15
2012
Is Patience Really A Virtue?
An article by 72MetsFan
I saw a link on MetsBlog that sent me through a wormhole and I ended up in the realm of Amazin Avenue where I discovered a post that asked:
Who Was The Most Patient Hitter In 2012?
If you click the title you can read the entire article in it’s full context, but I was vastly curious as to finding out who the answer to that question was. I was placing my bets on David Wright, Daniel Murphy and Ike Davis.
Eric Simon sets the ground-rules and writes: Who was the most patient hitter on the Mets this season? We look at walks (good), walk rate (better), and unintentional walk rate (best) to find out.
Sounds logical so far, right?
And the winners are:
First place paid $80.50 to Win, second paid $37.60 to Place, and third paid $17.50 to Show. If you had all three in that order, the Triple paid a very sweet $3,634.00 on a two dollar bet. $678.50 if you had it boxed. Not bad.
Wright and Davis rounded out the top five, but color me shocked.
About the Author: Drew Staley
On June 1, 2012 Johan Santana officially became my favorite current Met! I'm a Queens native who grew up in the shadows of Big Shea. I was a huge Ron Darling, Dave Magadan and John Olerud fan. Honored to be a part of such a great site for Mets fans. Ya Gotta Believe!
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Get out your shields and pitchforks guys…
This is not shocking at all, in fact this is exactly what I would have expected.
Same here. Torres has always had a good walk rate.
It’s articles like this that drive some fans crazy.
One of the most dumbest articles i ever heard of. And this guy Eric Simon is actually not afraid to proclaim how much he loves walks.
The insanity continues and get worse….
If this dumb thing ever really got out of hand and reached epidemic proportions in baseball – you think the games are long now? Wait until the day every single “athlete” is just standing there looking at strikes go by…….in order to…….try and get the pitcher out of the game..
Incredible. Anyway if it got out of hand than I would expand the strike zone – make these guys SWING AT PITCHES and restore order to the game.
You are a professional athlete in this game because you are born with a very special, special gift that only a few gifted people are ever born with and that’s the ability to see a pitch in less than 2 seconds, swing, and hit it.
That’s it. You are a professional baseball player because you have this gifted ability to HIT
Not walk.
Bayonne — A pitcher striding forward to throw a fastball releases the ball about 55 feet from home plate. If the pitch is a fastball traveling at 90 miles per hour, it gives the batter a total of only four tenths of a second. Less than a half a second. In that time he has to establish pitch recognition and location. Then he decides whether to swing or let it go by. Yup, as you said, these guys are very special athletes.
Duda’s passive approach to hitting, particularly allowing first pitch fastball’s to split the middle of the plate unmolested, was a signature failure of the 2012 Met offense. Whoever is responsible for preaching this approach team-wide should be looking for a new job…
I’ll take Pete Rose’s approach, “See the ball, hit the ball” anytime. Hit the ball where it’s pitched, hard. Hitters don’t intentionally hit home runs as much as pitchers throw pitches that can be hit for home runs. Not every pitch is a home run pitch, and not every hit is a home run.
I’d rather a pitcher walk a hitter because he’s been bombarded with lumber, than a team peck and hunt for a walk while the hitters’ bats slumber. Yeah, I just made that up!!!
Duda regressed, in part, because of his hyper-selectivity at the plate and also due to his inability to lay off 2-strike balls in the dirt. You’d figure a hitting coach could assist him in making the proper adjustments.
As an aside, it pains me to see Andre Torres’ name in print while watching Angel Pagan play on television. Pagan was one of my favorite Mets, despite his deficits.
H Tommy2Cat,
I guess some will now argue that Sandy Alderson knows more about hitting than Pete Rose.
Where Simon and his cohorts at AA fall way, way short here is that patience doesn’t mean walks. Patience is waiting for a strike to hit. And if that strike is the first pitch the batter sees and he swings at it, then that’s just fine with me.
