Swing Batter Batter!

Published by on February 5, 2011 | 13 Responses

Today’s quick post is a heat map of swings taken by two hitters with totally different approaches to hitting, Pat Burrell and Pablo Sandoval.

Burrell is your classic ‘takes a lot pitches, doesn’t swing much outside of the zone’ masher. In 11 seasons in the majors, he’s averaged 82 walks per per season while seeing an average of 4.18 pitches per plate appearance — the league average over that time is 3.76 Pit/PA. Burrell’s hitting style also includes a lot of whiffs (career K-rate of 23.8%), but he rarely goes outside of the strike zone. On the other hand, Sandoval doesn’t walk all that much (averaging 50 walks per season over the past two years) and he’s seen around 3.4 pitches per plate appearance over that same time. Sandoval makes much more contact (career K-rate of 12.7%) and he’s known for a swing from head to toes approach.

Below, you’ll see a heat map of both Burrell’s and Sandoval’s 2010 approach at the plate by swings. The darker the heat map, the more swings.

(Click to enlarge)

Burrell’s heat map looks exactly like what I expected. He doesn’t swing much outside of the strike zone. Sandoval’s heat map also looks like I expected — he swings a lot, and he’s unlikely to be very picky when it comes to hitting. I don’t think that, by themselves alone, these graphs tell us a whole lot about each batter, but they do give us a little insight. I think people will often point to Sandoval’s plate approach as a reason why he struggled so much last year and I think that’s a little unfair. When he was hitting in 2009, with the exact same plate approach, I didn’t hear anyone complaining. Yes, I would love to see him be a little more selective when hitting, but Sandoval seems exactly like the type of hitter that could have a bad BABIP year and look worse than he really is. His loss of power was a little concerning. If you split the difference between his 2008-09 and 2010 seasons, he’s probably around a .320-ish BABIP hitter going forward. If so, he should have the ability to hit around .300 and if the power comes back to even the .450 SLG range, he’s an asset to have.

In closing here are some Sandoval projections from ZiPS, CAIRO, and Marcel.

ZiPS: .295/.346/.475
CAIRO: .290/.341/.464
Marcel: .299/.354/.468

I would gladly take any of those projections.

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Adam C
Adam C

We need to remember that Pablo wasn't terrible for all of 2010. In April he absolutely crushed the ball. April 2010 22 G, 97 PA, 23 for 87, .368/.433/.575, 3 HR, 7 doubles, 10 RBI, 12 R, 10 BB, 8 K I distinctly remember talking to another long time Giants fan about Pablo at the end of April. We talked about how amazed we were that Pablo looked even better than he did in 2009. He even drew 10 walks in just 22 games which I took to be a huge deal at that time. Then it just fell apart. It still makes no sense. From Pablo's debut in 2008 to the end of April 2010 Pablo played 216 games. From May 1st 2010 to the end of the 2010 season he played in 130 games. 08/14/08--->04/30/10 : .337/.383/.546 (216 games) 05/01/10--->10/03/10 : .250/.303/.378 (130 games) What's going on here? I don't buy that NL pitchers just "figured him out". So NL pitchers had no clue how to get him out in 216 games then, presto, overnight they figured him out? Also, Pablo had extreme home/road splits in 2010 home: .330/.382/.520, 23 BB, 32 K, 0.72 BB/K road: .208/.266/.299, 24 BB, 49 K, 0.49 BB/K His home/road splits from 2009 home: .361/.312/.600, 24 BB, 36 K, 0.67 BB/K road: .301/.363/.501, 28 BB, 47 K, 0.60 BB/K So Pablo's lost 2010 season is really based on his complete collapse on the road. Pablo's 2010 home stats fit right in with his overall performance from 2008 through April 2010.

