Archive for Player Analysis

As we hurtle into what promises to be a dramatic postseason, let’s pause a few moments to remember the rake-steppers, face-planters, and prat-fallers who helped make others’ excellence possible. Far from being stars, these players are the space debris that clogged several MLB rosters this year. So without further ado, here is your All Kuiper Belt team for 2015 (and I don’t mean Duane Kuiper). The team features, if that’s the word, the worst qualifying hitter at each position, and the five worst qualifying starting pitchers, by fWAR.

Catcher: Jason Castro, .222/.286./.386, 1.2 WAR

By far the best player on this ignominious team, Castro is here in part because only nine catchers qualified for the batting title. FanGraphs had this to say in Castro’s pre-season player profile:

Castro turns 27 in June, and there’s not much to suggest regression in his future.

Well, not exactly. This year Castro was durable by catcher standards, but he regressed severely, and you could in fact have seen it coming. A stratospheric .351 BABIP propelled Castro’s breakout year in 2013. This season it sank to .293, not far from his carer mark of .307.  Neither as good as he was in 2013, nor as bad as he was this year, Castro should be a solid, above-average backstop, but always be wary of balls in play bearing gifts.

First Base: Ryan Howard, .222/.310/.380, -0.3 WAR

One of the best Baseball Prospectus player notes ever was for Ryan Howard this year. It consisted of just four words: “We told you so.” Howard’s career has become a coal seam fire, and he still has 2 years left on his deal before what will certainly be a $10 million buyout in 2017. Howard will be a pallbearer at the funeral for Ruben Amaro Jr.’s GM career.

Second Base: Aaron Hill, .244/.287/.367, -0.7 WAR

Hill wasn’t the worst Snake this year; that dishonor goes to Mark Trumbo, who managed to cram -1.3 WAR into just 355 plate appearances. There wasn’t a moist eye in the house when Kevin Towers lost his job, but The Gunslinger won the draw that sent Kelly Johnson to the Blue Jays for Hill in late 2011. Since then, Hill has amassed 6.6 WAR, while Johnson has only put up 1.7.

Third Base: Matt Dominguez, .215/.256/.330, -1.7 WAR

The second Astro on this list, Dominguez is here on the merits. Regressing plate discipline and an oddly consistent but abysmal BABIP have conspired to deprive Dominguez of any run production value. Known in his prospect days for his glove, Dominguez’ UZR is -8.7; only Lonnie Chisenhall had a worse rating at third. Dominguez is only 26, but then again, so was Kevin Orie in his last full major league season.

Shortstop: Derek Jeter, .256/.304/.313, -0.3 WAR

I don’t know about you. I always thought the Bob Sheppard thing was kind of creepy.

Left Field: Domonic Brown, .235./.285/.349, -1.7 WAR

One of the more fascinating what-ifs in baseball is what if Domonic Brown had come up with a different organization.  During most of his time in the Phillies organization, manager and front office were much more vocal about what he couldn’t do than what he could. Left to his own devices at last this year, Brown’s power disappeared. His HR/FB rate of 8.1% is 18th out of 19 qualifying left fielders, meaning that his power surge last year is looking more like a fluke than a step forward.

Center Field: B.J. Upton, .208/.287/.333, 0.4 WAR

This near replacement-level guy made $13.45 million this year, which is the kind of fact that gets GMs fired. He’s actually improved over last year, but every rate stat continues to be worse than his career averages. His K rate of 29.9% is the second worst of his career, and the worst of any qualifying center fielder.

Right Fielder: Jay Bruce, .217/.281/.374, -1.3 WAR

Bruce had surgery for a torn meniscus in his knee in early May and was never the same. Except that’s not true. He came back in June and raked to the tune of an .892 OPS, but then completely fell apart. I have to wonder if fatigue in the knee had something to do with it. For his career Bruce has almost exactly the same number of doubles (181) as homers (182). From July to season’s end, he hit 11 HRs, but just 4 doubles, which suggests he was having trouble getting extra bases without putting the ball in somebody’s beer. Bruce is generally a solid defender, but had a UZR of -8.4 this year, by far the worst of his career, which also suggests he was not fully mobile for much of the season. Bruce is the most likely player on this list to be an All-Star next year.

Designated Hitter: Billy Butler, .271./.323/.379, -0.3 WAR

Four of the seven Royals hitters who qualified for the batting title are home grown. Only one of them, Alex Gordon, had a positive wRC+ (indeed, Gordon is the only such qualifying hitter on the team, period). Butler, Hosmer, and Moustakas were going to be part of the the core of the next Royals playoff team. Instead, the Royals have made the playoffs this year largely despite these guys. Butler’s ISO continued to erode this year, and his walks, which spiked last year, plunged into the root cellar in 2014. These are hard times for DHs, slow and massive beasts whom evolution is passing by, and Butler’s mediocre wRC+ of 97 is just two points off the national average. But if the Royals are going to build a team to get past the Coin Flip Game, they will need to upgrade at this position. Butler is the only player on this list on a playoff team.

