When occasionally perusing his statistical line, the last number Adam Dunn looks at is batting average.
“Honestly, I really don’t look at batting average,” Dunn said. “I know my job is to drive in runs and get on base and things of that nature. I don’t care how I get on. I mean, whatever: Walk, hit, I don’t care. But it’s down at the bottom.”
Dunn entered Sunday’s series finale against the Astros hitting .226. But the White Sox designated hitter also ranked second in baseball with 19 home runs and third in the American League with 45 RBIs. He has a .371 on-base percentage, and is tied with Joey Votto for the most walks in the Majors at 48.
Taking his offensive importance one step further, Dunn is No. 1 in the AL at 4.49 pitches viewed per plate appearance, and ranks No. 1 in baseball with 1,164 pitches viewed this season. Those numbers aren’t important to Dunn, as much as they represent his norm as a professional.
“Every year I was kind of up there in that,” said Dunn of the pitches-viewed category. “It goes back to having my approach that is good and bad. Obviously, you want to get the starter out of there as quick as possible, so the more pitches you can see early in a game, the better.”
“He just seems like he’s on base all the time,” said White Sox manager Robin Ventura of Dunn. “Everybody wants their average to be up higher, but I don’t want him to have his average go up without him having the power. He has good at-bats when he goes up there. He’s not a typical three-hole hitter, but for us, he’s on base enough to be a three-hole hitter.”
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1. jingoist Posted: June 10, 2012 at 05:53 PM (#4153329)i don't hit a lot of pitches, but when i do, i prefer them to leave the park
EDIT: he's also on pace to shatter the single-season K record
C'mon, Adam--you can do it!!
52 HRs
130 BB's
255 K's
that would be a rather, ummm..."unusual" season, shall we say
What a hero!
What are you going to do, throw meatballs? He's like 300 pounds and he kills the ball.
Yeah, this is true. Watching a pitcher carve up a batter and get the K is just about my favorite thing in the world, but I would hate for the strikeout to be cheapened by overabundance. Why do you think this is? Is it just the continuing evolution of hitters' approaches, ie selling out on contact more and more for OBP/SLG, or is there something else driving strikeout rates? I'm not sure pitchers are doing anything all that different, and league-wide BABIP is pretty constant historically isn't it? (Taking some K's at the plate might make sense strategically in response to increasing defensive efficiency on balls in play). What kind of players would Adam Dunn and Mark Reynolds be in the 1930's?
Just curious, did you generate a list or is their web site that tracks individual TTO%? I would be interested in seeing who else ranks at the top.
It's because there is no particular incentive for hitters to avoid striking out (there's no inverse correlation between K rate and effectiveness, and in fact short of a certain point there is a direct correlation between the two), but there is an extremely powerful incentive for pitchers to strike hitters out (K rate is the single most prominent indicator of pitching success).
It's mostly not what the pitchers are doing that's driving K rates up, it's what the hitters are doing. Throughout history hitters have moved, inexorably over time, toward lighter, thinner-handled bats and whipping them through the strike zone faster and faster and faster, trading off increased strikeouts for increased power.
There's also a kind of natural selection at work. For all the bluster you hear from a few of them on the issue, baseball men have always been willing to accept a hitter that strikes out a lot if he hits the ball out of the park once in a while. Whereas they are not willing to accept pitchers that don't strike anybody out. This creates constant upward pressure on strikeouts--and in fact with only a very few very short-lived exceptions, strikeout rates have been steadily rising from the days of Tommy Bond to today. And the rate of increase has actually amped up the past ten years.
Bill James posted an excellent article studying this issue to his (paywall) website a few months ago. Most of the above is derived from that (or is a poor paraphrase of it).
If you want K rates to go down, you have to trade off power to do it; the two are very closely related. The simplest way to achieve it would be thicker bat handles. Less bat speed = less power but more contact. The very sad thing is we'll probably eventually get thicker bat handles after some unfortunate catcher or umpire dies from a bat splinter through the jugular, and then get lower K rates as a side effect.
I think there is a better chance of a baseball striking a pitcher in the head and killing him, than there is of the splinter having enough force after breaking away from a forward-moving bat to go backwards and pierce the skin of someone behind the batter.
We're more likely to see "pitcher helmets" than thicker bat handles.
