Today, I am mainly going to look at new metric, SLOW. It looks for hitters who are having problems hitting fastball in the strike zone. Besides SLOW, just a few other quick looks at Scott Kazmir, Jeanmar Gomez, Ryan Zimmerman and Felix Hernandez.
• I have read and heard many experts state a player has a slow bat and/or can’t catch up to fastballs. Finally, I have come up with an initial stab to see if a player is having problems hitting fastballs. To keep it easy, I am going to name it SLOW.
The basic parameters for the pitches examined are:
1. Pitches thrown into the heart of the plate (I don’t want to look at a chase rate)
2. Fastballs >=92 mph (looking for fastish fastballs)
I created the final metric using a weighted combination of:
1. Contact% (contact with the pitches)
2. Foul% (In play contact)
3. Pull angle on line drives and ground balls (is the hitter hitting the ball late)
The SLOW value may change a bit (I will probably put it on a 100 scale where 100 is league average) as I tweak it a bit here and there over the next couple of weeks. I have included two leader boards. One with the 2013 value. Another with players who have slowed the most from 2012 to 2013. Let me know if anything seems out of place.
Read the rest of this entry »