Pitchers (ERA/FIP, WAR):

Eric Stults, 4.30/4.63, -0.6 WAR

Sproingggggg! Regression to the mean was mean to Stults this year, as his FIP rocketed from 3.53 to 4.63, or 40 points over his career number.  The gopher ball killed him, no mean feet in cavernous Petco. The Pads won’t offer him arbitration, so he’ll look to take his Veteran Self elsewhere. He won’t be this bad again, but at 34 he may not get the chance to prove it.

Roberto Hernandez, 4.10/4.85, -0.5 WAR

Forced in 2012 to change his name by the International Fausto Carmona Association, whose members no longer wanted to be associated with him.

Chris Young, 3.65/5.02, 0.2 WAR

It’s tough to say goodbye. Young hasn’t been an effective starter since 2007, but he grimly soldiers on, desperately searching for signs of pitching life on this barren world. It’s easy to root for guys like Young, but the M’s had a pennant train to catch this year, and their decision to give Young almost 30 starts probably cost them a seat.

Shelby Miller, 3.74/4.54, 0.2 WAR

If you’ve been playing along at home, most of the guys on this list probably haven’t shocked you, but did you see Shelby Miller coming? Let’s start with that yawning chasm between his ERA and FIP. Miller’s career ERA is 60 points less than his career FIP, so the gap is only somewhat worse than that this year, but still disconcerting. His strikeouts disappeared, not because of any velocity drop, but because of the wholesale failure of his off-speed pitches. He’s still just 23 and he still throws hard. If the Cards can’t fix him, maybe they can trade him to a pitching coach who can. Paging Dr. Cooper …

Kyle Kendrick, 4.61/4.57, 0.4 WAR

The phourth Phillie on this list, Kendrick’s rather offputting FIP is actually 8 points better than his career average. A tolerable innings eating presence on a high-scoring team, Kendrick is now a liability on a team chock full of them. This was his walk year, a strange expression to use in conjunction with Kendrick, since that’s the one thing he doesn’t give up.

Twenty-one year old Brandon Finnegan put his name on the map in Tuesday night’s epic wildcard game, when he tossed scoreless 10th and 11th innings before leading off the 12th with a walk to Josh Reddick, who would eventually come around to score against Jason Frasor. Drafted by the Royals with this year’s 17th overall pick, Finnegan made quick work of the minor leagues, making his big league debut on September 6th at Yankee Stadium, just 81 days — and 27 minor league innings — removed from his last appearance with TCU in this year’s College World Series.

To find comps for Finnegan, I first looked for pitchers with a similar arsenal of pitches. Using a minimum of 1,000 pitches, I sought out left-handed pitchers who threw fastballs, sliders, and changeups — Finnegan’s three pitches — at least 90% of the time since 2008, and threw each of these pitches at least 5% of the time. From there, I turned to the PITCHf/x database to find out how often these pitchers’ pitches fell within Finnegan’s middle 50% of values for velocity, break angle, break length, and spin rate, and spin direction from his eight big-league games. These are the pitchers who threw the highest ratio of pitches comparable to what Finnegan threw. The similarity percentage was calculated by dividing each pitcher’s share of pitches meeting these criteria by the share of pitches met by Finnegan himself. The ERA’s were calculated over the last seven years: 2008-2014.

Finnegan looks to have a bright future ahead of him, as his top two comps are two of the most dominant pitchers in baseball — one a starter (Sale) and one a reliever (Watson). It remains to be seen which path the Royals will choose for their hard-throwing lefty going forward. While it’s tempting to slot him in in a relief role next season, the wiser decision might be to stretch him out as  starter, where he would be able to take full advantage of his three-pitch arsenal. But either way, until the Royals’ playoff run comes to an end, Brandon Finnegan will be allowed to air it out for just an inning or two at a time on easily the biggest stage he’s ever seen. And given his lights-out stuff, he might just end up being this year’s Francisco Rodriguez.

This article originally appeared on Pinstripe Pundits.

With 2014’s baseball season winding down, end of year award discussion is starting to kick into high gear. It seems every day there’s a new article discussing X player’s case for winning Y award, when likely Z will win it.

Mike Petriello wrote an article discussing the NL Rookie of the Year race, and in it stated that it comes down to two players — Billy Hamilton of the Reds or Jacob DeGrom of the Mets. Ken Giles of the Phillies may not be considered a contender for the award, but by every statistical measure Giles’s 2014 rookie season compares  favorably with Craig Kimbrel’s 2011 RoY winning season.

In 2011, the NL Rookie of the Year award was a unanimous decision — Craig Kimbrel! Ice in his veins! 46 saves! Those strike outs! That slider! Could you vote for anyone else in good conscience?

Kimbrel was (and still is) a fantastic pitcher. But if his case for Rookie of the Year was unanimous, does that mean Ken Giles should also garner some consideration? And if Ken Giles had started the season at the Major League level and produced like he has so far, what would that look like? Would he have a better shot then? Let’s dive into the numbers.

Note: I am not an expert with projections. Therefore — all rate stats will stay the same between Ken Giles’s 2014 season and the full-season extrapolation. Sorry to disappoint.

