There is a widespread belief in the baseball community that analytics makes the game less enjoyable and makes decision-making and transactions more valuable and interesting than the actual game played on the “emerald chess board.” Graphs and spreadsheets don’t make baseball less interesting—they make it more interesting. Analytics does not explain why something happens in the course of the game, but it hopes to explain how something happens. It tries to explain how a player that was mediocre last year is having a breakout year or how a pitcher who once was a staff ace looks like a glorified fifth starter.
Analytics values process above all. The exploits of left-handed hitting outfielders Joc Pederson of the Los Angeles Dodgers and Bryce Harper of the Washington Nationals are two players whose processes should be valued in a big way.
There is a baseball truism—power comes with age. A player, no matter how strong or talented, needs to develop what is a truly replicable home run swing. You can’t teach power, but it’s something that doesn’t ultimately come easy at the Major League level.
Pederson and Harper, young outfielders not built like enormous sluggers, should not be doing things like this in their age 23 and 22 seasons respectively. There are obviously exceptions to the rule, but generally power is much more the province of players in their latter twenties and thirties. The power tool should replace the speed tool in the course of a player’s twenties. With age should also come plate discipline and selectiveness.
Bryce Harper’s major league career boasts an 11.5% walk rate and a .362 OBP. These numbers are impressive, but his 2015 numbers have pointed to an even greater amount of discipline and selectiveness in what are still very small sample sizes. In 165 PA, Harper has hit 13 homers, walked 21.2% of the time, and struck out in 23.6% of his plate appearances. So far in 2015, the young Nationals outfielder has only swung at 44.5% of the pitches he has seen and at nearly 70% of the pitches in the strike zone. In terms of process, this means that Harper is keying in on the pitches he wants to hit and ignoring all other ones.
The chart below provided by Fangraphs.com shows the swing percentage on all pitches thrown to Harper so far in 2015.
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It is easy to see that he is looking for pitches away which he can extend his arms on and make the most damage with that perfect sweet left-handed swing. Compare this to the heatmap off the slugging percentage on the same pitches so far in 2015.
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It’s fair to say that wherever Harper is choosing to actually swing at pitches he has been making contact and doing damage. Harper is athletic and very strong. He can obviously do a lot of good things with his body, but ultimately his most valuable tool is his eye and his brain.
Pederson similarly ranks very high on the three true outcomes stats (home runs, walks and strikeouts) with 10 home runs on a 37.0% HR/FB rate, 19.4% walk rate, and 31.3% strikeout rate. This means that 87.7% of his plays result without the ball being put in play. The only way to support this sort of approach is with an unearthly 43.2% swing rate and a 27.2% chase rate.
Having good plate discipline, pitch recognition, and having a process is nothing new for baseball. But it is interesting when it is put into practice by young players who by all accounts should not have nearly this much of an on-base tool or this much in-game power. Pederson (like Harper) is extremely selective, but his sweet spot is a little different than Harper’s on the chart.
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Smart players have always had some sort of mental “database” of their own sweet spots or pitch preferences. What the data revolution in baseball means is that we as fans, media, and decision makers can finally come even close to tapping into that neural network and somehow make a dent into explaining how players look like they do.