It’s a stat that is meant to show how deep into counts you get and how many pitches you see per plate appearance (usually used by averaging). The relevance for it is to suggest how hard a Batter makes a Pitcher work to get a result.

SandyA seems to think that PPPA is an indicator of being patient at the plate….And that being patient at the plate makes the Pitcher work more (this is the Philisophical divide between him and me)
But truth is at best patience can only get you a PPPA of 5 cause at that point your at a full count and the next pitch is decisive….UNLESS you follow what I believe is WAY more important than plate Patience and that is PLATE PROTECTION and SITUATIONAL HITTING….

You can take pitches you don’t think you can hit well right up till strike 2 then the philosophy of PATIENCE falls apart!
Your no longer able to be passive and wait for a pitch you like because if it’s a strike your out!

So if you REALLY want to increase the workload of the Pitcher it is better to teach these kids Situational Hitting….

That means they should be looking for pitches to drive early in the count and when ahead (2-0, 2-1, 3-0, 3-1) as that is the SITUATION where a Pitcher is not going tobe too coy and paint a corner but throw a fat pitch you can drive to make sure he throws a strike. To note if a Pitcher is a notorious first pitch fastball type and if he is be prepared to take him deep, taking advantage of a Pitchers desire to get ahead early by sneaking a fat pitch fastball by you on the first pitch.
And then to teach the SITUATION that is the most important no matter what philosophy you think is important, To earn how to protect the plate with two strikes on you, learning how to foul off balls that are not great for getting a hit but close enough to call a strike by the umpire (taking the Umpire out of the results)

And if you can do that most important part well you can get the PPPA up much more than just 5 Pitches as you can extend a PA to 10 and 15 Pitches as we have seen guys like Tejada and Murphy do so well.

So regardless of your belief in OBP or BA, Patience and Discipline….None of it works if the guy can’t protect the plate with 2Ks in the count and make sure e keeps seeing pitches until the Pitcher makes a great one to beat him or makes a mistake that you can crush.

I have no idea what pppa is. It seems like you are very knowledgeable in this area. I dont know why the mets with thier resources dont just raid another teams best scouts and copy thier system. Whats your take on that? Also what do you know of our minor league scouting dept. Have there been many changes under the SA regime?

What seems to make the picks so unpredictable these days is this prevalence on drafting HS kids and running them through a hyper long development cycle where in most cases your changing everything you liked about them when you took them.

Sure you have a better bet of picking a kid who is ready at age 20 and can give you a lot of years but in most cases they bust, get hurt or never materialize into anything…

Instead of going for guys who COULD be great (High Cieling) if they do whatever you tell them to do (the coachable variable) Get guys who are already good without your help, do NOT press a batting philosophy on them, and at most tweak a flaw in the swing that could be exploited and spend the rest of your development working on how to make adjustments to thier natural approach.

But everyone fancies themselves a Philisophical Genius and we have kids being told to worry about their PPPA instead of thier BA and how to NOT K (which increases PPPA better than any learning of patience and pitch selection at the plate EVER will) and you will get yourself some fine hitters with good BA, Low K and guys who get GOOD hits as opposed to all the slap singles hitters we see because they are more focused on OBP than the BA and SLG that actually drives in those runs.

We all say DEVELOPMENT is as important as scouting and it is true to some degree….
The problem is if your development ignores what the scouting said they had and imposes a philosophy that ruins what made you like them in the first place you wasted your time and the kid busts because he is no longer the player you liked he is the player you wanted him to be but wasn’t.

The Mets have only had 5 Top Overall 1st rounders since they started…
Of those 5 picks all you can credibly say they got was Strawberry (OF) out of it
The failures?
Chilcott (C) a pick before Reggie jackson
Foli (SS) whose biggest note to fame is being traded to get Staub
Abner (OF) who was traded to get McReynolds
Wilson (RHP) he of Generation K fame, was never healthy

They have had 20 top 10 First round picks (includes the 5 picks above)…
Rohr #2 LHP
Matlack #4 LHP
Sterling #4 RHP
Benton #6 C
Brooks #3 (OF at the time he was taken eventually moved to 3B)
Leary #2 RHP
Blocker #4 OF
Gooden #5 RHP
Williams #4 3B
Preston Wilson #9 SS
Presley #8 RHP
Goetz #6 LHP
Humber #3 RHP
Pelfrey #9 RHP
Harvey #7 RHP

When more than half your top 10 picks selected are Pitchers, you are not going to find a lot of Hitters in there….
When you only hit one time out of 5 in the top Overall pick your not going to have any sustained success…

They did get Matlack, Gooden, Pelfrey and Harvey but thats a pretty poor rate (less than 50/50)
They got Brooks and Strawberry so in the end they have had a 30% hit rate on top 10 picks

If you can’t do better than 30% in the top 10 overall how the hell can you expect to do well after that?

And if half your picks are Pitchersyour going to have to find those hits someplace else.

Whomever is in charge needs to take the chance, if player is available to draft/sign a young power bat for the future.
If not now when, I find this totally embarrassing for this organiztion

Ike
Matt Harvey

The Mets have to stay the high road on their current path and not shift plans/directions so frequently. Most young-uns have no memory of the 80s so our 1 hitching point doesn’t exist for them.

Let us hope that some of the bats (Flores, Nimmo, etc..) begin to change that.