I don’t care how many pitches a batter sees, I only care that he swings at pitches he can do damage with. I hate seeing hitter flail at pitches out of the strike zone. Those are the ones that should be taken. Similarly, I hate seeing batters take pitches right down the middle (except in maybe the rare case where the team is down a run in the ninth and just needs base runners, so you try to get a free base instead of putting it in play where you fail seven out of ten times).
“Disciplined” is a better term that “patient.” I don’t care who walks the most. I care that as many hitters as possible only swing at strikes.
Yeah. When you do this, you get the highest combination of avg/obp instead of just a high avg or obp.
Exactly…walks are nice, but hits are better..you also gotta look at what hitters aren’t swinging at bad strikes. But what I mean by “bad” strikes is not chasing pitchers pitches in the strike zone. Just because the pitch is a strike, doesn’t mean it’s a good pitch to swing at, though you do need to be able to foul them off when you have two strikes on you too.
To me, being patient means a hitter knows the situation, knows what the pitcher is trying to do and waiting for the pitch the hitter wants…either to drive or knock the other way. It also means that they have the ability to sit and wait on the offspeed pitch.
What you fail to acknowledge is Sandy’s rigt there with those guys at AA over the approach!
he used PPPA as evidence that they were NOT patient in the second half when if what you say is true just means they threw first pitch strikes and they swung at them.
The patience you guys keep saying is what is being preached is NOT what they are preaching!
if it was
1 they would not be as passive as they had been taking strikes and
2, they would not have used PPPA to say they abandoned “The Approach”!
And I think you either choose to ignore the facts or don’t know how to properly analyze them. The Mets saw the fourth fewest percentage of strikes in the league. They swing at the FEWEST pitches out of the strike zone percentage-wise in the league and made contact on the fifth highest percentage of pitches in the strike zone and made contact swinging the bat overall at the fifth highest rate. And they are in a three-way tie for lowest percentage of swinging strikes.
So what we’re seeing is a team that sees very few strikes, but still doesn’t generally swing at pitches outside the strike zone, and when they swing the bat, usually at pitches in the strike zone, they don’t miss them.
They had the fifth highest walk rate in the league overall, but the third worst in September/October, and that fifth highest percentage of pitches in the strike zone they swing at dropped to ninth overall in September/October. And the lowest percentage of contact outside the zone rose to the fourth fewest.
So your “theory” that the Mets took too many pitches and all pitchers had to due was pound the plate and they’d fall into an 0-2 hole? 100% backwards. Sandy was 100% right. Their PPPA dropped because they swung at more pitches outside the zone and got out of the at-bats earlier. It’s all there in black and white. If they had the same discipline they had in the first half, swung at fewer pitches outside the zone and let them go for balls, they would have seen more strikes to hit and made better contact. It’s not rocket science.
I notice you have absoloutly no numbers to illustrate what you just said….
All the numbers posted on AA were about walks!
So in a post filled with rankings, you say I have no numbers. Completely transparent trying to ignore the fact that you got it handed to you again. If you want the specific percentages, they’re on fangraphs. And even if all you got all the numbers, how does it change what I said? You have no rebuttal, just a vague and last-ditch hope that can somehow try to discredit my post. It ain’t working. It never has. Is it lonely on that island?
You gave no rankings at all you twerp!
I think Biden calls what your selling here a bunch of mularkey!
Fangraphs the place that you and your buddy both derided all day for saying Pagan is worth 12 MIl?
THAT fangraphs?
The Moneyball capitol of the world next to Alderson Avenue?
HAHAHAHA And you think your winning!
TIGER BLOOD right?
Let the record show that my post filled with rankings apparently had no rankings, and I got called a name because it made the other guy look silly. And I never derided fangraphs, I derided WAR. If you’re going to lie, at least make it look good.
Pretty sure he will come out looking like Biden too, like your drunken uncle at a Christmas dinner.
Show the stats just like you insist whenever someone else uses rankings!
Like maybe how many 1st pitch strikes they took!
Show the actual numbers…
Until then you haven’t proved a thing!
Saw the 4th fewest percentage of strikes in the league?
And is that first half or second half?
if PPPA goes down isn’t it normal for strikes seen to go down too?
Regardless of how patient you are?
