![]() ![]() For all the newfangled stats, there is something to the idea of a player simply getting a hit, because that’s what everyone with a rooting interest in that team and player is hoping for. It’s one of the best parts about watching baseball, really. Which means you could watch them, quietly hope for a hit and watch them get that hit. They might have been unlucky, and it’s reasonable to hope for better luck. They have the lowest batting average on balls in play in the National League, and while some of that can be attributed to a lack of hard-hit balls, not all of it can. The good news is that batting average is the most fickle of all stats, and eventually those hits might start falling for the Giants. Batting average isn’t a great statistic to explain how good a team will be in the future, but it sure is a great one to explain how fun a team was in the past. But I can always tell you if that team is fun to watch. 222 average - one of the lowest in history - is awful at scoring runs or not. Whether it’s Juan Pierre, Albert Pujols or Melky Cabrera, a. But I can always tell you if a batter with a. 330 average is the frontrunner for MVP that season. Their ratio of expectation-to-payoff is horrendously out of whack, and it is definitely something that’s easy to notice, inning after inning, game after game. With the Giants, that result comes far less than it does for any other team. The calm before the storm is part of its charm, and before the pitch is thrown, everyone watching is rooting for a hit. Baseball is a stop-and-start game with so much expectation built in. The crowd, whether they’re at home or at the park, waits. No, it’s a problem in the aesthetic sense. What we’re talking about here is little more than a curiosity. We know they don’t hit for power, and we know they’re not adept at working walks and getting on base, and those are the biggest overall problems with the offense. The team average gives us only a hint at what’s wrong with the Giants. It’s how you end up thinking that “Moby Dick” is a story about a guy who really, really wants to be called by his proper name, and it’s how you think that all subpar averages are created equal. Batting average is only a sentence in the book of baseball analysis, and you’ll get in trouble if you pretend like that single sentence gives you the whole story. It’s not a problem because batting average is a super-important stat for teams. Overall, they’re just exceptionally bad at hitting baseballs that aren’t caught. Here are the qualifying Giants when it comes to expected batting average: Given a big enough sample, it sure seems to work. 248, and the league’s actual batting average is …. Sounds fishy, except the league’s expected batting average is. MLB keeps a stat known as “expected batting average,” which incorporates a hitter’s exit velocity and launch angle to determine what his batting average should be. There might be some bad luck involved, especially now that we know the shift isn’t necessarily to blame. ![]() The Giants actually put the ball in play more than almost any other National League team, too, which means they should be rooting for teams to shift against them. When teams shift on them, they have one of the best batting averages in baseball. When teams play them straight up, they’re the worst-hitting team in baseball. It’s the shift that’s killing the Giants.Īccording to FanGraphs, the Giants are much, much, much better against the shift. Steven Duggar, Joe Panik, Brandon Belt and Brandon Crawford are all everyday players, and the Giants will deploy even more left-handers against a right-handed pitcher. With all of the left-handed hitters on the Giants, you’d better believe this is going to mess with them. Percentage of defensive shifts against left-handed batters per plate appearance That’s pretty dramatic, but it gets worse for the Giants specifically. There have been more shifts this year, and almost twice as many as there were in 2017. Percentage of defensive shifts per plate appearance You might even say whereas teams were once open to the shift, now they’re just bat-shift crazy. Teams are shifting more than ever, and they were already shifting a whole bunch. It’s always been possible to hit for average at 24 Willie Mays Plaza. Never forget that the reason Buster Posey won the batting title in 2012 is because his suspended teammate withdrew his name from consideration. It suppresses power, but it doesn’t suppress batting average. It was a little bit above the average ballpark in 2018, just a little below in 2017, and one of the top ballparks in the league for hits in 2016. Oracle Park is right smack in the middle of ballparks when it comes to hits this year. Even compared to the low average of the rest of the league, the Giants are way behind. 222 average is still 26 points lower than the MLB average, which would be the biggest gap for the franchise since 1902.
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