Yeah, actually the more I think about it the more I think this is true. Even if someone DID take a splinter in the neck, you'd just see all the catchers and umpires wearing goalie-style neck shields and the hitters continuing to swing thin-handled bats as hard as they can. Hitters like it.
Rk Player HR BB SO OPS+ PA Year Age Tm Lg BA OBP SLG1 Adam Dunn 46 108 195 147 681 2004 24 CIN NL .266 .388 .569
2 Adam Dunn 40 114 168 140 671 2005 25 CIN NL .247 .387 .540
3 Adam Dunn 40 112 194 114 683 2006 26 CIN NL .234 .365 .490
4 Adam Dunn 40 101 165 136 632 2007 27 CIN NL .264 .386 .554
5 Adam Dunn 40 122 164 131 651 2008 28 TOT NL .236 .386 .513
6 Adam Dunn 38 116 177 144 668 2009 29 WSN NL .267 .398 .529
7 Brad Wilkerson 32 106 152 120 688 2004 27 MON NL .255 .374 .498
8 Jack Cust 33 111 197 130 598 2008 29 OAK AL .231 .375 .476
9 Jason Bay 35 102 156 138 689 2006 27 PIT NL .286 .396 .532
10 Jay Buhner 40 119 175 132 665 1997 32 SEA AL .243 .383 .506
11 Jim Edmonds 42 103 167 147 643 2000 30 STL NL .295 .411 .583
12 Jim Edmonds 42 101 150 171 612 2004 34 STL NL .301 .418 .643
13 Jim Thome 33 127 171 142 629 1999 28 CLE AL .277 .426 .540
14 Jim Thome 37 118 171 132 684 2000 29 CLE AL .269 .398 .531
15 Jim Thome 49 111 185 170 644 2001 30 CLE AL .291 .416 .624
16 Jim Thome 47 111 182 154 698 2003 32 PHI NL .266 .385 .573
17 Mark McGwire 58 101 159 170 657 1997 33 TOT ML .274 .393 .646
18 Mark McGwire 70 162 155 216 681 1998 34 STL NL .299 .470 .752
19 Mike Schmidt 38 101 180 141 674 1975 25 PHI NL .249 .367 .523
20 Ryan Howard 58 108 181 167 704 2006 26 PHI NL .313 .425 .659
21 Ryan Howard 47 107 199 144 648 2007 27 PHI NL .268 .392 .584
22 Sammy Sosa 64 116 153 203 711 2001 32 CHC NL .328 .437 .737
23 Troy Glaus 47 112 163 150 678 2000 23 ANA AL .284 .404 .604
24 Troy Glaus 41 107 158 133 708 2001 24 ANA AL .250 .367 .531
all those with a single-season tto% > .500
Preceded by dialing 9, presumably.
Minor leaguers.
The way each of them attempts to field thier assigned position alogside their K-rate would have them struggling to land a position in a MLB club.
WTF no Rob Deer on that list?
Just looked it up, and he never really came particularly close-- never walked more than 89 times, and only hit 30+ HRs twice. Did strike out more than 150 times in 6 different seasons.
if you look at my list in #25, neither Deer nor Bonds were TRUE TTO guys--Deer didn't walk that much, and Barry Lamar didn't K very much
But … but … I thought that timelining would suggest that Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig would hit about .233 nowadays. That would mean both Reynolds and Dunn would hit about .340 in the 1930s. And with 90 home runs a year! :)
1985 NL Dale Murphy - 37 HR / 90 BB / 141 K (152 OPS+)
1983 NL Mike Schmidt - 40 / 128 / 148 (led league in OPS+)
1958 AL Mickey Mantle - 42 / 129 / 120 (led league in OPS+)
1930 NL Hack Wilson - 56 / 105 / 84 (RBI record, led league in OPS+)
1928 AL Babe Ruth - 54 / 137 / 87 (led league in OPS+)
1927 AL Babe Ruth - 60 / 137 / 89 (home run record, led league in OPS+)
1924 AL Babe Ruth - 46 / 142 / 81 (led league in OPS+)
1923 AL Babe Ruth - 41 / 170 / 93 (MVP, led league in OPS+)
Sure, but how often has that been necessary for Dunn? He's been hitting behind two good baserunners (De Aza and Beckham) and in front of one who's having a fantastic season so far (Konerko).
In fact, you could argue that his high K has been preferable; he's only hit into one double play all year.
