Reed Johnson by Pitch Location

Here's a little more than you ever needed to know about your 4th outfielder. The news isn't all that great. He likes the ball down and shouldn't.

Each table in the image below (click to enlarge) is from catcher's perspective.



Got all that?

Basically, he handles the ball inside and/or up pretty well. Problem is, he swings at pitches down quite a bit, but with very little success.

How does he match up against other hitters? If you check out this post on low ball hitting, you can find a more (i.e. how I did it), but I'll repeat much of the data here, and then dig into Reed with the same filters.

Swing Rate - Pitches in Dirt
Alfonso Soriano 40.0%
Ichiro Suzuki   20.8
Luke Scott      20.0
Mark Teahen     20.0
group average    7.1

Contact (or lack thereof) at the original Ankles and Dirt post). Reed didn't make the cut (< 10 dirt balls seen), but I ran his numbers anyway. He got four pitches in the dirt (pz <=0, not by the human generated "in the dirt" notation from the PITCHf/x system), took three, whiffed on one.

Moving on, and up, to "Ankles" and below.

Swing Rate - Pitch at Ankles
Alfonso Soriano 44.9%
Alex Cintron    44.0
Garret Anderson 40.2
Jay Gibbons     40.0
Kendry Morales  36.8
Ichiro Suzuki   36.5
Geoff Jenkins   36.4
Matt Diaz       35.7
Jason LaRue     35.7
Delmon Young    35.4
Felix Pie       35.3
group average   13.0

Reed is at 27.3%, so not the worst offender, but still twice the average for the group I selected (based on # of pitches seen).

Contact Rate - Pitch at Ankles
Ichiro Suzuki   55.3
Alex Cintron    54.5
Ivan Rodriguez  45.5
Alfonso Soriano 41.9
Aaron Miles     40.0
group average   21.2

Reed is at 16.7%, well below league average.

Cubs numbers for Ankles on down, with Reed and without Cintron. Click and sort.

last	first	thresh.	zone	B	CS	SS	F	X	HR	pz	count	swings	swrt	contact	crate
Soriano	Alfonso	0.76	1.52	38	0	18	8	5	0	0.30	69	31	44.9%	13	41.9%
Pie	Felix	0.81	1.62	11	0	2	2	2	0	0.26	17	6	35.3%	4	66.7%
Ramirez	Aramis	0.84	1.68	32	0	3	3	0	0	0.35	38	6	15.8%	3	50.0%
Theriot	Ryan	0.73	1.45	26	0	2	0	1	0	0.24	29	3	10.3%	1	33.3%
Lee	Derrek	0.88	1.75	76	1	7	1	0	0	0.42	85	8	9.4%	1	12.5%
Fontenot	Mike	0.73	1.46	25	0	4	0	0	0	0.30	29	4	13.8%	0	0.0%
Murton	Matt	0.74	1.47	19	0	0	0	0	0	0.43	19	0	0.0%	0	0.0%
Johnson	Reed	0.70	1.41	16	0	5	0	1	0	0.35	22	6	27.3%	1	16.7%

As you can see, Reed Johnson is prone to swing low as much as any Cub, except Pie and Soriano. Thing is, his contact rate is horrific on those swings.