In Game 7 of the 2006 NLCS, Carlos Beltran struck out looking on a nasty curve that ended up in the middle of the strike zone. Fans have crucified Beltran ever since. And, seemingly, the Mets as an organization have decided that no key AB will ever again end with a player looking at a breaking pitch. From Ike Davis at near the start of the Mets360 era up till today, Mets’ hitters love nothing more than chasing breaking balls a foot out of the strike zone.
Hitting is hard. You have a fraction of a second to decide whether or not to swing at a pitch and hurlers have the ability to make a pitch look like a strike until it dives out of the zone at the last minute. As much as we’d like to pretend otherwise, we can’t wave a magic wand and have batters swing at nothing but strikes. Among qualified MLB hitters this year, the lowest O-Swing% is the 20.6 mark of Juan Soto. That means even the best hitters are going to swing at one out of five pitches out of the strike zone.
In all, 13 Mets have at least 100 PA this season and the lowest O-Swing% belongs to DJ Stewart, with a 19.2 mark. Everyone else has a rate of 27.4% or higher. Jose Iglesias has the worst mark, with a 41.9 O-Swing %. The MLB average is a 31.9% mark. Nine of the 13 Mets have a worse-than-average chase rate.
If you’re like me, you have mental images of Pete Alonso, Francisco Alvarez, J.D. Martinez, Tyrone Taylor and Mark Vientos chasing pitches way out of the strike zone. So, what can be done to change this? Unfortunately, not much.
Back on August 1, 2012 – my solution was for the Mets to give Davis the take sign whenever he got to an 0-2 count. Here was my idea from 12 years ago:
When the at-bat ends on a pitch thrown with an 0-2 count, Davis is 1-20 with 13 strikeouts. Now, nobody looks like a superstar when batting with an 0-2 count. But what’s the worst thing that could happen if Davis just took every pitch when he found himself in this hole? He would have one fewer hit. However, it’s quite likely he would advance to a 1-2 count quite a few more times.
Davis’ numbers are still not wonderful at 1-2, but his OPS rises from .295 to .394 and if nothing else you have made the pitcher work a touch harder. The big jump comes from 1-2 to 2-2. When Davis’ PA ends after a 2-2 pitch, his OPS is .610, virtually the same as it is when he has a full count (.611).
My “Davis Rules” would be to always take on an 0-2 pitch and sit dead-red on 1-2. Any time Davis swings at an off-speed pitch in these counts he should be made to carry luggage like he’s a rookie. Even better, make him carry the rookies’ bags.
Alonso is 3-46 with 21 Ks when the PA ends with an 0-2 count. To be honest, my expectations were numbers even worse than this. Clearly, some of those at-bats where he’s struck out on a pitch a foot out of the strike zone have come when he’s already seen some balls in the count. But whether the count is 0-2 or 3-2, it’s no fun to watch Alonso and the rest flail helplessly at balls so far out of the zone that it seems like they took a bribe to swing at them.
A former colleague of mine had a great line when it came to check swings, ones he thought that the ump missed by not calling them a strike. He would yell, “If he hit it, it would have been a double!” The exact opposite is happening on these two-strike swings by the chasing crew. What’s the best thing that could happen if they made contact on these pitches low and away? At best, it would be a weak grounder that didn’t get out of the infield.
So why swing?
It’s impossible to quantify the grief Beltran received for laying off that pitch, both at the time and even now, 18 years later. My opinion has always been that the pitcher should have received credit for throwing a great pitch, rather than the batter catching flack. Perhaps it’s hypocritical of me but whenever the chasing crew flails at pitches they couldn’t hit out of the infield even if they made contact, my instinct is to blame the batter.
Yesterday, Vientos swung at a pitch well out of the strike zone to end the game. Should the pitcher get the credit or should the batter take the blame? Perhaps it’s never 100% credit/blame to either party. With that thought in mind, let’s give five percent of the credit to the pitcher and 95% of the blame to the batter.
At least with the pitch to Vientos, it was just low, not low and away. Maybe the credit to the pitcher needs to be more than five percent. Still, there’s no way – at least for me – to give the majority of the credit to the pitcher for the outcome.
If you put me in charge, one thing that I’d institute would be to categorize every strikeout by the hitters in every game and try to assign that credit/blame between the pitcher and the batter. Perhaps if the chasing crew saw how many times they were the reason for the strikeout, rather than the pitcher, they’d make some changes in their approach with two strikes.
Interesting to see where you assign blame. I think at this point, given the data frm The Athletic article this weekend, its clear the Mets are getting a lot more intentionally thrown breaking pitches with the hope of the chase. So at this point the pitchers are tossing garbage with the notion that covering from behind in count leads to a wild chase. It obviously does. But you still need the batter to commit. I see the favor more for the pitchers now who are exploiting a weakness.
