eck'n called to a count (cont)
before i go on with the eckstein ball-strike stuff, i need to clarify something. the point of yesterday’s post wasn’t that eckstein hits worse when he’s behind in the count; all hitters do that. nor was the point to bash eckstein. the point is that eckstein bats from behind in the count — ie, at a disadvantage — more often than any other major-league regular i could find. and far too often for his (and his team’s) own good.
that doesn’t mean he’s a bad hitter; it means he’s a unique hitter. every batter makes decisions about which pitches to swing at; but few if any hitters have a pattern of decisions that resembles eckstein’s. does he know something ev’yone else doesn’t? does he have a skill ev’ybody else lacks? if so, i can’t see it. david’s like every other hitter — good on hitter’s counts, bad on pitcher’s counts. he just hits in more of the latter than the former. a lot more.
in comments here and at the birdwatch, it was suggested a few times that eckstein’s habit of laying off the first strike yields real but hard-to-quantify benefits — ie, he runs deep counts, fouls off scads of pitches, wears out the opposing pitcher, forces him to show all his pitches. these alleged benefits are thought perhaps to accrue to the hitters who come after eck — but whatever these dividends are (if they even exist), they couldn’t outweigh the damage eckstein does to himself by constantly hitting from behind. the deeper the count, the worse eckstein is. once he’s got two strikes on him — and according to the foul-em-off theory, two strikes is a given — eckstein’s obp is just 284. he fell into an 0-2 hole 337 times over the last three years — and battled back to draw a walk just three times. another 291 times he ran a 1-1 count to 1-2; from there he battled back to draw a walk just 8 times.
again, i’m not here to suggest that eckstein is unique in this regard. every hitter sucks when he falls behind in the count; eckstein’s no different. where eckstein is different is in how often he falls behind in the count — significantly more often than other hitters.
most hitters try like hell to stay out of pitcher’s counts. eckstein doesn’t. he puts a first-pitch strike in play only 10 percent of the time — the other 90 percent became 0-1 counts. other contact-hitting leadoff types are far more aggressive. juan pierre for example put an 0-0 strike in play 18 percent of the time; luis castillo, 15 percent; joe cora, 16 percent; ray durham, 19 percent. compared to these players, eckstein faces anywhere from 15 to 30 extra 0-1 counts per season.
of even greater interest is eckstein’s strategy on 1-0. he sees a lot of strikes, as pitchers don’t want to fall behind 2-0 on him with the heart of the order looming. he’s seen 779 1-0 pitches during this period, and 500 of them were strikes; yet eckstein put a measly 79 of those strikes in play — 16 percent. the other 421 strikes erased eckstein’s advantage and evened the count at 1-1. here’s how he compares to our group of hitters from yest’day:
put 1-0 strike in play:
pierre 43 percent
polanco 43 percent
grud’k 41 percent
rollins 31 percent
craig counsell 29 percent
womack 21 percent
cora 21 percent
eckstein 16 percent
when he did put a 1-0 strike in play, eckstein did well — .316 avg, .418 slugging,.743 ops. which surprises nobody since it’s a flippin’ hitter’s count. eckstein should be attacking pitches like these; you’ve got the advantage; you swing the batty-watty. instead, more than five times as often, david runs the count back to even at 1-1, and the at-bats play out to his disadvantage — .282 avg, .358 slg, .692 ops.
as salvo from birdwatch notes, eckstein didn’t sit with the bat on his shoulder for all 421 of those 1-0 strikes; he swung through some and fouled others off. but fouls and swing-throughs can’t explain a gap this large; eckstein’s too far removed from the field. he’s pursuing a deliberate strategy (which many readers obviously are more familiar with than me) of not swinging at the first strike. he thinks it works in his favor to run the counts deep.
he’s wrong. when eckstein puts the ball in play early in the count — 0-0, 1-0, 0-1, or 1-1 — he bats .322 and slugs .427. toss in his hbps on those counts and it adds up to an ops of 778. on all other counts, he’s a .251 hitter with a .654 ops. but — and again, this is my point here — eckstein’s at-bat distribution skews badly to deep counts. of his 1804 plate appearances, only 38 percent were resolved early in the count. the other 62 percent ran long, into ball-strike territory that disadvantages eckstein.
that’s how he chooses to play it; i think he ought to reconsider. the specific count he needs to rethink, imho, is the 1-0 pitch. taking a strike gets him nowhere; his walk rate from 1-1 counts forward is just .053, so he’s not exactly waiting pitchers out. he’s just handing them a free strike. i have to think if he became more aggressive on 1-0, looked for pitches in his happy zone and attacked them, he and the team would profit.