You keep saying wait for the pitch to hit can you prove they didn’t just get those pitches and thats why the PPPA and Strikes seen went down?
Is this reseacrh anything like your 30 years of research where OBP is the best correlator to RS but then when you look at the actual numbers it doesn’t correlate at all?
Please X you were doing better when you just stayed out of these types of statistical arguments as your all religion and have little empirical fact to back any of your dogma!
“Where Simon and his cohorts at AA fall way, way short here is that patience doesn’t mean walks. Patience is waiting for a strike to hit. And if that strike is the first pitch the batter sees and he swings at it, then that’s just fine with me.”
Ya, I think they would be better off measuring what they swung at and what they took rather than just how often or little they swung.
Looks like the off season is officially here when we start talking about things like this that have absolutely NOTHING to do with winning and that’s all Mets fans should be caring about.
Getting the best ballplayers you can to give you the best chance of getting into the post season.
Not that stupid who walks the best garbage. All this stuff does is get you the best Fred Lewises of the world
Nope, not touching this one with a ten foot pole.
I must be one of the few regular posters here who enjoys AA and it’s articles as well.
Both sites bring something to the table.
I do too.
Ya, the stupid little pissing matches can be very off putting.
Barry Bonds was a patient #4 hitter…
Vladamir Guerrero was an inpatient #4 hitter…
Wow. All that patience got us a 73 win season. If nobody swung (oe maybe it’s swang) the bat we may be able to win the world series. Oh the off season will drive me crazy.
There is a very simple overriding concept that seems to be getting lost in the shuffle. The most important aspect oh hitting , which is what the philosophy (if you want to call it that) is all about.
making fewer outs.
not about walking more. Just about not giving yourself up for easy outs, largely thorough going after pitchers pitches.
nothing to do with trying to out Castillo Castillo. All about hitting pitches you can do something with, and taking walks when a pitcher won’t give you one.
and if you listen to the much maligned Hudgens, that is exactly what he preaches. Be disciplined, and make the pitcher throw you a hitters pitch.. 1st pitch, 10th pitch, doesn’t matter.
and the whole obsession with Sandy mentioning a lower PPA? again, the key factor, they were not scoring runs or hitting. so, they made the connection to being less disciplined. seeing more pitches is not in and of itself the goal, more of an indication, and should be tied to more base runners.
it also is pitches seen, not taken. So if you foul off 8 tough ones before the pitcher grooves a mistake, then that is exactly what the goal is.
good example? The game 4 where Werth hit the winning HR last week. He battled a tough pitcher, fouling off good pitches, and when the pitcher finally made a mistake and left a FB out and over, he crushed it.
Here’s what I think
Patience and Strike zone judgement are two different things. I think the person who wrote this from Amazin Avenue (which I don’t read) – is confusing the idea. The Mets aren’t trying to promote not swinging, and thus walking – they are trying to promote waiting for the right pitch to hit rather than free swinging. That is exactly what Collins said.
Strike Zone judgement and figuring out the best pitches for the best possible results is something that is more important in the minors.
I think guys like Ike for example are still learning the game in some instances and so the “philosophy” is still valuable for him.
I’m not really worried about veteran hitters adopting the philosophy to be honest. They are what they are by now.
Torres being the most patient really doesn’t do anything for me because he was terrible. I don’t care if a hitter is patient if he’s not effective.
Jose Reyes benefited from this change in approach last year exponentially…
I think had he stayed in NYC under Dave Hudgens, he probably hits well over .300 again
What about Ojeda stressing the point that opposing pitchers were starting to see a trend about Met hitters were telegraphing they were being less aggressive back in May and warning us that this was going to catch up with them – as it did?
It was Sandy who made a connection between the PPPA as a team concept and less hitting in the second half, not us. The better hitters usually combine being aggressive and disciplined at the same time and don’t need to be told by the front office about a statistical connection. A patient hitter knows not to swing wildly.
Patience is as much a virtue as is aggressiveness when used properly depending upon the at-bat.
Omar Minaya used to get laughed at because he sounded stupid in the way he said things sometimes, but he really never said anything stupid. Sandy Alderson cant hide his stupidity behind an accent or blame English as a second language for his communication problems.