First, some dashboard stats:

Both pitchers allow very low AVG despite having average to below-average luck with BABIP. Their LOB% is well above average, and they don’t allow a lot of home runs. As a result, their accumulated WAR values are both very good. Let’s dig into some rate stats to see how they compare there.

By FIP and xFIP, these pitchers are comparable. By ERA Giles has the advantage, which likely can be explained by the difference in BABIP.

Both pitchers have K rates that are simply awesome. Kimbrel gives up a few more free passes,  but makes up for it with some more K’s. As a result, their xFIP is nearly identical.

Now let’s look at how they achieve these results:

Stuff wise, they mirror one another. Both fastball/slider guys, with some real heat on their fastballs and sliders that fare rather well.
The real eye-opener — they even attack hitters the same way. Take a look at Kimbrel’s Pitch% heat chart in comparison with Giles’s. They are remarkably close to one another.

So we have two pitchers that have great stuff and get great results, but Giles is not considered a candidate. Why? Oh right:

Kimbrel was the closer and Giles was stuck behind the 13 million dollar man.

That should not sway our opinion and lead us to devalue the year Giles has had. We are smarter than that! If Giles had been up since April (and ready to face major-league hitters), in all likelihood we’d be talking about him when it came to NL RoY voting.

One last note: Minimum 40 IP, only two rookies have ever had a lower FIP than Ken Giles. Those occurred in 1884 (Henry Porter, 1.27) and 1908 (Roy Witherup, 1.31). Baseball history is long and filled with many numbers. Ken Giles ranks near the top of that list, and the two players in front of him played in the dead-ball era. What Giles is doing is special, and should be recognized.

Now that the division title belongs to the Nats, and the race for the number one seed in the NL is pretty much locked up, there are still a few reasons to watch the rest of the regular season games (if you are a Nats fan). If I were an unbiased observer, I would find the whole Rafael Soriano situation fascinating. He was having a fantastic first half, and while his ERA was beating his peripherals by a decent margin, his peripherals were still pretty strong. There was reason to expect regression, but not reason to expect a full-on collapse. But Soriano has picked up over two runs on his ERA during this second half and gone from closer to “cross your fingers mop up guy.” While watching another mentally exhausting Soriano “save” on Sunday, I wanted to figure out what exactly had happened to a season that started out so promising.

One thing that is important to remember is that relievers are volatile, and a few bad outings can throw things out of whack. In September, Soriano has given up 7 ER in 7.2 IP. That’s awful, but it’s also only seven innings. You could find quite a few SPs this season who have had a stretch of 7.2 IP giving up 7 runs. Strikeouts haven’t been the problem either, as he is averaging over a K per inning, and a 3:1 K-BB ratio. And despite the recent blow up (by recent I mean the entire second half), Soriano is still sporting a .59 HR/9 ratio for the season, which is much lower than his career of .86 HR/9. His BABIP is the exact same as last year, his strikeouts are up significantly (6.89 in ’13 versus 8.70 this year), and while his walks are up too, the overall K-BB is stronger. Not to mention that he has the second best SwStr% of his career after posting a career low in the same metric last year. So with all these seemingly positive things happening, what’s the deal? Where has this implosion come from if it doesn’t stem from gophers or a high BABIP against?

I think the answer is two-fold: extra-base hits, and a lack of infield fly balls. Below is a chart from 2013 of hit types against Soriano:

Here is 2014:

There are two important takeaways from this chart. One, even though Soriano gave up more dingers in 2013, he has given up significantly more extra-base hits this season. By my count, he gave up 15 extra base hits last year, and 21 this year (including home runs). Six may not sound like a lot, but that’s a 40% increase. When you only throw 60 innings a season, that makes a huge difference.

Two, look at the location of the outs in 2014 compared to 2013. Notice how there are way more silver dots in the infield in 2013. As a pitcher, infield fly balls are the second best thing to strikeouts. They are an out basically 100% of the time and runners can’t advance on an out like they can on a deep fly ball or a grounder. Soriano went from a 16.3% infield fly ball percentage in 2013 to 7.4% this year. A pattern is forming here. For a guy who pitches with runners on base fairly frequently, infield fly balls and strikeouts are a fantastic way to get out of a jam. Even though Soriano has more Ks this year, he also has far fewer IFFB, which almost offset one another. A lower IFFB% despite a higher overall fly ball percentage from 2013 explains a lot of what’s happening here. More balls in the outfield leads to more extra-base hits or even runners advancing/scoring on an out.

I came up with a quick metric I’ll call “Nearly Automatic Out Percentage” to illustrate my point. Soriano has faced 248 total batters this year compared to 277 last year. He has 59 Ks and 6 IFFBs this year (65 total nearly automatic outs) for a NAO% of 23.5%, compared to 51 Ks and 14 IFFBs in 2013 (also 65 nearly automatic outs), a NAO% of 26.2%. These numbers are closer than I would have thought considering how much better Soriano has been with Ks this season. But when you factor in the additional extra-base hits and a few additional walks/HBP, it explains how the end result in 2014 can be so similar to 2013 (nearly the same WAR, ERA, and xFIP in 2013 and 2014) in two completely different ways.

