Some, Chris Needham most prominently, have argued that a team-wide over-aggressive approach is behind the team's poor offensive performance, and that it's an approach that is actually being taught by Lenny Harris. The theory goes like this: Lenny was a career-long pinch hitter. As a pinch-hitter coming off the bench cold, the risk of striking out is much greater. So his approach was to sing at the first pitch he could reach and slap at it. It's a terrible approach for creating runs--you will hardly ever walk or hit for extra bases, the two things that generate the most scoring--but it's not a bad idea if you're coming up cold and just trying to avoid making an out to keep the inning alive. So, the theory goes, this is what Lenny is teaching to the Nationals--hence their poor plate discipline, lousy power numbers, and generally terrible offense.
And there certainly has been some evidence to back the theory. When the Nationals first acquired Wily Mo Pena, there were a number of quotes from Lenny about how he was working to transform Pena's swing to get him to go the other way. Chris did a piece on Zimmerman back in April focusing on his approach that appeared to offer more evidence.
I thought it might be interesting to look closer at the data on plate discipline and first figure out, in fact, are the Nationals who are under-performing taking a more aggressive approach at the plate? And if so, is it enough of a pattern to conclude that Lenny's teaching his slappy, pinch-hitting ways to the whole team?
My attempt at a smart, statistics-based analysis steals a bunch from a couple articles by David Appleman on Fangraphs.com. If you are interested, you can check them out.
The stats I'm looking at (available at fangraphs.com and baseball-reference.com) are:
- O-Swing% (OS%): the percentage of pitches outside the strike zone a hitter swings at. Appleman shows that this number tends to correlate strongly with walk rate (not a shock). MLB hitters range from 5 to 37%.
- Z-Swing% (ZS%): the percentage of pitches in the strike zone a hitter swings at. MLB range is from 55 to 80%.
- Zone % (Z%): the percentage of pitches a hitter sees in the zone. Obviously, the hitter has almost no control over what pitch the pitcher decides to throw, but this tells you something about the approach pitchers are taking. This correlates with HR/FB and walks, as more dangerous hitters tend to get piched around.
- Contact rate: the percentage of time a hitter swings and makes contact. This tends to correlate with strikeout rate--again no shock--and also HR/FB rate, as guys who are swinging for the fences tend to swing and miss more. MLB range is from 55-94%.
- Walk %: You know what this is. MLB range is from 3 to 14%.
- HR/FB: the percentage of flyballs that become home runs. For pitchers, this stat is mostly a function of luck. But for hitters, it's a more useful measure of power (though other stats like SLG and isolated power are certainly better).
- P/PA: Pitches per plate appearance. More patient hitters see more pitches. MLB range is around 3.1 to 4.4.
Also, plate discipline is just one aspect of hitting, and these numbers won't tell us even close to everything we need to know to diagnose each hitter's strengths and weaknesses. But, we can try to get a sense of what if anything they are doing differently this year on plate discipline that might explain part of the situation. And we can try to get a sense of whether there are any team-wide patterns or not.
To keep the focus narrow enough to not overwhelm, I'm looking just at the most underperforming players and comparing their plate discipline this year to what they did in their best years. I also looked at Guzman and Flores, probably the two most pleasant surprises, to see if there's anything more to learn.
