Peabody: Life, Friends Baseball

I wasted my time looking at strike out percentage of both young Mariner hitters and other young hitters. The other young hitters I looked at were a variety of players that went on to be great hitters and hall of fame players to see if there was anything to draw from that examination.

Geoff Baker was riffing on this yesterday and linked it to comments by manager Wedge about hitters being aggressive and not looking to walk.

By way of disclaimer, I freely admit that I did not look at every player in the hall of fame for their strike out percentage. I looked at some of them and saw some interesting patterns. Enough to talk about it and continue to look at it.

There does not seem to be a lot of successful hitters, well rounded hitters who strike out 25% or more. There are a few hitters that have power and also walk a lot who strike out 25% or more…but not a lot more than 25%.

Here is something that really stood out said, “Lookie here!”

Most players strike out more in their first year in the majors than they do through most of the rest of their career, excepting those that survive to a ripe old age.

As a general statement it is a year of adjustment for young players, a time when they figure out a way to consistently see the ball well and not get fooled, either by sneaky guys quick pitching them or by not moving soon enough to effectively see breaking pitches. Mickey Mantle, Ken Griffey Jr., Prince Fielder, Babe Ruth, Alex Rodriguez and many, many other players show that pattern.

As players settle in to playing at the top of the heap, they strive to be consistent and repeat best swing practices. They start early enough so their motions are slow and unhurried until they let their hands go. If they start late, you will see hitters way over their front foot and swinging at stuff in the dirt. If they start late their head is moving when they should be visually locked on the ball.

That mostly sounds like witch craft I suppose, but go on youtube and look for videos of really good hitters such as Arod. See if you can find them working in a cage as well as game stuff. They try to repeat their motions and hit the ball right in the zone, not way out in front.

Hitters strike out when they swing at the wrong pitch. That probably sounds too simple, but often times the pitch they miss is a ball, other times a pitch they can’t hit that is a strike due to their being late. If their head is stable the bad pitch stuff gets reduced, except for bad umps.

The Mariners have a bunch of new hitters that just arrived last year. Some struggled a little, some more than that. I don’t think manager Wedge’s suggestions on attitude have much to do with either strike out percentages and certainly not on having a high onbase percentage. I suspect that if those young players get a chance to play, instead of the near dead free agents signed this winter, you will see a noticeable improvement. Telling players to go up there and hack, is not a great suggestion either.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 4th, 2012 at 11:10 am by terrybenish and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.