Comments on: Which Yankees really had the best batting eye?

By: Yazman

Yazman — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 04:36:30 +0000

Joseph, great follow up to your previous Gardner post.

This shows he does have a good eye, AND he needs to get better hitting pitches in the zone. I think he will.

As suggested by the zone% (+ his speed + lack of power), he should expect lots of fat pitches to drive in the gaps or slap for singles.

Doing so is his #1 challenge this year.

By: The Doctor

The Doctor — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 01:23:31 +0000

Holy crap is Carl Crawford amazingly poor here. Not that I’m greatly surprised, but yeesh.

By: Dan

Dan — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 22:46:22 +0000

I was thinking, to find a simple, one number measure of a player’s plate discipline, we could simply multiply (1-OSwing%)*ZSwing%

This would, in effect, discount a player’s propensity to swing at pitches he should swing at by his propensity to swing at pitches he should not swing at.

As it were, if we say a player with good discipline should swing at every pitch in the zone (obviously not entirely true, but every statistical measure has it’s limits), and should ignore every pitch outside the zone (not unreasonable), then the perfect player would score a 1 or [(1-0.00%)*100%)]. a player who swings at 25% of pitches outside the zone, and 100% of pitches inside the zone would have a 75% Plate Effeciency. I’ll test this by measuring Jorge, Swisher, ARod, Cano, Melky, and Molina…the top three and bottom three on your list…and Jeter and Gardner, for shits and giggles.

Jorge = (1-.189)* .661 = 53.6% Plate Efficiency
Swish = (1-.174)* .567 = 46.8%
Arod = (1-.213)* .677 = 53.3%
Jeter = (1-.222)* .699 = 54.4%
Molina = (1-.264)* .699 = 51.4%
Melky = (1-.249)* .637 = 47.8%
Cano = (1-.304)* .728 = 50.7%
Gardner = (1-.172)* .507 = 42.0%

outside of Molina, (obviously this does not take into account the ability, or lackthereof, to make solid contact), the list is not overly surprising. what do you all think?

By: JPR

JPR — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 22:17:50 +0000

He radically changed his swing last year and ceased to make a step. He was moving his head too much as the pitches were at thier closest to him which is bad. I think if he can reincorporate his step into his swing without the head movement he will have more power in his swing…maybe Long has that as a goal? As much as the sample says nothing how do we know if he can hit or not? It is still too small.

By: JPR

JPR — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 22:10:45 +0000

The crazy part about Cano is his hit chart is usually pink not white or red or blue because he is a free swinger and gets hits all over the zone.This is why he is a career .306 hitter….Dustin Pedroia’s is .307…….Cano gets a bad rap his defense is smooth and he is surrounded by A Rod Jeter and Tex …which makes him look like a slacker but he actually a smooth dude who needs more confidance in the clutch. These stats dont really show that. Actually, there are not many free swinger type hitters out there…

By: Jammy Jammers

Jammy Jammers — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 22:09:23 +0000

Cano also needs Reuben Sierra’s arm around him in the dugout keeping him nice and warm.

By: tommiesmithjohncarlos a/k/a Archimedes Torquemada

tommiesmithjohncarlos a/k/a Archimedes Torquemada — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 21:41:12 +0000

http://riveraveblues.com/wp-co.....-pwned.JPG (safe)

By: whozat

whozat — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 21:27:30 +0000

Ignore the boversimplification. Is anything that I said untrue?

The evidence we have absolutely bears out the point that I made: Brett Gardner’s approach is to take lots of pitches, and he cannot hit for power. There’s no evidence that his eye is particularly discerning, or that he has good contact skills. Not really evidence that he’s BAD at those things, just not really evidence at all.

It is absolutely possible that Brett has a good eye and that being more aggressive will mean that he increases the ZSwing/OSwing ratio as he increases Swing%. It is also absolutely possible that it goes the other way, because he can’t really tell the difference. It’s also possible that he doesn’t change much (because it’s tough to develop a new approach) and pitcher pound the zone even more, leading to more backwards K’s

By: southernyankeefan

southernyankeefan — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 21:16:00 +0000

Pedro Marinez is very familiar with Matsui’s O-swing.

By: Wes

Wes — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 21:12:37 +0000

I was surprised to see absolutely no correlation between the number of pitches outside the zone (1-Zone%) and the O-Swing%. I would think that pitchers would be more likely to miss the strike zone intentionally if they knew that a player was more likely to chase the pitch.

I’ll bet we’d see a significant correlation if we looked at only 2-strike counts, where the pitcher was trying to get someone to chase for strike 3.