The BABIP gods are a most fickle bunch. They come and go as they please, gracing the bats of some while abandoning others altogether. Take Chris Johnson, for example. Aided by a .394 BABIP (roughly 10% greater than his career average), Johnson finished second to Michael Cuddyer in pursuit of the 2013 NL batting title. This season, however, Johnson’s batting average has dropped 58 points following a BABIP regression. Losing a portion of his hits has certainly hurt Johnson’s offensive production — this season, Johnson has produced runs at a rate 19% below league average.

BABIP is not entirely driven by luck, however. In fact, each hitter’s batted ball profile influences their BABIP. Generally speaking, players who hit more line drives and ground balls carry a higher BABIP than fly ball hitters. While it seems reasonable for Derek Jeter and Joe Mauer to carry career BABIPs in the neighborhood of .350, expecting Adam Dunn to sustain a similar BABIP would be folly.

Now, to Chris Iannetta. Sporting a career fly ball rate of 42.8%, the Angels’ backstop is a true fly ball hitter. Iannetta’s 2014 batted ball profile bears a striking resemblance to that of his 2013 campaign. Observe the table below:

Table 1: Batted Ball Profiles for Chris Iannetta, 2013 & 2014

Very similar. Although a hitter’s BABIP is not solely dependent on his batted ball profile, we might reasonably expect Iannetta’s 2014 BABIP to reside in the neighborhood of his 2013 mark. Well ladies and gentlemen, at the time of this writing, Chris Iannetta carries a 2014 BABIP of .330, a mark 16.6% above his career average of .283!

A peculiar development indeed. Let’s take a step back and examine Iannetta’s run production in a broader context:

Table 2: Offensive Production for Chris Iannetta, 2013 & 2014

The BABIP gods have certainly smiled on Iannetta this season. Despite the same ability to hit for power and a minor dip in plate discipline, Iannetta’s BABIP spike has fueled a 16% increase in run production. Among catchers with a minimum of 350 plate appearances, Iannetta’s wRC+ currently ranks him the sixth-best hitting catcher in the league. Iannetta’s newfound singles are certainly helping the Angels’ cause.

Because of random variation and luck, it is hardly rare for a hitter to experience a jump in BABIP. What is truly remarkable, however, is that Iannetta’s BABIP has jumped 15% above his career average while he has produced fly balls at a rate 20% greater than league average. To experience such a spike in BABIP while hitting a high percentage of fly balls seems quite rare. But how rare?

In order to better appreciate the peculiarity of Iannetta’s season and look for possible comparisons, I searched the past five seasons for players who experienced a BABIP jump 15% greater than career average while producing fly balls at a rate 20% above league average. Consider the table below:

Table 3: From 2009-2013, Player Seasons with a BABIP 15% Greater than Career Average, Fly Ball Rate 20% Greater than League Average (Minimum 400 PA)

That’s a motley crew. At first glance, one commonality emerges. Unsurprisingly, each hitter experienced significant BABIP regression the year after their jump. The BABIP gods hit some harder than others. Adam Dunn seems like an unfair comparison for what might happen to Iannetta — his remarkably terrible 2011 was fueled by more than BABIP regression. Similarly, Nick Swisher, Mark Reynolds and 2011 Colby Rasmus each saw fairly significant erosion in their power numbers. Swisher retained a good portion his productivity by dramatically increasing his BB%, but I don’t think that’s a fair expectation for Iannetta.

Perhaps the best example of what might happen to Iannetta is 2013-14 Colby Rasmus. In the midst of a BABIP regression, Rasmus has maintained his power numbers and plate discipline. Nonetheless, he’s currently producing runs at a rate 27% lower than last year. Those extra outs sure do add up.

Ultimately, if Iannetta can sustain his ISO and BB%, he should remain valuable for the Angels. Although Iannetta is on the wrong side of the aging curve, a mild BABIP regression with minor skill erosion would forecast a wRC+ somewhere in the neighborhood of 105-115. The Angels will certainly take that from their catcher.

Interestingly enough, the only hitter besides Iannetta to fit the parameters of a BABIP 15% greater than career average and fly ball rate 20% greater than league average this season is Devin Mesoraco. Mesoraco, however, is currently enjoying a well-documented swing renaissance, rendering his career BABIP rate generally unreliable for the purposes of this study. Going forward, Mesoraco is much more likely to sustain his present success than Iannetta.

It’s well documented that Yasiel Puig has been having a rough second half to the season. FanGraphs’ own Jeff Sullivan covered Puig’s troubles in a great piece here, and other articles like this one, and this one, and this one, continue to pop up. Further, a recent dugout altercation with veteran Matt Kemp have only made the media scrutiny on baseball’s most volatile player tighter. Jeff discussed Puig’s inability to do anything but roll over inside pitches of late, and his failure to lift fastballs as well. Let’s keep that information in the back of our mind for a second and look at Puig’s L/R splits for 2013 and 2014.

