Over the weekend, MJ Recanati of Was Watching pondered Nick Johnson’s plate selectivity. Currently, to start the season, Johnson is hitting .158/.407/.286, causing some concern that the patient DH might be acting passively, rather than using his eagle eye to setup advantageous hitting counts. In MJ’s piece, he noted that Johnson was seeing an “extremely high percentage of fastballs” – 67%, second only to Derek Jeter – in the Yankees’ latest game against the Texas Rangers and connected that to being, perhaps, too passive (passive, not selective), for as logic would suggest, a fastball is easier for a player to hit than a breaking ball.
While I see what MJ is trying to get at, I think another bit of data might be more useful in deciding whether or not Nick Johnson has gone from being wonderfully selective to particularly passive over his first 12 games. For Johnson, in the zone or outside of the zone – ball or strike – is the real key, not necessarily the pitch type in one game (the fastballs cited by MJ might have been outside of the strike zone). Thus, let’s take a quick look at Johnson’s season swing percentage on pitches over the plate, relative to the rest of the league.
According to FanGraphs, Johnson has swung at only 44.1% of the pitches thrown inside of the strike zone. Again, these are pitches that are over the plate (according to umpires). That number is, at this moment, the lowest in baseball, as the season average across the league is currently 63.7%. Now, is this a bad thing? Not really, as Johnson’s swing percentage on balls in the zone (i.e., Z-Swing%) is expected to be lower than the league’s mark, given his plate discipline (he won’t go after an unhittable fastball on the corner of the plate, for example). However, Johnson’s swing percentage on hittable pitches over 12 games is just too low, even for him, as his career average is 59.4% (last year, it was 55%). With those numbers in mind, one can make the case that Johnson is is possibly being somewhat unassertive. Furthermore, Johnson is hitting balls in the zone when he actually swings – his contact rate on balls over the plate is 93.3%, while the league average is 88.1% – so why not swing when the pitch is right “there.”
Of course, this is a quick analysis using a 12-game sample. Essentially, what I have said here, unless it continues well into the season, is meaningless (this is a blog, we have to find something to discuss). Johnson could rattle off a handful of hits this week, dramatically transforming the numbers featured above. That’s why I am not worried (and you shouldn’t be worried either). Johnson himself has said that he can fall into some passive lulls at the plate and perhaps this is one of those moments, but he’ll be fine.
Photo by Al Bello/Getty Images
Original Story:
http://www.i-yankees.com/?p=19951
