Dunn's Future

[Kyyle23]

BTW I'm not saying the numbers aren't going to be useful but they probably shouldn't be used to try to get a complete picture of a hitter. At least not yet until the process becomes more sophisticated.

 

Wite, Eminor3d, everyone has been saying this from the beginning. these stats are used to put the picture together, they are not the entire picture.

[southsider2k5]

BTW what I'm saying above is basically what Steverson seems to be preaching, don't help the pitcher out but get your pitch and be aggressive when you get it. Great approach for really anyone but especially flawed hitters.

 

You can see his stress of approach versus what we have seen in years past. I wonder if past hitting coaches spent more time on the mechanics of the swing, than the psychology of the swing? The difference this year in so many of our hitters is just shockingly drastic. Dunn, Flowers, Viciedo, Ramirez, etc... they have plans up there this year. When they see a pitch, they seem to recognize the pitch, AND have an idea what they want to do with it. I'm not sure that was happening before.

[witesoxfan]

Ok as simply as possible.

 

You're talking about measuring an event (outside zone swings) and recording it as generally a bad thing/undesirable result, completely ignoring that it in some situations it may be a very, very good thing and doing so selectively may be an indication of excellent strikezone judgement and plate discipline in a hitter.

 

I think that's dumb.

 

As I've clarified, most of the time it IS a bad thing, just as ground balls are typically bad because they're usually very weak outs and when they aren't they usually do very little damage as they are typically singles. Most of the time, swinging at pitches in the zone IS a good thing, just the same as hitting line drives is a good thing because they are hits most of the time and they can even be doubles or homers. However, there are instances where the opposite of the expected effect occurs, where you hit a grounder down the right field line just past the outstretched glove of the 1B and it kicks around and you end up with a triple, or you hit a screaming bullet to LF and the defender makes a stupendous catch.

 

Generally speaking, you can't say so and so's O/Z-Swing is a bad thing because it ultimately does matter how they are performing, but players that swing at pitches out of the zone at a higher rate will typically be worse than those who do not.

[The Ultimate Champion]

You can see his stress of approach versus what we have seen in years past. I wonder if past hitting coaches spent more time on the mechanics of the swing, than the psychology of the swing? The difference this year in so many of our hitters is just shockingly drastic. Dunn, Flowers, Viciedo, Ramirez, etc... they have plans up there this year. When they see a pitch, they seem to recognize the pitch, AND have an idea what they want to do with it. I'm not sure that was happening before.

Yeah I think they were probably getting either too much information or too much contradictory information. Like, instead of someone saying "Do this but don't do that and on some occasions do this," Steverson is just telling them "This is what you are, this is what you do."

 

Sometimes it can really be that simple. I had a pitching coach once years ago just talk to me about something, like my approach and stuff, and in the same side session I went from everywhere and scary to hitting spots immediately. Sometimes the ability is there but it has to be focused the right way, I think that's what Coop is best at. That's all that happened with Thornton.

 

I just love Steverson's philosophy about how hitters are hitters and pitchers are pitchers. Pitchers are there to throw strikes, hitters are there to hit the baseball. Get what you want and be aggressive, and don't be afraid to take it if it's not what you're looking for. You don't need to go into protect mode until you have two strikes but sometimes it's like our hitters have looked like they were in protect mode early in the count, or that somehow they felt like they always had to take a pitch no matter what, which just gets them to that point quicker.

[Eminor3rd]

Ok as simply as possible.

 

You're talking about measuring an event (outside zone swings) and recording it as generally a bad thing/undesirable result, completely ignoring that it in some situations it may be a very, very good thing and doing so selectively may be an indication of excellent strikezone judgement and plate discipline in a hitter.

 

I think that's dumb.

 

I think the key point is if a pitch is outside the zone, are you going to be able to leverage that take into a better pitch to hit later? Most of the time, I think the answer is yes. So it's not that Alexei can't hit stuff out of the zone, but he's going to hit better on pitches in the zone, and if he takes a pitch that is ultimately a ball instead of "expanding his zone," he's taken a step to forcing a better pitch to hit later in the at bat.

 

The exceptions exist though. Like Abreu: probably won't see a much better pitch than a belt high fastball 2 inches outside, so if that's the best he's going to get, and it's close enough to his hot zone that he can do some real damage to it (not simply make contact), there is a case the expanding the zone is the best thing to do.

