristled at me. I didn’t expect it to be this extreme, certainly, but is it really that much of a surprise that Bay is hitting significantly less homers at Citi Field than he was at Fenway?
Worst contract of the offseason by FAR.
Oh yeah, except if you consider the whole he hit more HRs on the road thing (21-15) last year
Bay hasn’t been great this year, but it’s a lie to suggest he couldn’t hit outside of Fenway.
And considering the deal Holliday got, it isn’t even close to the worst contract of the offseason
…and most road parks are much more homer-friendly (especially to RHB) than Citi, which is probably the worst park in baseball for a hitter like Bay.
And Holliday? Bad contract, but at least he can play defense.
Lackey?
Garrett Atkins? Pedro Feliz?
“He hit 36 in 2009, and 31 in 2009” – what?
Is it really so hard to click on his name and see that the author meant 31 HRs in 2008?
actually the author meant supermodels.
“And considering the deal Holliday got, it isn’t even close to the worst contract of the offseason”
When Bay’s option vests, his contract will be 5 years, $80M. Holliday got 7/$120M.
Do a 5-3-1 projection on their 2007-9 WARs for 2010 and figure a 0.5 WAR decline each year:
Holliday 5.2, 4.7, 4.2, 3.7, 3.2, 2.7, 2.2 = 26.4 WAR = $4.5M/WAR
Bay 3.2, 2.7, 2.2, 1.7, 1.2 = 11.0 WAR = $7.3M/WAR
So, it’s really hard to say that Holliday’s deal was worse than Bay’s — and if you project out their 2010s based on their first 60-ish games, each is pretty much on target for the above 2010 projection [Holliday 5.1, Bay 3.1] so it’s not even like either one of them is doing much different than what even a quick and dirty projection would have guessed…
Were those projections from before or after Fangraphs adjusted it’s fielding statistics earlier this year?
Yeah, Bay ended up w/ a positive UZR after all adjustments were made.
Ellsbury’s CF defense was also less damned (though still bad). It’s weird to see how off the number was on some guys. That being said, even with Bay having a 5 WAR season, that contract, in that market, was nutso.
It is because he is moving from a weak division to a stronger one!!! Obviously the AL is just a Rec league softball league with soft tossers just serving up meatballs Bay is readjusting to going to the NL. If he was in the AL east he would be putting up the same silly numbers that Bautista and Gonzalez have in Toronto
I was worried for a second there that you were serious, but as parody this is pretty good.
It is only kind of parody, the whole weaker league thing annoys me. The fact that pitchers hit doesn’t mean that an NL hitter will have a tougher time with AL pitching. The DH/pitcher argument only goes so far. IMO outside of the big three in the east the AL teams would likely struggle to win a division title in the NL.
Nobody wants to conside the ball. Sigh. HR’s jumped in the AL 13% over 2009 (no such jump in the NL). In August, there was an explosion in HR’s that has not been seen in the AL (in August) in the 20 years I had checked.
The Red Sox set an all time team record for HR’s in a month.
Maybe the Red Sox understood the nature of Bays HR explosion, and undertood the balls would be produced to the run prevention spec for 2010, so did not pursue Bay. LOL.
Seriously, Bay is a streaky hitter. Last year from June 2 to August 1 he had 4 HR in 215 PA. From August 5 he hit 16 HR over his next 158 PA.
Also, never discount the magic of a contract year. I have to imagine Jason Bay was a bit distracted in the off season, and disappointed in the outcome and perhaps did not come to the Mets in the best shape physically or mentally. Call it a let down if you will. I tend to discount the 1st 1/2 year for players changing teams after signing a big contract.
well if you discount the first 1 1/2 of the Bay contract, all you are left with is an albatross..
As the Red Sox currently stand to score 881 runs at this pace, I kick back and say “wow, I’m sure happy Theo Epstein is my team’s GM and not Dan Shaughnessy”.
How are we condeming or praising any contract after 60+ games? I understand it’s all we have to go on so far, but it’s still premature. Can we let the guy get through July/August before we write him off as a bust? Same goes for Holliday, give the guy a chance.
Bay’s defense hasn’t been nearly as bad as some of you seem to make it out. He’s made no major gaffs and quite a few sparkling plays. Does he get to EVERY ball, of course not, but measuring him against his UZR and UZR/150 after 60+ games is just folly. Doesn’t that stat take like three years of data to truly be acurate? After watching visiting LF’s at Citifield I can say that Bay has actually been quite good. Any one catch Boesch’s (sp?) butcher job last night?
Bay hasn’t been great. As a jaded Met fan, he’s performed about as well as I expected. Going into the offseason, what other options did the Met’s have. No one thought Pagan could be an everday player, we knew Beltran wasn’t going to start the season on the active roster. That left what? Francoeur? F-Mart? Did we really want Mike Cameron back? Bay’s contract is exactly what a player of his caliber is worth in today’s market. He’s still under performing, but there is still 100 games to go.
Exactly. Bay is probably the streakiest batter I’ve ever seen. A guy who has shown he could go 0 for 2 months, then throw up these ridiculous numbers for the next 2 months (this is why I was happy he left, btw). No, he will never be worth that contract, but yes, he will hit again. Give him time.
He’s gonna end this year with approximately the same numbers as his proceeding 2 years. Whatever Citi takes, the junior circuit will give back.
“How are we condeming or praising any contract after 60+ games?”
The massive resources committed to baseball by the media, give stupid people the confidence to express opinions. Additionally, we are now arming these stupid people with more numbers with fancy acronyms, thus further increasing the potential for misinterpretation.
I like the graph but it is a bit inaccurate since it does not factor in the crazy height of the outfield walls in citi field and Bay may have hit balls of the top of the wall which resulted in triples and doubles instead of home runs.