Hitters: What Went Wrong?

Earlier I wrote about what went right for batters in 2015. In this piece I will touch on what went wrong for the lumber lashers. 

LINE DRIVE RATES

These fellas simply didn’t hit the ball on the line with any frequency this past season.

Jose Bautista hit 40 homers but otherwise he didn’t hit the ball that hard. Josh Donaldson hit 41 homers and had 41 doubles, but his 17.3 percent line drive rate wasn’t even league average (19-20 percent most years). His career rate is just 17.7 percent.

Russell Martin had the worst line drive rate of his 10-year career. Two of the last three years he’s been under 17 percent.

Manny Machado crushed it going 35/20, but that line drive rate fell as his fly ball rate increased (31 percent the last two seasons before pushing it up to 38.5 percent in 2015). More fly balls equals more outs in the long run.

Jose Altuve had a mere 18.1 percent line drive rate. The mark was over 22.5 percent the last two seasons. He was the only player in baseball at 18.1 percent or lower to have a BABIP over .314 (it was .329).

Prince Fielder hit .305, his second season with a mark in the .300s. Oddly, his 18.3 percent line drive rate was a five-year low.

BABIP FAILURE

Albert Pujols had the worst mark in the league. He’s never been a big BABIP guy, his career mark is .297, but this is the third straight season the mark has been under .266.

Brian McCann has been under .240 each of the last two years and three times in four seasons.

Bautista blasts homers so he doesn’t need a huge BABIP mark. His .237 rate was the third worst of his career, however.

Brian Dozier just isn’t a BABIP guy. Four seasons and he’s never hit the .280 mark.

Joc Pederson blasted 26 homers but he struck out 170 times in 480 at-bats and generally didn’t produce hits unless the ball left the yard (BABIP doesn’t count homers). Pederson hit .210 on the season. Yikes.

David Ortiz had a great season as a run producer, but for a second straight year he failed to reach a .265 BABIP. His career mark is .299.

Todd Frazier has alternated decent and poor BABIP efforts. Here is his mark the last four seasons: .316, .269, .309 and .271.

WHERE DID THE POWER GO?

From the Stats City Sabermetric Primer –

ISOLATED POWER, or ISO (created by Branch Rickey and Allan Roth) Slugging % - Batting Average: A sabermetric measure which attempts to describe a hitter's overall effectiveness by measuring the player's ability to generate extra-base hits. Batting average measures all hits without any attention being paid to what type of knock they are. SLG measures all bases earned (including singles). ISO measures only extra-base hits while excluding the other hits. The historical average for ISO is around .120, with .080 being roughly equivalent to a singles hitter, while anyone over .200 should be considered a power hitter. ISO was apparently created by baseball great Branch Rickey, along with Allan Roth in the 1950’s, though they termed it “Power Average.”

Alcides Escobar was the worst hitter in baseball in terms of driving the baseball with a sickly .064 mark. One other was under 0.70 – Erick Aybar at .069. There were 16 men with a mark under .100.

Nick Markakis is a solid run producer, 73 scored in ‘15, and he gets on base (.370 OBP). Vacuous power bat though – three homers. At least he hit 38 doubles.

Avisail Garcia had a mark of .108. He had a career-best 13 homers but most were hoping for 20 or more. His ISO fell from .169 in 2014. Disappointing.

Christian Yelich may never learn to drive the ball. His .116 mark was a third straight season between .108 and .116.

Jason Heyward had a .146 mark. That’s better than the .113 mark he had in 2014 but still well off his career pace (.163).

Ian Desmond had a mark of .151, just a bit below his .160 career level. Still, the mark was at least .173 the past three seasons. 

TAKE A WALK KID

Jean Segura walked 13 times this season. Honestly, is that even possible? I mean I see that it happened, but I cannot believe my eyes are accurately reading the number. Am I? Simply embarrassing.

Salvador Perez has a horrible 2.4 percent walk rate (walks / plate appearances). His career mark is 3.5 percent. Just like Segura, Perez walked 13 times all season. Truly embarrassing.

Starlin Castro was between 30 and 36 walks each year from 2011-14. He walked a mere 21 times in 2015.

Dee Gordon has seen a severe reduction in his walk rate the past three seasons: 9.4, 4.8 and 3.8 percent. His BB/K rate has been a subpar 0.28 the past two seasons. He really depends on that huge BABIP (.383).

Adam Jones continues to be a star despite having no idea what four balls means. He’s never walked 37 times in a season and has been at 25 or less three straight seasons. Incredible really.

Altuve did what he always does – swing at everything and run really fast. For the third straight year his walk rate was between 4.8 and 5.1 percent. 

TAKE A SEAT MEAT 

Chris Davis had a 31 percent K-rate (strikeouts / plate appearances). That’s the fourth time in five seasons that he’s hit at least 30 percent on the whiff rate. His game isn’t about batting average, never will be, but he can bash the ball.

Michael Taylor at 30.9 percent is something he’s going to have to address. Nice power-speed combo, but that average is definitely in question (.229 average).

Kris Bryant had a great season overall, but 199 punch-outs are at such a rate that his .275 batting average is certainly in doubt. Hard to maintain that mark with all the strikeouts. His teammate Addison Russell also was a whiff monster.

Anthony Gose has no power with 10 career homers. Pretty tough to think much about him filling a prominent role with any fantasy squad. The 23 steals is something, but the .321 OBP and lack of pop really means he should be a part-time player.

For the second time in two seasons Brandon Belt had a K-rate over 26 percent. His career mark is 24 percent.

Chris Owings had the worst BB/K ratio amongst the group at 0.18. That’s half the league average. Terrible.

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