Dustin Pedroia is a New Hitter This Season -- Or is He?
by Randy Booth on May 1, 2010 8:00 AM EDT
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Without a doubt, Dustin Pedroia is the Red Sox's best hitter through April this season. Since offensive production has been scarce at times, having Pedroia batting well in the two-hole and put up solid numbers -- six home runs, 18 RBI, .302 batting average -- has been huge.
But the Pedroia you're seeing this season isn't the same ol' guy you're used to. He's different. How different? Well, let's take a look at what he's actually doing.
Pedroia's six home runs in April is impressive -- and it's something he certainly can do from time to time -- but it's not just a random flux of production. Pedroia, as far as April is concerned, is a different hitter.
For starters, let's just look at what Pedroia is doing at the plate on the season:
| BB% | K% | BB/K | |
| 2010 | 5.8 | 14.1 | 0.46 |
Those numbers don't mean too much unless you look at what he's done over his career in those categories:
| BB% | K% | BB/K | |
| 2007 | 8.1 | 8.1 | 1.12 |
| 2008 | 6.9 | 8.0 | 0.96 |
| 2009 | 10.4 | 7.2 | 1.64 |
Everything, at this point on May 1, is a career-low for Pedroia.
It seems that Pedroia is making some sacrifices when he's at the dish. He's not walking as much because he's swinging at more pitches. Those pitches, at this point in the season, have turned into home runs. But they have also turned into strikeouts. This all makes perfect sense, correct?
So why has Pedroia made this switch? It could just be because of a small sample size because we need to remember it has just been one month. Or it could just be Pedroia making an adjustment he felt he needed to make. Or, what I think is the most likely answer, is that he has some crazy bet with one of his teammates that he can hit 50 home runs in a season and he's going to try his damndest. Don't doubt Pedroia -- he could probably pull it off.
Pedroia is on pace to strike out more than he walks this season (7 walks, 13 strikeouts). This is significant because Pedroia has only done that once in a season. That came in 2008 -- his MVP season -- when he walked 50 times and struck out 52 times. Not a huge difference. For the average hitter, that'd be amazing. For Pedroia, that is subpar considering he had 29 more walks than strikeouts last season.
As far as 23 games is concerned, Pedroia's 2010 campaign is actually starting to look a lot like his MVP season in 2008 -- at least in terms of his plate discipline. Overall, Pedroia is swinging at 44.6 percent of pitches this season. That number sat at 45.2 in 2008, but dropped significantly to 39.7 percent last year.
So maybe we aren't seeing a different Dustin Pedroia. Maybe the power burst has just made us think that way. After looking deeper at the stats, it seems like 2009 was really the outlier and Pedroia is returning to his norm -- the MVP season.
Odds are good Pedroia's power is going to drop off. And the odds also lean toward him walking more and striking out less. Regardless, this Pedroia is a damn good player -- the same one we've been watching for four years now.
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Who did?
Sizemore was probably a little more deserving, but you have to have a pretty damn strong case over the next candidate when you play for a bad team.
USG
by Ben Buchanan on May 1, 2010 12:54 PM EDT up reply actions
You could make a good case for Sizemore, Mauer and ARod IMO
but out of guys on playoff teams, Petey was the best… and that’s often been enough. Pretty standard choice. He certainly deserved it.
Bullpen Banter
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twitter: @alskor
Pedroia led the League in WAR that season with 6.7
if you dont count pitcher for MVP Awards
by German Red Sox Fan on May 1, 2010 2:08 PM EDT up reply actions
Maybe he didn't
But he turned on the hype machine when it mattered the most, at the end of the season.
"We are not normal, We are Legends. People will tell their kids about us." - Deon Butler before Ohio State Game 2008.
IMO
Youk was MVP that year. He put up great numbers AND shifted from each side of the diamond. I wasn’t upset Pedroia got it, but I think Youk helped the team out much more.
yeah
but guys who can play 1B/3B aren’t that uncommon. If he had been switching say between SS and 2B in some other universe then yeah that would add a lot of value.
Sign me up
as someone who doesn’t think the awards have any meaning at all. MVP, CY, and Hall of Fame stuff is all BS.
If they didn’t give out those accolades, what would the BBWA writers do? Seems like just a high percentage of what they write consists of awards predictions and awards debate. It’s a self-fulfilling cycle, since they determine everything about it.
I wish we could all spend more time writing and reading well-thought pieces (such as this post) and less time writing and reading pointless award rhetoric.
Said my peace!
You need more evidence for your theory
Generally speaking, the best offensive strategy is to never swing at balls while taking a varied approach to swinging at strikes: only swing at ideal pitches with less than two strikes but swing at all strikes when you have two strikes. Not only does this maximize your walks, it also tends to improve both your power numbers and your batting average.
Why? Because when you swing at pitches out of the strike zone, you either tend to miss them — which leads to strike outs — or hit them poorly, which leads to outs and prevents you from getting hits on pitches you would have seen later in the at bat had you been more patient.
The only real exception to this comes when a hitter actually fares better at hitting some balls — say, pitches that are just high — than he does hitting many pitches that are legitimate strikes — say those at the very low end of the zone. In such a case, a hitter could sacrifice walks for more hits, especially more extra base hits.
But hitters like that are very rare, and if you want to prove that Pedroia really is sacrificing walks for both strikeouts and extra base hits, you are going to need to dig up the data of pitches that Pedroia has hit for singles, doubles and home runs and show that a fair number of those pitches are outside the zone. You are then going to need to dig up data on swinging strikes and compare the number of extra Ks to the number of extra bases that Pedroia has from swinging at more stuff outside the zone.
Otherwise, we should just assume that by swinging at more pitches outside the zone, he is merely increasing his strikeout totals while lowering his hit count, average, OBP and slugging. There’s no reason to simply assume that because he’s swinging at more pitches and hitting more home runs, that he’s actually crushing balls out of the zone. It’s hard enough to hit strikes, let alone balls.
Indeed, barring proof to the contrary, the best bet is to assume that a more selective eye would generate more hits, more home runs and, obviously, more walks and fewer Ks, boosting an already impressive OPS into the stratosphere.
by Andrew D. Smith on May 1, 2010 10:20 AM EDT reply actions
It looks like he's not trading walks for K's.
He’s taking a few more strikes looking than normal, fouling off a few more than normal, offering at a few less than normal, and putting a lot less than normal into play.
So it looks like he’s actually being somewhat more selective with his swing than he used to be.
Fenway: "An alternate and better universe, disguised as a ballpark." --Thomas Boswell
Too early
We’re looking mostly at random fluctuation. These measures haven’t stabilized yet. He’ll approach his norms in these components soon enough. He may have changed his approach (it wouldn’t shock me at all if he was more aggressive this year, walking less and striking out a little more) but its too early to differentiate between any changes and noise at this point.
Bullpen Banter
www.bullpenbanter.com
twitter: @alskor
Pedroia
Not him I’m worried about…..if only the rest of the line-up had his less than average numbers.
The guy has nothing to prove. As far as the MVP, it was a toss up between him and Youk but he deserved it. He made George Brett eat his words.
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