Since day one the new GM has often put his foot in his mouth and said things he wished he could take back. Not even a week on the job and he already began undermining Reyes and minimizing his best asset, his speed. He was making light of the upcoming Winter Meetings as well saying things like I hear the hotel accommodations are nice there. Then his father died and everyone felt sorry for him. Bottom line is he showed up with Paulino, Emaus, Carrasco and a bag of coal.
The first chance he got he traded Beltran and K-Rod to which Dickey and Wright called him out after he essentially killed any chance for meaningful baseball inn September.
His second offseason made Alderson more brazen, he joined Twitter and began mocking the fans and making jokes about his second Winter Meetings like Fred didnt give him enough gas money and other unprofessional things.
He rid the team of all their speed by letting Reyes go and then lying about the circumstances behind it. He traded Pagan and sold us a load of bunk on Torres who was getting DFA’d later that night by the Giants who couldn’t care less throwing him into the deal as he was essentially useless to them.
He gave a disastrous contract to Francisco who had a 62% save rate as a closer and yet he was anointed closer that very night. Rauch who was coming off a career worst season got $3.5 million dollar deal, a raise.
All this was done within a 90 minute window after Jose Reyes agreed to his deal with the Marlins.
It’s been lies, distortion, and abominations from this GM who continues to lie now as he begins his quest to paint Wright and Dickey as the bad guys.
He has never spent one dime of every dollar he has slashed and reinvested it. It all went to Fred’s pocket. The two of them are evil twins. Too bad nobody else sees the cover-up.
This sin’t rebuilding. This is a charade and most of you are chumps or delusional. When the curtain finally falls and you see Alderson and Fred were hand in hand in this fiasco, you’ll feel like jack asses.
The Post of the Year!
Hi K Maxx,
Beautiful assessment.
I still can’t forget his first sit down interview on SNY taking calls from fans. When asked about making changes to Citi Field so the Mets could hit more home runs he answered back that the Mets would have to learn how to hit home runs in Citi Field. Totally absurd.
Again, I think if one looks at Sandy Alderson not as a baseball person but rather as the business person brought in to drastically downsize the organization to enable the Wilpons to meet bare minimum operating expenses due to the capital and annual revenue lost to Madoff one cannot be too upset with him personally. Many of us are more upset with those who still insist he is a baseball person with vision and insight instead of a lawyer with expertise in the areas of law and finance.
“Many of us are more upset with those who still insist he is a baseball person with vision and insight instead of a lawyer with expertise in the areas of law and finance.”
Bingo
Im not even mad at Sandy…he’s not a GM….
Im more ticked off at the fans that have the disgusting double-standards they applied with Omar..
Double standard, Double Standard, DOUBLE Standard, DOUBLE STANDARD!!
Joey you do realize that being a tough out and fighting off pitches with two strikes would also increase your ppa?
Hi Trs,
Exactly, which makes the case that PPA is a meaningless stat which proves nothing.
I think there was a guy who hit three home runs on three consecutive pitches in a world series game about 35 years ago.
He also struck out an awful lot as well.
Actually it doesn’t make it meaningless at all. Part of the Mets approach is supposed to be becoming great two strike hitters, I believe Sandy and Terry mentioned it. So if you are trying to work to get your pitch and are a good two strike hitter then over the course of a season your PPA will be high. Doesn’t mean never swing at a first pitch.
Being a better two strike hitter is not the same as one setting himself to be in such a position with the advantage going to the pitcher.
Thats the philosophy now? I thought it was wait for your pitch that you can handle?
What you fail to understand here is if they just focused on what to do with two strikes it really wouldn’t matter what they did earlier in the PA!
I go to my Library to print off coupons that I dont have to download soft wear to the computer bc I cant do that there. There isn’t that many websits that have it were you dont have to download something first. Can you help me find some coupon websits all i have to do i print to get the coupons. Thanks!
Fred and Jeff. The coupons for players under $ 1M have a warning at the bottom. It states as follows: “When you’re out of quality you’re out of business”.