Cardinals Plate Discipline

I see you left out Brendan Ryan; I presume it’s because you thought that green bar sitting at about 0.989 was a bug in your analysis somewhere.

My next reaction: small sample size, but if the BABIP didn’t prove that thurston’s hitting is not going to last, look at that ridiculous chase rate, coupled with a low watch rate. Ugh. His BA has got to come crashing down and soon. although I guess some of it is 2008.

it’s interesting after our brief panic attack about ankiel’s plate discipline and slump to see that his discipline is actually getting much better.

again, in a very small sample size, it does seem that barden and greene’s discipline have improved dramatically.

harry, what’s your sense on the noise ratio in this data? how many PA’s give you a meaningful sense of what the batter is actually doing? I would imagine that the sample size doesn’t need to be terribly large, since the stats (other than the nkSLG) are not outcome dependent and don’t need to account for the randomness of line drives being hit straight at a fielder or grounders going through a hole. still, facing a particularly wild pitcher (say, Oliver Perez) could throw a confound in here in small sample sizes.

Here’s a handy link
http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/fantasy/article/when-do-stats-become-meaningful/

The rate shown is SLG, not BA, so I don’t know the stabilization point for that.

I realized now that the graphs are missing the pitch counts (beyond the baselines). Oops.

For 2009 they range from 11 (LaRue) to 243 (Albert). You’d like to have twice as many as Albert has, more like 500, before having much confidence in the rates. That’s a guesstimate.

Here are the pitch counts

LaRue 2007 314
LaRue 2008 594
LaRue 2009 11
Ankiel 2007 607
Ankiel 2008 1717
Ankiel 2009 179
Pujols 2007 1033
Pujols 2008 2264
Pujols 2009 243
Thurston 2008 21
Thurston 2009 133
Ludwick 2007 713
Ludwick 2008 2317
Ludwick 2009 177
Duncan 2007 601
Duncan 2008 970
Duncan 2009 223
Greene 2007 1648
Greene 2008 1554
Greene 2009 202
Molina 2007 598
Molina 2008 1580
Molina 2009 224
Schumaker 2007 310
Schumaker 2008 2077
Schumaker 2009 169
Barden 2007 92
Barden 2008 29
Barden 2009 86
Ryan 2007 534
Ryan 2008 813
Ryan 2009 69
Rasmus 2007 6
Rasmus 2009 147
Freese 2009 72

Great stuff, as always.

Looks to me like Ankiel just isn’t hitting the ball square. He’s watching more pitches than he didn’t last year and he isn’t chasing any more than he did a year ago — but when he makes contact, the ball isn’t going as far.

Greene’s graph is one of the singular reasons I wanted to see this data: I wanted to see if what I’m seeing with my own eyes is playing out statistically, and it is. Greene’s watching more pitches and chasing fewer which tells me that he’s become a the more disciplined hitter that we saw in spring training. Looking at this, it seems like only a matter of time before he gets on a hot streak and starts hitting doubles and homers as pitchers have to throw him more strikes than in years past.

Rasmus , based on the career chart, has the lowest Chase rate.

ankiel, on the other hand, is a quite the pleasant surprise. seemed like he was chasing a lot this year, but i guess much of it could be contributed to bad luck. i did notice several games whwere he hit the ball hard but right at someone

It seems like the sample size for the SLG data is probably too small to make any kind of predictions or analysis, but the other three categories give a pretty good picture of what’s going on with our batters. It looks like Skip and Colby have a very good top-of-the-order approach to hitting. It looks like Molina has the right approach if he could just outrun a molassis spill.

I wonder if Ludwick’s swing numbers are higher due to seeing more good pitches hitting behind Pujols. He’s hitting so well, but I wonder if there will be a correction to his numbers coming up due to that swing rate.

when I look at that omnibus career graph and notice that there’s a taller nkSLG bar than Pujols’…Thudwick indeed.