Tom Verducci力挺Eric Wedge
http://tinyurl.com/n89wxdb
As baseball executives play the usual game of hit-or-miss with the
First-Year Draft on Thursday, the story of what happened to former college
standout Dustin Ackley stands as the most recent warning of the fickle nature
of the draft. Ackley was a great hitter at North Carolina (hitting .402, .417
and .417 in his three seasons) and the number two overall pick of the 2009
draft, but merely a good hitter in the minors (.280) and then such a bad
hitter in the majors (.237, including .205 this year) that the Mariners
recently demoted him to Triple A at age 25.
Seattle manager Eric Wedge took some heavy criticism for "blaming"
sabermetrics for Ackley's troubles. Ackley was lost at the plate mentally,
letting pitch after pitch go by. Out of 171 plate appearances this year,
Ackley swung at the first pitch for a hit only twice while taking that first
pitch for a strike 74 times. On counts without a strike -- 0-0, 1-0, 2-0, 3-0
-- Ackley had only four hits all year. He let the pitcher dictate his at-bats.
Wedge got himself into hot water with the sabermetrics community when he
said, in part, "People who haven't played since they were 9 years old think
they have it figured out. It gets in these kids' heads."
Uh-oh. Wedge's long discussion with reporters about Ackley quickly was
reduced to the shorthand narrative that Wedge was a Neanderthal of a manager
who has no use for numbers, nevermind that he has embraced statistical
analysis since his days managing the number-crunching Indians.
Where Wedge slipped on a verbal banana peel was using the term "sabermetrics"
as a catchall term. Wedge actually was making a very good point about the
down side of the modern passive-aggressive approach to hitting, but he
distracted from it by using the hot button term of "sabermetrics."
He later clarified his comments about sabermetrics, saying to reporters,
"That's not the reason Ackley was having issues at home plate. What I'm
talking about is this recent generation of players that has come up in the
sabermetrics world . . . What you can't do is play this game with fear. You
have to go out there and play and when you get your first good pitch to take
a whack at, you have to take a whack at it. People stress so much getting
deeper into counts and drawing walks, it's almost a backward way of looking
at it."
Bingo. I have been writing and talking about this exact trend in baseball.
When you go to a baseball game today you will see, on average, more
strikeouts, more pitches without the ball in play and fewer hits than at any
time since the designated hitter was introduced 40 years ago. Ackley became a
proxy for what happens when good ideas go bad because they are taken to
extremes. Those good ideas include "drive up the pitch count," "let the ball
get deep," and "keep your hands inside the ball." The batter is the one with
the bat in the hand -- the one by definition who is "on offense" -- but the
modern hitter often cedes control of the batter-pitcher confrontation to the
pitcher. He lets the pitcher dictate terms of the confrontation by "giving"
him too many strikes.
Don't blame this trend on sabermetrics, which have enhanced our understanding
of the game and shot down some conventional wisdom that turned out to be,
well, unwise. (I do agree, though, with Vernon Wells of the Yankees, who told
me in spring training that the increased attention to measurables --
especially the ubiquitous pitch count -- has influenced young hitters'
approaches.) Obviously something is going on here as games get longer and
slower but declining offense is a troubling trend for the game's appeal. You
can't watch hitters night after night take 2-0 fastballs with runners on base
and not wonder where hitting is going. (Ackley was a mind-blowing 1-for-20
after 2-0 counts.)
So, I began to ask: Where are the Dustin Ackleys coming from and how they did
they get this way? Is there a common thread in the hitters who most favor
this passive-aggressive approach?
The first thing I did was to take a look at hitters on both ends of the
aggressiveness spectrum at the time Ackley was demoted, as measured by the
percentage of times they swing the bat. Imagine a Bell curve and disregard
two-thirds of all everyday hitters -- the ones in the middle. The other
one-third includes the extremists on both ends: the 30 most aggressive
hitters and the 30 least aggressive hitters. Something immediately jumped
out. Take a look at the percentage of hitters in each category according to
when they were signed:
Keep this in mind when MLB holds its annual draft this week. Players drafted
out of college are almost three times as likely to be passive-aggressive
hitters as players who signed out of high school or as international free
agents. The trend is more pronounced the further you examine the spectrum.
The five least aggressive hitters all played in college: A.J. Ellis (Austin
Peay), Lucas Duda (USC), Ackley (North Carolina), Josh Willingham (North
Alabama) and Ben Zobrist (Dallas Baptist).
At the top of the most aggressive side, none of the 11 most aggressive
hitters attended college (Pablo Sandoval, Jeff Francouer, Adam Jones, Alfonso
Soriano, Yuniesky Betancourt, Josh Hamilton, Carlos Gomez, Torii Hunter,
Alexei Ramirez, Miguel Cabrera and Jay Bruce). Only two of the 21 most
aggressive hitters attended college (Greg Dobbs and J.P. Arencibia, the only
righthanded former college hitter among the top 30 who likes to swing the bat
often).
"That's very interesting," Braves hitting coach Greg Walker said when I
presented him with the numbers. "What's that old saying among scouts about
Latin American players? 'You can't walk off the island.' You hit your way."
Sure enough, nine Latin American free agent signees are among the 30 most
aggressive hitters in baseball -- including Cabrera, the undisputed best
hitter in baseball. Among the least aggressive hitters, only two Latin
American players show up: Carlos Santana and Marco Scutaro.
