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April 14, 2008

BP Fantasy Beat

Missing Bat Speed

by Marc Normandin

It may be too early in the season to draw any conclusions about whether a player has either turned a corner or lost an edge, but we can still implement some of the strategies for identifying those players. The thought process is more important than the players involved, since these tools can be applied to any player in a similar situation. For this article, we’ll be looking at some veterans who may have lost some bat speed, as well as some young players who may not have figured it out yet.

After posting one of the more disappointing lines of 2007 at just .222/.311/.413, Andruw Jones has picked up where he left off with a .105/.209/.132 start to 2008. There are tons of players hitting badly at this point in the season, but Jones sticks out for a few reasons. For one thing, he has only hit 11.5 percent of his batted balls for liners; the league average is closer to 20 percent, and his career rate is 18.1. Even last year he was at 17.2 percent. This can easily even out, since 11.5 percent is just three liners out of 26 batted balls, but it’s something to watch.

There are two things that worry me more than his liner rate. Jones’ grounder rate is 69.2 percent; he’s hitting 3.6 times more grounders than flyballs at the moment, an odd thing for a player who has crossed the 40 percent mark for flyball rate the past three years. He’s also striking out in 31.6 percent of his plate appearances, the highest mark he’s had since he first came into the league as a 19-year-old rookie. He’s never hit for much of an average, so if his bat is slowing to the point where he can’t hit for much power, he’s not going to be any help at the plate.

The evidence for his bat slowing is sort of muddled with the few numbers we have to look at this early in the year. He’s pulling 27 percent of the balls he makes contact with to the left side of the infield, and then another 26 percent of them to left field. Only 16 percent of his batted balls have gone to the right side of the field. Last year, Jones hit 33.4 percent of his batted balls to the left side of the infield for a batting average of .171, so that pull rate is nothing new.

Jones is hitting .304 on fastballs so far this year, but the only place he’s killing the ball is right down the middle of the plate and outside; he hasn’t been able to do anything effective with inside pitches yet. This makes me think that so far, he’s only been hitting mistakes off of pitchers who aren’t challenging his bat speed. If that’s the case, Jones' line may not jump to the point where he’s going to be any help for you at a very deep position. Keep an eye on him and watch for improvement or stasis in his batted-ball data, strikeout rate and pitches hit before doing anything rash.