Valen wrote:I think strike zone judgement standards have changed in recent years. Today's player does not see a high strikeout rate as a problem. An out is an out. They focus on hitting the ball hard and taking a good swing. And for most teams I think it is coached that way. When I was young almost all hitters adjusted their approach with 2 strikes to put the ball in play and avoid strikeouts. More and more though I am seeing players who have been coached to not change their approach. Just focus on hitting the ball hard. Once the decision is made to swing make the swing count. This results in a high swing and miss rate. But it does not necessarily translate in to a low BA. For many it does but there are many who do not believe it results in any lower BA than the player would have had anyway.
Actually, an out isn't just an out, as statistical/sabrmetrical analysts--like Paul Podesta with Billy Beane--have well shown. The significant problem with a strikeout is it doesn't put the ball in play. Putting the ball in play can advance a runner and/or force the defense into making an error or a costly error in judgment helping the offensive team. A strikeout fails to do any of those things.
As to batters not "changing their approach" to better choose pitches, I've never heard of this. A part of a batting coach's job is to work on pitch selection, since that is something all batters can improve. However, if you can actually show minor league hitters like Baez are actually coached to "not change their approach" as to pitch selection, please share some examples.
Sabermetrics these days brings out stats that focus on net production. Reduced swings may mean reduced strikeouts but if those strikeouts are translated to ground ball or fly ball outs sabermetrics says they mean little compared to the value of the extra HRs and line drives that a consistent swing hard approach delivers. BA in many cases is now giving way to OBP and more recently the "well hit average" and "BABIP". Many saber driven teams look past the high strikeouts and focus on his BA is on balls he puts in play. Those saber focused scouts will look at his upward trend of .319 in 2013, .322 in 2014, and .403 BABIP this year and see that as evidence of better plate discipline. He is recognizing strikes, swinging hard, and getting hits more frequently when he makes contact.
Yes, Sabrmetrics does focus on net production, but focusing on net production does require focus on what
detracts from it as well. So, sabrmetrics does not argue for poor pitch selection that leads to strikeouts and poor batting results. Also, as I pointed out earlier, ground balls and fly balls, as opposed to strikeouts, can produce sacrifices, sacrifice flies, and errors producing runs and/or prolonging innings. If Baez continues his extremely high strikeout rate he showed in Chicago, he'll just continue making many outs that cannot be productive at-bats.
Secondly, while BA is giving way to OBP and BAPIP, if Baez continues the poor strike-zone judgment and strikeouts he showed and produced in Chicago, he
won't have a decent OBP you, yourself, admit to be important. And please tell me how you know exactly how scouts will judge Baez, particularly when they focus more on present performance, not statistical trends--that's the statistical analysts job. One things' for sure, the analysts will know of that recent production, as well as his god-awful .227 OBP and 95 K's in 213 ABs in Chicago last year, and
won't be predicting his sure success until he shows he can do better than that in the majors.
Plate discipline has come to strictly mean when you swing was the ball in or close to the strike zone and did you lay off pitches out of the zone. With this new definition a player who lays off enough balls to collect walks pushing up the OBP is often described by scouts as having improved strike zone discipline. In other words strike zone discipline has morphed in to percentages of swings on strikes and non-swings on balls. That is now separated almost completely from contact rate which is how often you connect when you swing and how hard you hit the ball when you make contact.
I agree with this, but you've now completely contradicted yourself. At the beginning, you said nothing about "laying off pitches out of the zone". You said batters were just coached like so:
More and more though I am seeing players who have been coached to not change their approach. Just focus on hitting the ball hard. Once the decision is made to swing make the swing count. This results in a high swing and miss rate.
That is antinomical to what you just said above. If one is only focusing on "hitting the ball hard," one can't lay off enough balls out of the zone or laying off enough balls to collect walks. So, you've contradicted yourself. Also, if Baez doesn't show the strike-zone judgment you dismissed at the top of your post, he won't lay off of those balls out of the zone or collect walks either. So, you contradicted yourself again.
The modern saber crowd probably does not care that Chris Davis could lead the league in strikeouts. They care his walk rate is high enough to drive a decent OBP and the number of runs he drives in and scores by hitting HRs. Nobody in Chicago is going to care if he strikes out 200 times if he also hits 40 HRs and drives in 90+.
Actually, they do care. If Davis could cut down his strikeouts without minimizing his power, he would put more balls in play and do more damage. However, if that would compromise his power production,
then they wouldn't.
That also goes for Baez. If he doesn't show excellent strike zone judgment beyond the very minimal standard for strike zone judgment you originally proffered, he won't likely be hitting 40 hrs or staying in the lineup long enough to do so.
Even if he hits 30 hrs--scouts don't see 40 hr power anymore--they won't be as sanguine about a ridiculous 200 K's in a season, as you claim. There were guys named Kingman and Deer who hit 30 hrs and struck out a lot, without ever "producing" 200 K's. Their teams were hardly happy with that trade-off.
Sat Aug 29, 2015 10:44 pm