Notice the drastic drop in Puig’s performance against left-handed pitching. Now both samples are limited in terms of plate appearances, but I don’t think you can attribute this drop in performance entirely to luck. First, see the difference in how right-handed and left-handed pitchers have attacked Puig by location in 2014.

Left-handed pitchers have made a significantly more concerted effort to pitch Puig inside, the same area that Jeff acutely pointed out Puig has been struggling. However, this isn’t much different than the way left-handers pitched Puig a year ago. See below for 2013 chart:

What has changed though is Puig’s ability to hit left-handed change-ups, and off-speed pitches in general. In 2013, Puig swung and missed at a lot of change-ups (28% whiff rate), but when he did make contact he did damage (.539 SLG in 26 AB’s where he put a change-up in play). In 2014 though, Puig has cut down on the misses (20% whiff rate), but also lost his ability to impact the baseball against the pitch (no extra base hits vs. lhp change-ups). A similar trend, but not as exaggerated one, can be found if you look at Puig vs. breaking pitches.

This isn’t a secret either. In last night’s contest, during his at bats against the Cubs lefty Tsuyoshi Wada, 4 of the 7 pitches Puig saw were change-ups. Wada did let one creep over the plate in his second at bat and Puig was able to hit a grounder through the left side.

But let’s go back to the examples in Jeff’s article. In the at bats where Puig is successful he gets to the ball out front and is able to get extension through his swing. Yet, in the examples where Puig is unsuccessful he rolls over the ball, is late, hits the ball deeper in accordance to his body, and cannot get the same extension. Granted both of the examples are against righties, but it illustrates the greater point of how Puig’s timing right now is off against fastballs (particularly fastballs on his hands and up).

And the problem with being late against the fastball is the rest of the game starts to speed up. To try and account for his deficiency, Puig has likely started to to cheat (start his swing earlier), leaving him more vulnerable to off-speed pitches away. And if you’re a lefty with a good change-up, you have a serious advantage versus Puig right now.

The question you might be asking yourself is why can’t righties take advantage of the same flaw. Well, since August 1, they have to an extent, and against right-handed four-seam fastballs Puig is a mere 5 for 35.

However, against off-speed pitches it’s a different story. For his career Puig recognizes and hits breaking balls considerably better than change-ups. Against sliders and curveballs, he’s batted .327 and .298 respectively, compared to a lowly .219 against change-ups.

And given that Puig is right-handed he’s a lot less likely to see change-ups from right-handed pitchers. Per Max Marchi’s data, pitchers are more than twice as likely to throw change-ups to opposite-side hitters than same-side hitters. This holds true for Puig, who in 2014, has seen 16% of pitches from left-handers be change-ups, compared to only 7% of pitches from right-handers. So while the advantage is still there for righties, it’s less likely they’ll get to it, or can do so within the limits of their arsenal.

What’ll be interesting to see is if a team will actually bring a lefty out of the bullpen to face Puig in the postseason. If it happens, one likely scenario would be Marco Gonzales of St. Louis (if he makes the playoff roster), whose profile suggests him being Puig’s kryptonite. He throws over 30% change-ups against right-handers and 51% of his fastball to righties have been located inside.

Another poor match-up would be if the Dodgers face the Nationals and Gio Gonzalez is on the mound. Gonzalez has upped his change-up usage against right-handers to 23% in 2014, and has limited hitters to a .230 average against the pitch with a 23% whiff rate.

I also think it’s important to watch how Puig handles inside fastballs the remainder of the season. It’s conceivable the adrenaline of a playoff series could help him regain his timing against the pitch and get him back in sync. Like any hitter his swing is constantly adjusting, and it could start clicking for the Cuban slugger at any point in time. The Dodgers are hoping it clicks soon, or else they’ll be stuck searching elsewhere for offensive production when October rolls around.

Data courtesy of FanGraphs and Brooks Baseball

Featured Image courtesy of USA Today

The Mets took a chance last year and inked Curtis Granderson, age 33, to a four-year contract worth $60 million. Granderson was just coming off an injury plagued season with the Yankees in which he fractured his right forearm, and then the pinky in his left hand, sidelining him for over 100 games. In 2013 he posted a slash line of .229/.317/.409. Prior to his 2013 season, Granderson finished 4th in MVP voting in 2011, and was an All-Star in 2011 and 2012, finishing with more than 40 HR and 100 RBI’s.

So what can we expect from Curtis Granderson for the rest of his career with the Mets? Is there hope that he will be the big clutch hitter the Mets desperately need and come close to his 2011 and 2012 seasons with the Yankees? Or will his name be forever remembered by Mets fans in the same category as Jason Bay and Chris Young, forged in the hall of ineptitude? Here is a look at Curtis Granderson’s numbers after 2010 when Granderson turned 29 and started his stint with the Yankees. Here is a look at some of his numbers from 2010-2012, before his injury-riddled 2013 campaign:

It is important to note that he is playing the majority of his games at notoriously hitter-friendly Yankees Stadium. Using a measure of the effect of Yankee Stadium called park index, it can found that Yankee Stadium has about a +3% increase on a left-hander’s average, and a +53% on a hitter’s home run total. Granderson hit 56 total homers at Yankee Stadium from 2010-2012. After the Mets reconfigured their outfield, their left-handed batters hit on average +2% more home runs. If we adjust Curtis Granderson’s home run total to playing at CitiField for these years, his adjusted home run total is somewhere between 26-27 per year.