He's put up a .385 OBP at the top of the lineup. B-ref has him at -0.0 dWAR, Fangraphs has him with a UZR of 1.3. Anecdotally, he plays a good, but not great, CF. He's not an MVP candidate or anything, but he at least should get some consideration as an All Star, though I doubt he will.
Well, if you start out by leading the league in Home Runs and Walks, you are probably having a pretty good season.
I'd be shocked if it didn't. GIDP's are killers.
Based on run expectancy (source: Tango), with a runner on first:
0 outs:
Before: 0.853
K: 0.504 (worth -0.349 runs)
GIDP: 0.094 (worth -0.759 runs)
move up runner: 0.678 (worth -0.175 runs)
-0.349 = -0.759x + -0.175(1-x)-0.349 = -0.584x - 0.175
-0.174 = -0.584x
0.318 = x
If more than 31.8% of all ground balls Dunn hits in that situation are turned into double plays, then striking out is better.
1 out:
Before: 0.504
K: 0.216 (worth -0.288 runs)
GIDP: 0.00 (worth -0.504 runs)
move up runner: 0.325 (worth -0.179 runs)
Using the same method as above, if more than 33.5% of all ground balls hit are turned into double plays, then striking out is better.
Unfortunately, I don't know where to find out how many ground balls Dunn has hit with a runner on first and less than two outs this year, or for his career. So we can't say for sure if striking out has been more valuable than grounding out.
This is a bit of a strawman, in that contact can obviously lead to more outcomes than I've analyzed here; however, the original post heavily implies that grounding out would be better (or at least I read it that way).
Dunn's flyball rate is at 50.0% this year, up slightly from his career average (47.1%). His ground ball rate is the lowest of his career, at 27.1% (33.2% average). His HR/FB is way up, at 33.1% compared to 21.8% for his career.
In terms of the double play analysis, fly balls aren't really going to factor in. Very few fly balls advance a runner from first. You're right that contact can obviously lead to bad defensive plays, which is non-trivial.
I guess I'd rather have Adam Dunn doing what he's doing now, though; I'll gladly trade some runners advancing (and double plays) for the power he's showing again.
But that's not the only tradeoff. If he changes his approach to strike out less, how many fewer home runs and walks would he have?
Judging by last year, many.
I don't think there's any evidence he changed his approach (or the White Sox encouraged him to) last year. I think he just sucked.
Similarly, I don't think Swisher (who you mentioned earlier) is evidence of anything other than a guy who had a shitty year on balls in play, but otherwise was pretty much the same hitter. His TTO numbers in Chicago look pretty indistinguishable from those in Oak and NY.
Appendicitis.
It's just that I can't help but look at Swisher and Dunn, and now even Logan Morrison (and even John Buck) in Florida, and not thing there's something there to the notion that Ozzie messes up low-average, good TTO players.
For fun, Here are the top 100 players since 2003 with Batting Average < .260 in 800 PA, sorted by TTO.
Edit: Andruw Jones got his revival in Chicago, I suppose. So there's that.
Certainly.
But it's not like Dunn's not driving in runners. He has 46 RBI so far.
I also wish I knew where to find Dunn's situational stats, or at least how often he's come up with runners in each base state.
That wouldn't surprise me. Ozzie is definitely a fan of slap hitters, and also seems to be very polarizing among players. The ones he likes love him, and the ones he doesn't hate him.
But Dunn has to be seen in the context of his peers. Everybody's striking out a lot these days. He strikes out at a hideous rate, but it's not like he has 96 strikeouts and all the other sluggers have 20 or 30. That's what I should have said instead of "irrelevant"; it's more like the amount of missed opportunity involved in striking out 96 times as opposed to 46 (Mark Trumbo) or 52 (Josh Hamilton) doesn't amount to much of a hill of beans.
It's on BB-Ref.
Appendicitis.
Boy, don't I feel like an ass now. No more post things like this from work, at least without verifying the numbers weren't right under my nose.
Thanks Shock.
I understand your point, but I find it much easier to chalk up the disaster year to "reasons unknown" than to "bad coaching." Mine is a cop-out, but it's also more likely to be accurate. And it has room for things like appendicitis.
I just figured that given his consistency over a long career, for him to put up a season-long stretch like 2011 meant that he had totally lost it.
If he had hit .159 with 33 homers or something I could see just chalking it up to variance, but man, that was ugly.
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