that doesn’t mean he’s a bad hitter; it means he’s a unique hitter. every batter makes decisions about which pitches to swing at; but few if any hitters have a pattern of decisions that resembles eckstein’s. does he know something ev’yone else doesn’t? does he have a skill ev’ybody else lacks? if so, i can’t see it. david’s like every other hitter — good on hitter’s counts, bad on pitcher’s counts. he just hits in more of the latter than the former. a lot more.
in comments here and at the birdwatch, it was suggested a few times that eckstein’s habit of laying off the first strike yields real but hard-to-quantify benefits — ie, he runs deep counts, fouls off scads of pitches, wears out the opposing pitcher, forces him to show all his pitches. these alleged benefits are thought perhaps to accrue to the hitters who come after eck — but whatever these dividends are (if they even exist), they couldn’t outweigh the damage eckstein does to himself by constantly hitting from behind. the deeper the count, the worse eckstein is. once he’s got two strikes on him — and according to the foul-em-off theory, two strikes is a given — eckstein’s obp is just 284. he fell into an 0-2 hole 337 times over the last three years — and battled back to draw a walk just three times. another 291 times he ran a 1-1 count to 1-2; from there he battled back to draw a walk just 8 times.
again, i’m not here to suggest that eckstein is unique in this regard. every hitter sucks when he falls behind in the count; eckstein’s no different. where eckstein is different is in how often he falls behind in the count — significantly more often than other hitters.
most hitters try like hell to stay out of pitcher’s counts. eckstein doesn’t. he puts a first-pitch strike in play only 10 percent of the time — the other 90 percent became 0-1 counts. other contact-hitting leadoff types are far more aggressive. juan pierre for example put an 0-0 strike in play 18 percent of the time; luis castillo, 15 percent; joe cora, 16 percent; ray durham, 19 percent. compared to these players, eckstein faces anywhere from 15 to 30 extra 0-1 counts per season.
of even greater interest is eckstein’s strategy on 1-0. he sees a lot of strikes, as pitchers don’t want to fall behind 2-0 on him with the heart of the order looming. he’s seen 779 1-0 pitches during this period, and 500 of them were strikes; yet eckstein put a measly 79 of those strikes in play — 16 percent. the other 421 strikes erased eckstein’s advantage and evened the count at 1-1. here’s how he compares to our group of hitters from yest’day:
put 1-0 strike in play:
pierre 43 percent
polanco 43 percent
grud’k 41 percent
rollins 31 percent
craig counsell 29 percent
womack 21 percent
cora 21 percent
eckstein 16 percent
when he did put a 1-0 strike in play, eckstein did well — .316 avg, .418 slugging,.743 ops. which surprises nobody since it’s a flippin’ hitter’s count. eckstein should be attacking pitches like these; you’ve got the advantage; you swing the batty-watty. instead, more than five times as often, david runs the count back to even at 1-1, and the at-bats play out to his disadvantage — .282 avg, .358 slg, .692 ops.
as salvo from birdwatch notes, eckstein didn’t sit with the bat on his shoulder for all 421 of those 1-0 strikes; he swung through some and fouled others off. but fouls and swing-throughs can’t explain a gap this large; eckstein’s too far removed from the field. he’s pursuing a deliberate strategy (which many readers obviously are more familiar with than me) of not swinging at the first strike. he thinks it works in his favor to run the counts deep.
he’s wrong. when eckstein puts the ball in play early in the count — 0-0, 1-0, 0-1, or 1-1 — he bats .322 and slugs .427. toss in his hbps on those counts and it adds up to an ops of 778. on all other counts, he’s a .251 hitter with a .654 ops. but — and again, this is my point here — eckstein’s at-bat distribution skews badly to deep counts. of his 1804 plate appearances, only 38 percent were resolved early in the count. the other 62 percent ran long, into ball-strike territory that disadvantages eckstein.
that’s how he chooses to play it; i think he ought to reconsider. the specific count he needs to rethink, imho, is the 1-0 pitch. taking a strike gets him nowhere; his walk rate from 1-1 counts forward is just .053, so he’s not exactly waiting pitchers out. he’s just handing them a free strike. i have to think if he became more aggressive on 1-0, looked for pitches in his happy zone and attacked them, he and the team would profit.
posted by L Boros at 12:48 AM
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