This still is a great total, and I think any Met fan would welcome a 25+ home run season from Granderson with open arms. Right now there are 10 games left in the season and Granderson has 18 home runs. He could sit around 20 this season which would not be terrible unless we remember his atrocious .218/.320./.374 slash line. We also have to consider the unfortunate factor of Granderson’s age to this equation. Granderson has a little bit of a strange aging curve because of his incredible seasons at age 30 and 31. I decided to look at how similar players performed at ages 32, 33, 34, and 35 (no player that has a top-ten similarity score has played a season at age 36 yet). The similarity scores were calculated based on Baseball-Reference’s similarity scores equation.

All of my worst fears came true and I started having flashbacks of one of the all-time worst Mets busts as I saw the name that popped up at number 1 — Jason Bay. Here is what other similar players did at age 32, 33, 34, and 35 (I omitted information if a player played less than 70 games aside from Granderson’s season at age 32.):

This does not paint a good picture of what we hope to expect from Granderson. For a player signed to the amount of money as Granderson, I would like to see an OPS around or above .800. There are only two out of ten players — Phil Nevin and Jayson Werth, that hit decently at the advanced ages of 34 and 35 (Werth is hitting pretty well with over 80 RBI’s with an OPS above .800, Nevin hit decently with a 0.76 OPS and 22 home runs at age 35). Six out of ten players ended their careers following a tremendous decline before getting to age 34 (I included Jason Bay whose career was arguably over before age 31, a year after signing with the Mets), Edwin Encarnacion is too young to make any conclusions about, and it is looking like Jose Bautista will play well, or at least decently at ages 34 and 35.

Even though most similar players did not have good seasons, or even reach seasons at ages 34, 35, and 36, similar players like Jayson Werth, Phil Nevin, and Jose Bautista give us a glimmer of hope. Similar players in no way give us a definitive look at a player’s future, so there is also always the possibility Granderson carves himself a much different path than any of the players on this list. To determine what might be causing Granderson’s decline, I’m going to look through Granderson’s batted ball statistics along with walk rate and strikeout rate:

The most glaring discrepancy between Granderson’s time with the Mets and Yankees is his HR/FB rate. His BABIP has gone down a little, but it is not that far removed from his numbers from 2010-2012. BABIP is a good statistic to look at to determine if a player is having a relatively unlucky season by comparing it to that player’s normal BABIP. It looks like he might have been a little lucky getting hits in 2011. Other than that, BABIP does not tell the story of what has happened to Granderson in 2014.

My initial thought from watching Granderson play daily was that he is striking out at a much higher rate. In fact, his K% is lower than it was in 2011 and 2012, and on par with what it was in 2010. And here is where we come to his HR/FB. Although Granderson is hitting about the same FB%, the percent of his fly balls that are going out of the park is dismally low compared to how it was when he was hitting 40+ home runs at Yankee Stadium. Although this could partially be age-related, it could be easily argued that a huge component of this is also the change in ballpark where Granderson plays. It is hard to determine if Granderson could possibly change his approach somehow to adjust to CitiField’s landscape when he is going to be 34 years old next year. The future is looking bleak for Mets fans unless Granderson can figure out how to turn things around next season.

Rockies outfielder Corey Dickerson is quietly having an excellent season at the plate. Believe it or not, the 25-year-old is hitting an impressive .315/.371/.577, which even after adjusting for the effects of Coors Field, is still good for a 144 wRC+ — 13th highest among players with at least 400 plate appearances. Dickerson’s batted pretty sparingly against lefties, which has certainly played a role in his gaudy stat line, but platoon or no platoon, a .405 wOBA is certainly nothing to sneeze at.

While Dickerson’s out-of-the-blue breakout is interesting, the approach he’s used to get there is what makes him truly unusual. Since debuting last season, he’s swung at 62% of pitches inside the strike zone and 42% of pitches outside of it, making him about 1.5 times (62%/42%) as likely to swing at a strike than a ball. This is the lowest such ratio of any player with at least 600 PA’s these last two years. Dickerson’s not a free swinger, per se — his overall swing rate of 51% is 38th out of 251 players with at least 600 PA’s — but he just doesn’t discriminate based on whether or not a pitch is in the strike zone. Here’s a look at the hitters with the lowest Z-Swing%/O-Swing% these last two seasons:

Dickerson’s contact rates tell a similar story. Just like his overall swing rate, Dickerson’s contact rate of 81% isn’t all that interesting. Here, he checks in at 151 out of 251. But also like his swing rate, it doesn’t change very much depending on a pitch’s location. He’s put wood on 83% of pitches he’s offered at in the zone, compared to 74% outside of it, making him 1.1 times as likely to connect on a pitch within the zone — fourth lowest out of 251.

