Some time has passed since we last checked who were the hackers and who were the discplined batters on our little ball team. Because I'm slowly moving into the visual presentation world more so than tables I decided to make a colorful bar graph to reflect the data and a point for me.
Click for a larger view. The seemingly random yellow bar just below the 75% tick represents league average for percentage of balls seen outside of the strike zone that players did not swing at. The maroon-ish color on each bar is the player's O-Swing% (available at FanGraphs) and the blue is "O-Take%" or O-Swing% subtracted from 100. It's not a real statistic in the sense that you can find it listed, but rather a simple modification to the current statistic that probably gives a better understanding of what is "good" and what is "bad".
For the most part we have an above average roster when it comes to taking bad pitches. Only Jason Bartlet, Rocco Baldelli (SSS), Shawn Riggans, and Cliff Floyd rank below 74% and none rank below 70%. Nobody likes it when lovers fight, whether it be Britney Spears and Kevin Federline or Jeff Garcia and Jon Gruden which is why it's encouraging that Upton is so damn good at taking bad pitches and Gross, Iwamura, and Zobrist are all below the 20% swing proportion.
For those who want the table form:
Player | O-Swing% | O-Take% |
---|---|---|
Upton | 14.81 | 85.19 |
Gross | 17.85 | 82.15 |
Iwamura | 18.34 | 81.66 |
Zobrist | 19.82 | 80.18 |
Pena | 20.96 | 79.04 |
Aybar | 22.05 | 77.95 |
Navarro | 22.97 | 77.03 |
Hinske | 23.74 | 76.26 |
Longoria | 25.33 | 74.67 |
Bartlett | 26.45 | 73.55 |
Baldelli | 26.67 | 73.33 |
Riggans | 27.34 | 72.66 |
Floyd | 28.85 | 71.15 |