[Jake]

Earlier this year, FanGraphs looked at O-Swing% and compared it to the same basic thing, excepted they added an arbitrary amount to the strike zone size to see if there were a bunch of hitters who only swung at near-miss pitches. Except for just a handful of guys, you basically saw that if guys swing at some non-strikes, they swing at all of them.

[The Ultimate Champion]

As I've clarified, most of the time it IS a bad thing, just as ground balls are typically bad because they're usually very weak outs and when they aren't they usually do very little damage as they are typically singles. Most of the time, swinging at pitches in the zone IS a good thing, just the same as hitting line drives is a good thing because they are hits most of the time and they can even be doubles or homers. However, there are instances where the opposite of the expected effect occurs, where you hit a grounder down the right field line just past the outstretched glove of the 1B and it kicks around and you end up with a triple, or you hit a screaming bullet to LF and the defender makes a stupendous catch.

 

Generally speaking, you can't say so and so's O/Z-Swing is a bad thing because it ultimately does matter how they are performing, but players that swing at pitches out of the zone at a higher rate will typically be worse than those who do not.

Yeah I can agree with this. I guess I just don't see how it can be all that useful. Maybe this kind of data works well as a starting point or for list making.

 

I.E. I've come around some on WAR, it's a great measure to use when you want to whittle a s***load of variables down very quickly to make a very wide comparison (like adding up the overall value of player A to every player in the league at the same position, or calculating the effectiveness of an amateur draft 8 years out, etc.) but if you really want to make a specific comparison or make a pretty accurate review of a specific player you'll need a lot more data than that.

 

To me, the eye test is still KING, and it's not even close, it's just that as always you can't look over 500 separate ABs or 500 separate batters faced so you need the numbers to tell you where to look and when.

[Eminor3rd]

Earlier this year, FanGraphs looked at O-Swing% and compared it to the same basic thing, excepted they added an arbitrary amount to the strike zone size to see if there were a bunch of hitters who only swung at near-miss pitches. Except for just a handful of guys, you basically saw that if guys swing at some non-strikes, they swing at all of them.

 

Yeah, I remember that. That was a Jeff Sullivan article, right? I'll have to try to find that again.

[Jake]

Yeah, I remember that. That was a Jeff Sullivan article, right? I'll have to try to find that again.

 

Yes. He was most interested in whether this "good lack of discipline" applied to Abreu. It didn't.

[The Ultimate Champion]

I think the key point is if a pitch is outside the zone, are you going to be able to leverage that take into a better pitch to hit later? Most of the time, I think the answer is yes. So it's not that Alexei can't hit stuff out of the zone, but he's going to hit better on pitches in the zone, and if he takes a pitch that is ultimately a ball instead of "expanding his zone," he's taken a step to forcing a better pitch to hit later in the at bat.

 

The exceptions exist though. Like Abreu: probably won't see a much better pitch than a belt high fastball 2 inches outside, so if that's the best he's going to get, and it's close enough to his hot zone that he can do some real damage to it (not simply make contact), there is a case the expanding the zone is the best thing to do.

Imagine the K zone as a box the exact same size you are used to seeing. But instead of it being in a fixed location it is a floating object, and the parameters are set by pitch sequence and location. The hitter just moves his zone up or down, in or out.

 

I guess the main problem with viewing the K zone as fixed is that it assumes 1) the pitcher has full control of it all the time and the hitter has really none, and 2) when the pitch goes outside of it that the pitcher is forcing the hitter to play his game or something. But the truth is that not only can the pitcher beat the hitter both inside and out of the zone, the hitter can also beat the pitcher both inside and out of the zone. And if Michael Young *wants* Mark Buehrle to throw that 86mph fastball 7" off the outside corner so that he can lace it down the line, and if Miguel Cabrera *wants* to yank his hands in and pull that pitch over the LF wall, who is setting up who?

 

You know what would be a really good stat? Adding up the number of hits that occur outside of the K zone on a hitter and subtracting those PAs from batting average, and doing the same with SLG% and RBI total (because hitters will expand to drive in a run, ex didn't Cabrera do this with the Marlins when someone tried to intentionally walk him but left a pitch too close?). Doing that might be one way of comparing the effectiveness of that hitter to others outside of the zone. There are things you could I am sure use zone numbers for but they'd have to be more specific. And again the whole great result that anyone should ever really care about on a macro scale is the quality of PA and whether the pitcher gets the hitter out or whether a hitter gets himself out. In the mind of a hitting coach or a more knowledgeable fan, again on a macro level, a line shot that the fielder robs is just as good as the line shot which goes for a double, because both are indicative of a quality AB. It's just that one result counts and the other doesn't, but as far as I can see the whole point of advanced stats is to try to figure out who is *really* the best, not just who is most fortunate or something.