Multiplying these two metrics (Contact% x Swing%) gives us Dickerson’s contact rate over all pitches seen, regardless of that pitch’s location. Lets call this AllContact% to distinguish it from the traditional Contact%. This number shows just how much of an outlier he really is. For the average major league hitter, a pitch thrown in the strike zone results in contact 2.9 times as often as one outside of it, but for Dickerson, a pitch in the zone is less than 1.7 times as likely. Even if we set the bar as low as 70 plate appearances to include 577 players, this is still the lowest in baseball since the start of 2013.

And unsurprisingly, he also the all-time leader since 2007 (the earliest year with PITCHf/x data). Dickerson had the lowest among all players with 100 PA’s here, but I set the threshold to 600 PA’s to avoid having leader board filled with obscure players like Jesus Feliciano and Jordan Brown. In case you were wondering, Vladimir Guerrero checked in at 2.13.

Dickerson’s indifference to a pitch’s location means its probably only a matter of time before pitchers just stop throwing the ball in the strike zone, especially if he keeps slugging well above .500. So far this year, opposing pitchers have thrown Dickerson a strike just over 45% of the time. This is lower than the league average of 49%, but isn’t exceptionally low, especially for a free-swinging power hitter. Guys like Jose Abreu, Carlos Gomez, and Pablo Sandoval see strikes around 42% of the time, so pitchers could almost certainly get away with throwing Dickerson a few more balls. Sure, he’s shown that he’s able to hit those pitches, but even for a player like Dickerson, chasing after bad pitches is still a recipe for lots of swings and misses. His 74% O-Contact% is well above the league average of 63%, yet still lower than the overall Contact% of 80%.

Dickerson’s one-size-fits-all approach to swinging has worked well so far, but it remains to be seen what will happen when pitchers start exploiting it by throwing more balls out of the zone. Maybe he’ll be unfazed and keep on raking. Maybe he’ll turn into a strikeout machine, who needs to refine his approach to even stay in the big leagues. Either way, Corey Dickerson’s a fascinating player, who’s unlike any we’ve seen in recent years, and it’ll be interesting to see if he’s able to keep succeeding going forward.

For the past two years or so, Kansas City has been torn about breakfast… Billy “Big Country Breakfast” Butler that is. During this past offseason there were many rumors that the Royals were going to trade him and it seemed inevitable upon entering talks with then free agent Carlos Beltran. Billy Butler is part of the home-grown youth movement in Kansas City with Alex Gordon, and later followed by Salvy Perez, Mike Moustakas, Eric Hosmer, and company. From 2009 through 2013, Billy Butler has offensively been above average, and even great! However, after failing to meet expectations last year, and in some opinion already being in decline at the age of 28, Billy came out and struggled mightily to start the 2014 season.

But he has turned it around somewhat, and with the Royals making headlines this August, Big Country played a big part. So I wanted to look at what he did differently comparing his April dud, to his career average, and to his being a stud again in August. We will measure his overall offensive prowess with WRC+, which in this study would be 50 in March/April, 118 for his career average, and 126 in August. So let’s look at the more telling processing stats.

One of the first things to pop out at you is the BB/K ratio. While under his career margin (and by a decent margin too), his BB/K rate is nearly the exact same in April and August. A lot of times credit for a hitter’s success is given to an increase in the BB% and decrease in the K%, but here Butler cuts down on both, therefore increasing the amount of balls he puts into play bringing us to BABIP. Both his April and August are way below his career norms. Perhaps dealing with a little unluckiness? Or just weak contact? Fact is even with his BABIP down and his home run rate relatively consistent he can still create above average production.

Now comes the most telling rate, which is the type of balls that he hits. As someone who is an AL DH, Billy Butler is not only expected to hit, but to slug. That big goose egg for HR’s in April is just an absolute killer, and the culprit is the GB%. It is no wonder why a big, SLOW (we all know about his base running and uncanny attraction to double plays), gap to gap power hitter has one of the worst months of his career considering his GB% is up almost 12% and his FB% is down nearly 10%. Billy Butler will never be Aoki. He has to get the ball in the air. He lives on hitting doubles into the deep gaps at Kauffman Stadium and with ratios such as those it is no surprise he puts up a WRC+ of 50.

When your BB/K ratio is so nearly identical but yet you put up such drastically different numbers, not to mention the fluctuations in his BABIP, it has to come back to his swing mechanics and getting to a consistently good contact position where he can drive the ball.

Billy’s discipline at the plate has been waning. But the month he really lacked discipline is the same month he did so well in: August. In April he was within his career norms for all of his discipline stats except O-Contact%. Overall he was swinging less and missing less. And that is where the problem may lie! It is not so much that he was struggling with pitch selection, because clearly he was even worse with discipline in August, but the fact that he didn’t miss when he swung.

In a sense Butler was too good at making contact! With his swinging percentage up along with increasingly bad pitch selection, the higher his swinging strike percentage, the better! And perhaps with his swing percentage, his first pitch strike percentage, and his O-Swing percentage all up, he has changed to a more aggressive approach? Again all of this can lead back to the assumption of Butler making poor contact in April. Which leads to the question of what has he done differently, if anything, with his swing?

