Situational Hitting

[chw42]

There's been a trend going on where we just absolutely refuse to hit sac flies with a runner on third and less than 2 outs. I know it's a super weird thing to be bad at, but our bad record in 1 run games and the fact that the playoffs will be full of close games magnifies this situation even more.

The weird thing is that we weren't always bad at it this year. We're 11th in sacrifice flies in baseball with 35, but also 3rd in PAs with a runner on third and less than 2 outs with 305. We've hit .361 in said situations, so we're bringing in a run about 40% of the time. That's really good. The average ML team hits .316 in those situations. 

So why are we even talking about this? Well, it's cause the results have been night and day since the All-Star break
 

Pre-ASB with man on 3rd and less than 2 outs: .410(best)/.391/.609 in 198 PA with 28 sac flies (4th), 88.4 EV with 12 degree launch angle. BABIP of .437. Run success rate of 59%.

Post-ASB with man on 3rd and less than 2 outs: .268/.368/.415 in 107 PA with 7 sac flies (27th), 84.8 EV with 3 degree launch angle (worst). BABIP of .297. Run success rate of 27%. 

Regression is a b**** ain't it? Not only did we get super lucky in the first half, we also hit a lot more fly balls and hit the ball much harder. A nearly 60% success rate of bringing a runner on third with less than 2 outs is extremely good. The 27% success rate we've seen after the ASB is god awful and it's probably a result of hitting far too many grounders and just not hitting the ball hard enough in general. 

Diving deeper into the numbers, with 1 out and a man on 3rd, our numbers get even worse. In a situation where you must make contact and try to hit a fly ball to ensure a run gets in, we manage to do the following:

Post-ASB with man on 3rd and 1 out: .207(worst)/.311/.293 in 75 PA, 83.3 EV, 1 degree launch angle (worst), 5 sac flies. Run success rate of 23%. 

What's even funnier is that since August 1st, we've managed to have a negative launch angle in said situations. No other team in baseball has managed to achieve this. In a situation where a fly ball gets you a run without a hit, we just decide to hit grounders.
 

So here's what all of this tells me: when we were surprised at how our patched together offense put up runs in the first half of the season, it was because we were lucky and we were extremely efficient at scoring runs with guys on base and when the runs could be had without the benefit of a hit. We all thought that when we got Eloy and Robert back, our offense would become a juggernaut and score consistently. It's been the very opposite of that. We went from an offense with a high floor and low ceiling in the first half to an offense with a very low floor and very high ceiling in the 2nd half. Part of that is our inability to cash in runners with a runner on 3rd and less than 2 outs. You may think that those situations are just a fraction of our PAs this year and you'd be right. It's not a big sample. However, if we executed at the rate we did in the first half with a runner on 3rd and less than 2 outs, we'd have 30 more runs in the 2nd half alone. That's not an insignificant number. Hell, had we just done the ML average, we'd at least 10 more runs. That alone there is a win in pythagorean terms. 

I'm not sure if the guys are just pressing or if it's a personnel or a hitting coach problem, but something is very wrong with our approach with a guy on 3rd and less than 2 outs. I know everybody who's been watching on a daily basis like I have notice it. Quite frankly, it's getting old and it's costing us games down the stretch here. Those games may not mean a lot, but the ones coming up in 3 weeks do and I hope to god we fix our issues by then. Cause every run matters in the playoffs, especially when you can get them without the benefit of a hit. 

[hi8is]

@chw42 says, “situational hitting”… the entire team responds, “what’s that?”

[TheTruth05]

very well done, it's a troubling trend for sure and hopefully once we have a legit 1-9 of starters this can be fixed. Vaughn especially has been brutal so hopefully he comes back refreshed and this team can stop leaving so many runs on the basepaths