Felipe Lopez
| ZSw% | OSw% | Zone % | Cont % | BB% | HR/FB | P/PA |
05 | 57.8 | 15.3 | 53.6 | 84.3 | 8.9 | 18.3 | 4.0
|
08 | 58.8 | 18.2 | 50.9 | 85.6 | 9.0 | 2.3 | 3.7 |
Ryan Zimmerman
| ZSw% | OSw% | Zone % | Cont % | BB% | HR/FB | P/PA |
06 | 61.3 | 23.7 | 52.7 | 80.6 | 9.0 | 11.4 | 3.88 |
08 | 61.2 | 25.5 | 53.1 | 82.9 | 6.2 | 9.8 | 3.62 |
Wily Mo Pena
| ZSw% | OSw% | Zone % | Cont % | BB% | HR/FB | P/PA |
06 | 77.1 | 35.8 | 47.5 | 64.1 | 6.8 | 14.7 | 3.54 |
08 | 75.6 | 35.8 | 48.3 | 68.6 | 4.9 | 5.4 | 3.62 |
Austin Kearns
| ZSw% | OSw% | Zone % | Cont % | BB% | HR/FB | P/PA |
06 | 72.6 | 18.4 | 50.3 | 74.0 | 12.4 | 15.3 | 4.09 |
08 | 60.8 | 15.1 | 52.9 | 83.6 | 9.8 | 7.6 | 3.96 |
Lastings Milledge
| ZSw% | OSw% | Zone % | Cont % | BB% | HR/FB | P/PA |
07 | 67.2 | 32.0 | 47.6 | 76.1 | 6.6 | 17.1 | 3.82 |
08 | 67.7 | 31.2 | 51.9 | 79.9 | 6.5 | 10.7 | 3.91 |
Jesus Flores
| ZSw% | OSw% | Zone % | Cont % | BB% | HR/FB | P/PA |
07 | 65.6 | 32.5 | 49.5 | 75.8 | 7.2 | 9.1 | 3.19 |
08 | 67.7 | 31.2 | 50.1 | 70.8 | 5.9 | 12.1 | 3.72 |
Cristian Guzman
| ZSw% | OSw% | Zone % | Cont % | BB% | HR/FB | P/PA |
05 | 64.2 | 22.8 | 58.4 | 83.9 | 5.2 | 4.4 | 3.19 |
08 | 62.7 | 26.8 | 53.3 | 88.6 | 3.9 | 4.7 | 3.10 |
So what does this all tell us? Maybe nothing. There are plenty of very aggressive hitters--Pena, Milledge, Flores, and Guzman. But no one really is more aggressive than they were in their better days, especially in the zone. Then you have Kearns, who seems flat out passive.
There is some evidence that Pena and Zimmerman are going the other way more and perhaps too much, as their power is down. But Kearns, Flores, and Milledge aren't going the other way significantly more than in the past.
Bottom line, I think a bunch of these guys are indeed too aggressive. I think you have some guys who have always been hackers who probably are who they are (Pena, Guzman). Some young guys are still learning (Milledge, Flores). You can probably blame Lenny for not getting these guys to make more progress than they have, but I don't see evidence that Lenny's teaching it that way.
5 comments:
Wow, nice body of work. I'll have to wait till tonight to dig deeper, but thanks for cranking through all those numbers.
Thanks.
I should clarify (which I meant to do when I was finishing the post at 1 am), that my conclusion is NOT that Lenny shouldn't be fired. His job is to figure out how to get the team to perform, and as far as I can tell the outcomes aren't there. Unless every young hitter ends on a tear, he hasn't earned a second full season in my book.
As I've said before, I think that most hitting instructors are pretty inconsequential, but that I have no reason to think we couldn't do better. And that the way I'd prefer the situation get resolved is for the team to first give Manny power over his coaches and then second have Manny pick his own, hopefully better, guy.
I'll echo what Hendo wrote, thanks for providing the numbers.
And I agree with you that the larger issue with Harris is that Acta doesn't seem to have the authority to hire his own coaches.
As an aside, Guzman's OPS+ is down to 93 and his EQA is at .254 now which puts him solidly in the David Eckstein/Orlando Cabrera/Brendan Harris/Nick Punto/Alex Cora crowd.
Eckstein, Punto, Cora, and Cabrera are all due to be free agents. Obviously I could be wrong on this, but I sort of doubt that all of them get contracts making as much as Guzman's extension.
In the grand scheme of things, the money they're giving Guzman isn't going to make or break the franchise, but I do think it says a bit about how they value players.
One other thing, did you see the blog that Nieto's agent put up? He mentions quite a few front office people, but no mention of Bowden. I just thought that odd.
A competent hitting coach can make a huge difference. Take a look at one of the consistently best hitting teams, the Rangers. They have arguably the best hitting coach in the majors, Rudy Jaramillo. Look at the job he has done with Marlon Byrd over the past two season. Byrd was an erratic hitter with the Nats and has now turned into a solid guy with the bat in Texas.
@Phil--I would say that a very, very good hitting coach can make a difference, but I think most are just kind of guys standing there. That's not a defense of Lenny, it's just my sense of it. I doubt that if you dug into the specifics that you and I would disagree much.
I'm just resistant of the sentiment that "Lenny is so bad he's turned what would otherwise be a good offense into crap." I'm not trying to put those words in your mouth or Chris's, but I think that a dumbed-down, over-argued version of Chris's case like that has gained some legs out there.
I just don't think he's a credible scapegoat. I think the first problem is that we don't have enough good hitters. Our best hitters are better suited to be complimentary guys and our complimentary guys are better suited for the bench. I don't think the Dean Smith of hitting coaches would transform that reality.
@Mike--amen. Guzman sucks and blows. I curse the day we signed him and double curse the day we re-signed him.
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