Kendrick: 2B Stock Down
Howie Kendrick had what seemed to be a breakout season in 2011. Most of his improvement came from a career high 18 home runs. He is not having the same level of production in 2012. He is just hitting over .250 with four home runs. Howie has several factors leading to his decline this year.
Kendrick started out the season as the #2 hitter for the Angels. This position should have provided an opportunity for plenty of plate appearances along with good Run and RBI chances. He struggled for the first month of the season, hitting 0.241/0.267/0.398. These numbers are well below is his projected triple slash line of 0.275/0.320/0.431 (ZiPS). I was not surprised to see the drop in OBP. With Pujols hitting after him, teams would not be inclined to walk Kendrick. His walk rate was 3.5% for the first month of the season with pitchers pounding the strike zone 46% of the time. Then, he was moved down in the lineup where his BB% has increased slightly to 4.8% and only 43% of the pitches he has seen since then are in the strike zone.
With the pitchers pounding his strike zone, his strikeout rate is at a caree- high value of 22%. Earlier in the season, when pitchers were throwing more pitches into the strike zone, his K% was up to 24%. Since being demoted in the lineup, it is down to 20%.
Also his power stats are nearly at career lows as seen here:
Season: SLG, ISO
2009: 0.444, 0.152
2010: 0.407, 0.128
2011: 0.464, 0.179
2012: 0.367, 0.116
Career: 0.429, 0.139
The first sign that he is showing less power is from his batted ball distribution. His line drives down 4% (22% to 18%) from last year. That value alone would help to explain the 35 point drop in his BABIP (0.338 to 0.303).
Besides the drop in line drives, his fly balls have gone down 1%. This is not a huge deal, but his HR/FB is down from 16.5% in 2011 to 10.5% this year. There is though some hope though on this front. Here are his average home run and fly ball distances from the last 4 years:
Year: Distance
2009: 282 ft
2010: 277 ft
2011: 289 ft
2012: 287 ft
He has been able to maintain the power gain from 2011, but has not been able to get as many fly balls to go for home runs.
Kendrick really has no positive qualities to look at this season. Plate discipline is down. Power is down. He is not having any luck on the base paths (three for six in stolen base attempts). There is just not any signs that he will hit any better. 2011 looks to be his career season and a possible slow decline to follow.
Jeff, one of the authors of the fantasy baseball guide,The Process, writes for RotoGraphs, The Hardball Times, Rotowire, Baseball America, and BaseballHQ. He has been nominated for two SABR Analytics Research Award for Contemporary Analysis and won it in 2013 in tandem with Bill Petti. He has won four FSWA Awards including on for his Mining the News series. He's won Tout Wars three times, LABR twice, and got his first NFBC Main Event win in 2021. Follow him on Twitter @jeffwzimmerman.
Another data point dispelling the notion of “lineup protection”. Many pundits predicted another breakout year hitting near El Hombre…
How much lineup protection was the guy who didn’t hit a HR before May providing?
Well the specter of Albert or just having that presence there was supposedly the whole theory behind Howie’s continued resurgence. Even if the guy was slumping massively it’s not like he just completely turned into Adam Dunn 2011.
Doesn’t this actually…prove lineup protection, in a way?
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe that the basis of lineup protection is that by putting a better player behind someone, they see more pitches in the strike zone(Since you cannot pitch around them, lest the better player come to bat, and you may wish to be less careful), giving the player who is lineup protected more balls he can hit.
Accordingly, the article says that he sees more balls in the strike zone(46% with Pujols behind him, 43% without). Unless all 3% were on the outside paint, that means he was getting more pitches to hit then before, though it meant his BB% took a slight dive as less balls were being thrown outside the zone. Just because Kendrick didn’t take advantage of the increase in balls in the strike zone doesn’t mean that he didn’t see more in the strike zone and thus presumably better pitches to hit: It just means that he didn’t do anything with it.