We need to move on from Beltran. It was nasty. He is a HoF caliber Met who faced a brutal pitcher. No sense dragging him down anymore. And the same for Bonilla. HIs is about the least egregious deferred payment contract.
If it became known that the Mets liked to trade for hitters who swung at breaking balls out of the strike zone – and a trade happened where the Mets acquired this type of guy – what would your reaction be? I’m betting it would be something like, WTF – why do we need another hitter who everyone knows chases? You’d blame the Mets’ FO for making a bad trade, not congratulate the other team’s FO for exploiting a known weakness.
I play backgammon against the computer. I’ve discovered the computer will accept an offer to double the match whenever the position is relatively close. So, it’s my roll at the end of the game and I have two pieces left and the computer has three pieces left. I offer the double and the computer accepts and I win the game 99.99% of the time. Do I get credit for exploiting a weakness or do you say – man, the developers really need to fix that!
There’s an episode of M*A*S*H where Winchester is cleaning up in poker. The rest of the gang is talking about it and Hawkeye says, “He even whistles louder when he has nothing!” They found the tell and clean up versus Charles. Now, they deserve credit for figuring out the tell. But if they continue to play cards for years and Charles continues to whistle louder when he has nothing – do the others still deserve the credit or does Charles deserve the blame for not fixing it? How many years have we been complaining about Alonso swinging with two strikes at bad pitches?
I don’t mean to pick exclusively on Alonso when others are doing the exact same thing. It’s just that we’ve known about this weakness of his for years, while the others are relatively new – at least from a Mets fan POV.
When a weakness exists for years and nothing is done by the player to attempt to fix it – he has to take the lion’s share of credit for the negative outcome.
either way, its adding up to the same thing: fugly at bats that end in embarrassing Ks.
We’re fed up with Alonso and his fishing trips.
I’d like to offer that we need to give the pitchers more credit for throwing a nasty pitch than fault the batter for swinging at a ball that clearly on TV is not a strike. My wife has even commented “how could they swing at such garbage?” They say the batter has about a quarter of a second to decide to swing at a pitch. They almost have to start swinging when the ball leaves the pitchers hand. That is crazy. In my best days I could hit a ball thrown in the low 70’s. At 95 MPH, I would need to ask the ump if the ball had been thrown. I also would have enough brains to not even stand in the batters box. We had the opposite view when deGrom used to make most opposing hitters looked stupid. I’d think the opposing team criticized their player’s swings instead of simply acknowledging that deGrom made them look bad.
I stopped crucifying Beltran several years ago when I accepted that the hellacious curve ball from Wainwright was too close to take with two strikes. Would rather have the Mets be more aggressive and start swinging earlier in the count, sometimes the first pitch as the pitcher tries to go up 0-1. Would never have pegged Iglesias as the worst at swinging out of the strike zone as he continues to lead the team with a .342 average and an OPS approaching .900. Too bad he’d need double the ABs to be among the league leaders in hitting. What a great addition he has been!
I don’t think it’s impossible for a hitter, e.g. Alonso, to learn to not swing at pitches clearly heading outside the zone.
The fact that PA comes as close to hitting the pitch – as he does – while absolutely lunging for it, well, that means that he is aware on some possibly semi-conscious level that said pitch is clearly outside the zone
In other words, what does PA expect the result to be when he aims for a point 3 to 6 inches below and (!¹) 3 to 6 inches to the left of the strike zone? Does he believe that there is any possibility that such a lame swing could result in strong contact?
1. My use of (!) indicates that, if allowed, I would have capitalized the previous word
BTW – still waiting for one of yous people to explain how I can underline and/or italicize and/or bold…erdash text in this here format
Great post! The analog is the soccer goalie shamed into diving one way or the other to show they are trying when doing nothing and staying in position is equally the right move!
Let’s explore another scenario with a slumping batter who has worked a 3-2 count somehow, but fouled off a 3-1 pitch out of the strike zone. Let’s say the team needs baserunners. Say it’s Harrison Bader.
Depending on the pitcher, if it’s a straight take, there’s a 50-50 probability the pitch is ball 4, Harrison’s on base! The wheels are in motion.
If Harrison swings, there’s a 22% chance of striking out. If he happens to put the ball in play, his BABIP is .307, which means he has only a 19% chance overall of getting a hit. Not swinging means he has quadrupled his chances of getting on base in this scenario. This doesn’t incorporate fouls, HBP, errors, etc.
Of course, if it’s a fastball right down the middle…