[Eminor3rd]

Imagine the K zone as a box the exact same size you are used to seeing. But instead of it being in a fixed location it is a floating object, and the parameters are set by pitch sequence and location. The hitter just moves his zone up or down, in or out.

 

I guess the main problem with viewing the K zone as fixed is that it assumes 1) the pitcher has full control of it all the time and the hitter has really none, and 2) when the pitch goes outside of it that the pitcher is forcing the hitter to play his game or something. But the truth is that not only can the pitcher beat the hitter both inside and out of the zone, the hitter can also beat the pitcher both inside and out of the zone. And if Michael Young *wants* Mark Buehrle to throw that 86mph fastball 7" off the outside corner so that he can lace it down the line, and if Miguel Cabrera *wants* to yank his hands in and pull that pitch over the LF wall, who is setting up who?

 

You know what would be a really good stat? Adding up the number of hits that occur outside of the K zone on a hitter and subtracting those PAs from batting average, and doing the same with SLG% and RBI total (because hitters will expand to drive in a run, ex didn't Cabrera do this with the Marlins when someone tried to intentionally walk him but left a pitch too close?). Doing that might be one way of comparing the effectiveness of that hitter to others outside of the zone. There are things you could I am sure use zone numbers for but they'd have to be more specific. And again the whole great result that anyone should ever really care about on a macro scale is the quality of PA and whether the pitcher gets the hitter out or whether a hitter gets himself out. In the mind of a hitting coach or a more knowledgeable fan, again on a macro level, a line shot that the fielder robs is just as good as the line shot which goes for a double, because both are indicative of a quality AB. It's just that one result counts and the other doesn't, but as far as I can see the whole point of advanced stats is to try to figure out who is *really* the best, not just who is most fortunate or something.

 

Yeah, that would require insane manpower, but would definitely be fantastic. Hopefully this is some of the stuff we can start to see with the new MLBAM cameras.

 

[The Ultimate Champion]

Yeah, that would require insane manpower, but would definitely be fantastic. Hopefully this is some of the stuff we can start to see with the new MLBAM cameras.

This is the kind of thing I meant before when I said that changes are happening where the stats are starting to make the game smarter, not dumber.

 

I think the whole problem people like me, and to an extreme, people like Hawk, have with stats is that they can't tell everything that happens within the game, but yet there are some who still treat them as if they do. SoxTalk though, aside from being a massive collection of angry haters who refuse to give appropriate credit to legends like AJ Pierzynski and Mark Buehrle, is actually pretty smart when it comes to interpreting things the right way, which is I come back even when they ban me. I think the issue is just that there are more marginal fans and writers who take stats too far, and doing that prompts action on the other end of the extreme and then you get Hawk talking about TWTW. But IMO Hawk's TWTW is the kind of cocksucker Bill O'Reilly response to the cocksucker Bill Maher observation, but really both are just cocksucker responses and have more to do with cocks and sucking than baseball.

 

IE just the other day my favorite radio personality in the world Mr. Darin DJ Jackson went on in detail about how he doesn't like the over use of the shift. I think part of the game becoming smarter via stats is that stats will cause shifts, shifts will then be overused, and then at some point you'll find yourself in a situation where you get a happy medium, and a shift on a hitter is akin to the question of, do you call in the lefty guy in the pen who is struggling himself to face a left-handed hitter who struggles against lefties in a vacuum, or do you call in the righty who is rolling to face a left-handed hitter when the hitters splits indicate he's better vs. RHP than lefties. Things will be learned, the game will be smarter, but in the end there will still be situations where it's nothing more than an overhyped guessing game, and when you're right it's a "no duh" proposition and maybe you're even a genius, but if you're wrong you're an idiot to do that when there's clearly a better option available.

Edited May 23, 2014 by The Ultimate Champion

[brian310]

With Fielder being out for the year, anyone think that Texas will possibly target Dunn say in about a month?

[Balta1701]

With Fielder being out for the year, anyone think that Texas will possibly target Dunn say in about a month?

Right now they have a worse record than us and are farther back in their division. With their injuries it might not even be possible for them to turn around this season.

[Quin]

My god this thread.

 

On track: I'm beginning to wonder if the Sox trade Dunn/Gordon/Alexei/Conor or trade some of the prospects for cost control guys that can help the team compete now.

 

Damn Sox playing well making decisions hard and s***.