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Wednesday, August 30
A walk on the patient side
Special to ESPN.com
Editor's note: The team of writers from the Baseball Prospectus (tm) will be writing twice a week for ESPN.com. You can check out more of their work at their web site at baseballprospectus.com.
Although drawing walks has always been an important part of a team's ability to score runs, only in the last few years has the base on balls begun to garner the attention it has deserved.
The increased awareness was fueled by the success of the 1998 New York Yankees. Joe Torre's juggernaut won 114 regular-season games and the World Series despite having nobody in the top five in the American League in either home runs or RBI. This fact was all the more confounding since the team led the league in runs scored.
Forced to dig a little deeper for the reason behind the Yankees' offensive prowess, people ultimately came to the conclusion that their patience at the plate was largely responsible for their success. The Bronx Bombers led the league with 653 walks, with the team-wide plate discipline yielding the double whammy of putting runners on base and tiring the opposing starter so the Yankees had more opportunities to feast on the soft underbelly of middle relief.
Perhaps no team recognizes the value of plate discipline more than the Oakland Athletics. The 2000 version of the Green and Gold is second in the AL in run scoring despite ranking 13th in batting average and playing half its games in pitcher-friendly Network Associates Coliseum. They score runs by sowing the seed of walks (2nd in the AL) and harvesting them with the long ball (3rd in the AL in home runs). The Athletics preach the gospel of plate discipline throughout all levels of their organization, and as a result all of their full-season minor-league clubs rank either first or second in their league in bases on balls. Not coincidentally, they are also all among their leagues' top teams in runs scored.
However, not all ballclubs have found, or appear to be actively seeking, religion. Detroit Tigers' manager Phil Garner occasionally tosses out verses of the scripture to the press, but his flock isn't responding. Before catching fire the past two weeks and moving up three slots in the runs scored standings, Detroit had spent the season at the bottom of the AL.
Many Tigers players blame the lack of scoring on the cavernous dimensions of their new stadium. While Comerica Park has played as a pitcher's park, the main reason the Tigers don't score is they are simply not reaching base often enough, ranking 12th in the league in both on-base percentage and walks drawn. The good word of plate discipline isn't trickling down to the minors either, as only one of the organization's four full-season teams is in the top half of its league in walks.
Two of the Tigers' core players are a pair of free-swinging 24-year-olds, Juan Encarnacion and Deivi Cruz. The two have combined for just 33 walks in 905 at-bats this season, a horrific rate, and both have below-average OBPs. It would seem to behoove the Tigers, and specifically batting coach Bill Madlock, to do something to alter their approach at the plate and increase their on-base percentage.
But Madlock says that while every player would like to get on base more, he didn't feel he could significantly modify their approach. He said, "You can't change anyone because they've been doing it this way forever. You can't make a guy work deep in the count if they can't hit deep in the count. You've got to work with what they've got."
Madlock's comments are disturbing on a couple of levels. First, from the Tigers' standpoint, if plate patience isn't being emphasized to their hitters in the minors (and the numbers indicate it isn't), they are unlikely to learn it under Madlock's watch. Secondly, analysts recognize the importance of drawing walks and like to think it's a skill that can be learned, even at the big-league level, if stressed by the organization and practiced diligently.
Let's examine Madlock's assertion that free-swinging players can't change their ways. For the purposes of the study, a free-swinger was defined as a player who had at least 400 plate appearances in his first season in the majors and walked less than 5 percent of his plate appearances. If a player met this criterion, the remainder of his career was checked for any full season in which he walked in 11 percent of his plate appearances.
The "free-swinger" rate corresponds to a season of less than 20 bases on balls in 400 plate appearances, a very low total on the order of players like Deivi Cruz or Garret Anderson. The higher rate produces one base on balls approximately every ten at-bats, which is a common baseline used to identify a hitter with acceptable plate discipline. It's also a rate that's easy to spot when perusing a table of batting statistics.
The search for free swingers was limited to players whose first 400-PA season was in the post-war era (from 1946 on) and yielded a total of 183 players. Of those, only 13 were able to eventually raise their walk rate to the "disciplined" level. These select players are listed below, along with the walk rates from their first full major-league campaign and the season in which they first reached the disciplined level:
Player Debut Rate Year Rate Harold Baines 1980 .037 1989 .125 George Brett 1974 .044 1980 .114 Jose Cardenal 1965 .050 1975 .118 Cesar Cedeno 1971 .039 1979 .119 Julio Franco 1983 .046 1990 .116 Al Kaline 1954 .042 1955 .121 Bob Horner 1979 .043 1982 .116 Ted Kluszewski 1949 .035 1954 .119 Dale Mitchell 1947 .045 1950 .119 Paul Molitor 1978 .035 1987 .129 Brian McRae 1991 .037 1998 .126 Willie Stargell 1964 .039 1967 .126 Eddie Waitkus 1946 .049 1952 .113Overall, it's a fairly impressive baker's dozen, including three Hall of Famers (George Brett, Al Kaline and Willie Stargell), a player just waiting to become eligible (Paul Molitor) and Harold Baines, who has a chance if he reaches 3,000 hits. The only player in the group that had a sub-par career offensively was Brian McRae. Demonstrating that the skill is not readily learned, only Al Kaline reached the disciplined level in less than three years. An incredibly precocious player, Kaline's walks jumped from 22 his rookie year to 82 the following campaign, when he became the youngest player ever to win the batting average title. The list of 170 first-year free-swingers that never found, or have yet to find, the nirvana of plate discipline is too long to enumerate, but includes both Encarnacion (.026 BB/PA) and Cruz (.031 BB/PA). There are but two Hall of Famers in this larger group -- Orlando Cepeda and Roberto Clemente -- although Joe Carter, Tony Oliva and Kirby Puckett may ultimately find their way into the halls of Cooperstown. If they do, that means five HOFers out of the 170 career-long free swingers versus five from the group of 13 players that eventually developed into disciplined hitters. It's natural for a hitter's patience at the plate to improve as he gains experience, but the numbers show that a concerted effort should be made to tighten one's strike zone -- even at the major-league level -- as there are benefits to be reaped in terms of performance and longevity. Twelve of the 13 players in the disciplined group concluded their playing days with above-average offensive totals, but only 47 of the 170 free-swingers did so. While all of the disciplined hitters had big-league careers that spanned at least a decade, less than half (84 out of 170) of the career-long hackers accomplished this feat, despite being everyday performers at one time. Interestingly, at their current pace this season, four players may graduate from the free-swinging group into the more exclusive disciplined set at the conclusion of this season. They are:
Player Debut Rate Year Rate Derek Bell 1993 .039 2000 .111 N. Garciaparra 1997 .048 2000 .113 Shawn Green 1995 .049 2000 .135 Charlie Hayes 1990 .047 2000 .138Four new players joining the disciplined group in a single year, when the average conversion rate over the last half-century has been one every four years, indicates that the importance of patience at the plate is gaining a firmer foothold in the baseball community. While history shows that Madlock is largely correct in his view that you can't significantly change a hitter after he has reached The Show, recent evidence illustrates that more and more tigers -- and maybe even Tigers -- can change their stripes. Jeff Bower may be reached at jbower@baseballprospectus.com.
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