Chris Quick
Chris Quick

Careful with those splits, Eugene. I'm generally anti-split, I think they often tell us little (while making confusing assertions) and chucking half your data sample usually is a bad idea. Monthly splits are almost pure noise and rarely tell us anything significant. For example: Pablo accrued 97 plate appearances in April, 2010. Over the entire season he accrued 616 PAs. Or, in other words, April represents about 15% of his total seasonal PAs. Yes, we know he hit well in April, but even after that month, he had 85% of the season to play. So, yeah, if we only include all the data when he performed well, he looks really good. But we can't just ignore most of 2010. I can't claim to know why he struggled so much. There are a lot of theories. But, we should take what happened in 2010, and use it to adjust what we think he's likely to do in the future. The home/road splits thing also confuses the issue. Let's not worry about them too much, unless we want to only play Travis Ishikawa (.801 carer home OPS vs. .660 road OPS) while at home. I would expect, that on a long enough time line, a player's performance between home and road will be very similar (excluding extreme park factor stuff.)

Adam C
Adam C

I guess the important question is what happened after April? His 2010 April is right in line with what he did in 2008-2009. He was still fat and swinging at everything in April yet he was producing at the same level that he did in 2008-09. I doubt on the morning of May 1st than anyone thought that Pablo was going to utterly collapse for the rest of 2010. So the question is why?

Adam C
Adam C

Also wanted to add that in August 2010 Pablo's line was: 28 G, 115 PA, 34 for 109, .312/.348/.560, 6 HR, 16 RBI, 11 R, 7 doubles, 6 BB, 14 Ks. SO Pablo had had two great months and four absolutely lousy months in 2010.

tfjeldsted
tfjeldsted

Pointing out the obvious: Burrell is right handed, Pablo bats switch. Can we see a pair of heat maps from each side of the plate on him? Lumping them together can slightly mask his inside tendency from the left.

Fergie348
Fergie348

People frequently confuse results with process. When you say Pablo didn't change his approach in 2010, I would argue that this is exactly the problem. What I'd like to see are scatter charts for how Pablo was pitched in 2009 (when the league didn't know much about him) compared to how he was pitched in 2010, preferably by counts. I expect that there were far fewer strikes thrown in all counts, especially pitchers counts. Word got around, pitchers and coaches started to realize that you didn't have to throw this guy a strike to get him out. In most cases he got himself out in 2010 with wild swings far outside the zone. I'm not convinced that Pablo's weight or conditioning has anything to do with his hitting. Defense, yes. A heavier Pablo won't have enough range to stick at 3rd base for much longer. I think his hitting woes of 2010 can mostly be attributed to the lack of adjustment to how he was being pitched. I don't have data to back it up, but I saw a lot of Pablo at bats last year where he didn't seem to have any clue whether a pitch coming at him was likely to be in the zone or out of it. This is a huge contrast to a batter like Burrell (or Posey, for that matter) who would take close pitches in hitters counts if it wasn't where he wanted it. Pablo has to have a plan, not just whack-a-doo on every pitch or he won't be playing in the bigs for much longer.

Adam C
Adam C

How do you explain Pablo's August though? He hit well in August (.312/.348/.560) after three lousy months. Did he make adjustments in August? But Pablo collapsed in September reverting back to the Pablo of May-June-July.

parishfrank
parishfrank

Any of those projections would almost be like a solid offseason acquisition.

Otis Anderson
Otis Anderson

interesting contrast. Can you track any season to season variation in how pitchers approached Sandoval?

Chris Quick
Chris Quick

I should be able to, yes. That's a good idea for a post (/scribbles that down) ... I'll see if I can expand on it.

daveinexile
daveinexile

A question about sample size on this. Wouldn't one want at least 3 seasons start getting any kind of meaningful information the the traditional number don't already give?

Otis Anderson
Otis Anderson

It depends on the specific question you want to ask and what kind of variance the answer has. I suspect we're going to want to lower the bar from "statistically signficant" to "suggestive, but not conclusive."

TakiSC
TakiSC

<blockquote cite="">I would gladly take any of those projections. I can't agree with this more...