This is a two-part look at Kosuke Fukudome's plate discipline. This post covers his overall trends in swinging, or not swinging, at pitches. Part two will discuss the effects specific splits show - or don't show (pitcher hand, speed, pitch type).
Starting off with some information from Fangraphs, we can see that Kosuke has been in decline.
First three charts are walks and strikeouts - and the picture is not pretty in the K side.
As far as hitting the ball, he's not shown any power all year.
But his ground ball rate appears to be increasing
Not good. What can PITCHf/x tell us? I like to look at four numbers - swing rate/whiff rate in/out of the zone. Breaking each down by month and by week gets towards sample sizes of some meaning - but the weekly numbers are noisy, and this week is a short, incomplete, week. Still, the numbers are consistent with what anyone watching him can see.
He's chasing more and more pitches out of the zone, and missing more pitches, too. Part Two will look at this a little more closely, including some speculation on how George Sherrill's chin music plays into all this.
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Fukudome's Declining Zone Judgment - Part 1
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Excellent stuff as always here, Harry. I'm not surprised about the K-rate increasing. I figured him for a good 150 to 175 strikeouts in the big leagues based on how much he struck out in Japan. I am surprised at the decreased BB-rate. The scary part is that an increase in walks almost always means an increase in strikeouts, but he's decreased his walks and increased his strikeouts.
That leads into what else you showed about his out of zone swings.
Not a good trend at all. I'm looking forward to Part 2.
Post a Comment