(By the way, keep your eye on hard-swinging, free-swinging Yasiel Puig, the
exciting 22-year-old rookie from Cuba just called up by the Dodgers. He drew
just 12 unintentional walks in Triple-A before his promotion. In his major
league debut Monday night, he swung at seven of the nine strikes he saw.)
But why would college players be so much more likely to take a
passive-aggressive approach? Based on conversations with managers and
coaches, here are some theories:
‧ The metal bat. College players play three or four more years with a metal
bat, which is more forgiving than a wood bat.
"The college strike zone is about one foot outside," Nationals manager Davey
Johnson said. "College pitchers throw away much more than they do in because
of the bat and the strike zone. The game is played off the plate much more."
Outside pitches must be contacted deeper than inside pitches, so "letting the
ball travel" becomes the norm. Johnson said the style teaches a hitter to be
patient without learning how to throw the barrel at the ball in front of the
plate, which is required for inside pitches.
Johnson was aghast when he took over the Nationals about how his team was
beaten regularly on inside fastballs or flat out took them. He and hitting
coach Rick Eckstein have worked to change the philosophy in Washington to a
more aggressive swing path. Johnson is not even a proponent of the accepted
practice of flicking balls to the opposite field during the first round of
batting practice no matter where the ball is pitched.
"Everything is cyclical," Johnson said, "but if you look at any great hitter
over time, they have the ability to hit the ball out in front of them and
drive it with power, not just fight it off and inside-out the ball."
‧ College players are older when they enter pro ball. "The older you are the
harder it is to change the hitter you are," Walker said. "Walt Hriniak [the
former White Sox hitting coach] was always trying to get Frank Thomas to be
more aggressive, especially with runners on base, but it never really took.
We went through the same thing in Chicago with Nick Swisher.
"I will say this: if you're talking about changing a hitter, it's a lot
easier to get an aggressive hitter to dial it back a little than it is to get
someone who's not aggressive to dial it up."
‧ College baseball is more coach-dominated than minor league baseball.
College catchers need coded wristbands with pitches and plays on them, in the
style of NFL quarterbacks, because college coaches have so much control over
many aspects of the game. Coaches will practice bunt defenses and
first-and-third plays literally for hours. Colleges often have more coaches
than minor league teams. Freewheeling, individualized play -- as long as it
produces results -- is more likely in minor league ball, especially with the
influx of international players, than the structured environment of college
ball.
‧ College players are, by definition, students and thinkers. The
passive-aggressive approach tends to be a more cerebral approach than the
see-ball-hit-ball approach. Information is good for a hitter. Too much
information is bad. Sabermetricians make better pitchers than they do hitters.
"The information hinders the hitter," said Rays pitching coach Jim Hickey.
"It helps a pitcher, absolutely. I think it has a negative effect on the
hitter. First of all, if you're up there thinking, you're done. Secondly,
hitting is so reactionary. Pitching, nothing happens until you're ready. You
size up the situation, you line it up and decide what you want to do with
your delivery. As a hitter all you can do is react. As a hitter if you start
betting bogged down with the facts -- this guy throws 36 percent backdoor
cutters on strike two -- and that's in your mind, I think that's where the
hindrance comes in. The best hitters are reactionary hitters."
Johnson is correct in that hitting styles are cyclical, and this one will
change. It has to change if only because it is not producing results. The
major league batting average is the lowest since 1972. The rate of runs per
game is the lowest since 1992. Strikeouts are up for an eighth straight year
toward a seventh straight record-breaking rate.
"Hitters today think they have to see a lot of pitches," Johnson said. "But
the best pitch they may see sometimes is the first one. You have to be ready
for it. The mentality you have to have as a hitter is you're swinging until
you're not. You can't be not swinging and then decide when the ball's halfway
there."
Said Walker, "I think you go up there hunting the first good strike you see,
especially fastballs. Some guys, like Freddie Freeman, take great pride in
that. But some guys will take fastballs for strikes and then find themselves
fighting against a pitcher's breaking stuff deeper in the count. Sometimes
it's not easy for them to change if they've been hitting that way for a long
time."
Statistics show that hitters are swinging at first pitches less often -- but
that actually may be a good thing. Check out the percentage of one-pitch
at-bats in five-year increments over the past 25 years. You will see how it
has continually declined, but based on the adjusted OPS of those at-bats,
hitters are getting better results when their at-bats end with the first
pitch:
That's good news about modern hitting: Hitters are doing a better job at
swinging at the first pitch when they can do damage, not just make contact.
The bigger problem seems to be the continued passivity after the first pitch.
Pitchers are throwing more strikes, as evidenced by the seven-year streak of
record strikeouts and a four-year streak of declining walks. Trying to "run
up pitch counts" of starting pitchers may not be as an effective a primary
strategy as it once was -- not with strikeouts increasing, runs and walks
decreasing and not when bullpens are now packed with more high-velocity
relievers. When you "get into the bullpen," you're getting pitchers that
average 8.3 strikeouts per nine innings (up 17 percent in 10 years) and are
tougher to hit (.242) than starters (.259).
Finally, here's one more look at a link between passive-aggressive hitting
and the declining run-scoring environment of today's game. Again, it's a look
at snapshots in five-year increments over the past quarter of a century, this
time looking at the average number of pitchers per plate appearance as well
as the average of runs per game per team:
You see a steady increase in the number of pitches in the average major
league at-bat. You also see an increase in runs scored through The Steroid
Era, but the payoff for all these longer at-bats has disappeared. As at-bats
get longer over the past decade runs are going down. Neither trend shows
signs of abatement.
--
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