Now the main reason I bring these stats up is that I am a huge believer in fastball hunting. These charts may not be the most reliable in telling of pitch selection, but they do tell you if he has been seeing certain pitches better and the rates at which he has been seeing pitches.  So I wanted to look closely at his fastball rate in particular just to see if there was anything funky going on. And what was so funky is that in August he was crushing it! The more fastballs you see the better chance you have to hit well. While I am not sure of the exact quantity of fastballs he faced, for the most part he has been seeing the same consistent rate of different pitches he always has and he definitely has done one of his better jobs of taking advantage of the fastballs he has seen. Can a correlation be made between his April failures and August success against fastballs to a possible new approach and/or adjustment in his swing mechanics? Or just unlucky, bad contact?

After searching through the KC Star (hometown newspaper) as well as other media report outlets, I have not been able to find much of anything indicating adjustments being made. There was some talk of just his timing being off, but other than that there are not many clues. I wish I knew how to make video clips of swings and find a couple angles of Billy Butler’s swing in April compared to his swing in August and dissect them both. I would like to see what, if anything, is different. If we could see his timing and especially his bat path, I believe we can tell a lot about what he is doing wrong or right. If anyone can provide those, or teach how to make them, please do and send to me!

However, going off of what I have seen here, everything to me points back to weak contact consistently being made. Whether due to timing or mechanics, I am not sure. Normally I would say this is due to poor pitch selection, but as I showed above, he had even worst discipline and pitch selection in August than April and still put up very stellar numbers. To be clear hard contact is not good enough for a player of Billy Butler’s style. He NEEDS to get air under his pitch. Now they say that this is a game of adjustments. I would love to know what, if any, adjustments Billy “Big Country Breakfast” Butler has made. After all, could it really have just been a string of bad luck?

At the start of the 2013 season, Brett Gardner adopted a new, more aggressive approach at the plate in the hopes of barreling more hittable pitches. Up to that point, the slap-hitting outfielder had been one of the most patient hitters in baseball. Gardner sat out most of 2012 due to injury, but swung at just 32.7% of all pitches seen between 2010 and 2011, the fewest of any player with at least 300 plate appearances. Last year, his swing rate jumped to 40.1%, with most of his new-found aggressiveness focused on pitches located within the strike zone. While his zone swing rate rose by 13 percentage points from 2010 to 2013, his rate for pitches out of the zone only increased by seven.

The change seemed to pay off. Gardner posted a career high .143 ISO last season — much better than his career mark of .103 — on his way to a very respectable 108 wRC+. He’s carried that success over to this season as well. With 16 homers, he’s doubled his total from last season — which was already a career high — and with a 119 wRC+, he’s developed into one of the better-hitting outfielders in all of baseball.

But unlike last season, he’s no longer sporting a swing percentage north of 40%. Instead, it’s fallen back to 36.6%, just a tad higher than his 35% mark from 2011. So if Gardner’s back to his old ways of watching two thirds of all pitches go by, how has he managed to keep hitting for power? The answer has everything to do with plate discipline. Gardner’s continued to take advantage of hittable pitches, but has also gotten much better at laying off pitches outside of the strike zone. First lets look at how often he’s swung at pitches inside of the strike zone.

Since adopting his more aggressive approach two springs ago, Gardner’s behavior on pitches in the zone hasn’t changed much. Maybe he’s gotten a little less aggressive over the past couple of years, but for the most part, his swing rates have been pretty consistent. It’s probably safe to say that Gardner’s a guy who swings at about 50-55% of pitches in the strike zone. We see a different story, however, when it comes to pitches outside of the zone.

At least initially, Gardner’s swing rate on balls out of the zone also spiked. He seemingly became more aggressive on all pitches, without discriminating based on location. But that’s changed over the past couple of seasons, as he’s swung at fewer and fewer pitches out of the zone. His O-Swing% dipped below 18% in both July and August — down from around 25% in early 2013 — putting him on par with what he was doing back in 2010 and 2011. Today, Gardner’s been nearly three times more likely to swing at a strike than a ball, up from two times as likely in April of 2013.

Gardner’s improved plate discipline is nothing new. Although his change in approach puts a kink in the trend, Gardner’s been getting better at deciding whether or not to swing since his first days in the big leagues, and probably even longer. Even before he re-evaluated his approach before the 2013 season, he was already starting to transition from a “guy who doesn’t swing at anything” to a “guy who doesn’t swing at balls”.

Coming up through the minors, Gardner didn’t impress many scouts with his tools, and barely even made his college team as a walk-on. Sure, he’s always had plus-plus speed, but that only gets you so far when you’re an outfielder with little power to speak of. Rather than relying on his pure hitting skills, Gardner makes it work with his zen-like plate discipline. By swinging at so few balls out of the zone, Gardner practically forces pitchers to leave the occasional pitch over the heart of the plate, and has just enough pop in his bat to make them pay for it. But most importantly, he’s learned how to take advantage of those mistake pitches, while simultaneously laying off of the bad ones.

Statistics courtesy of FanGraphs.