MASH Report – SLOWest Bats

During the 2013 season, I created three metrics to help find possible injuries: PAIN, HURT and SLOW. So far this offseason, I have looked back at the final 2013 values for PAIN and HURT. I have put off SLOW ( Swinging Late or Whiffing) because the data was a mess a to query and work with.I finally simplified the process so the following is a look at the 2013 SLOW leaders. Also, I will examine if a SLOW bat was behind the second half struggles of Jason Kipnis and Jean Segura.

I created SLOW to see which hitters struggle with fastballs right in the heart of the strikezone. The two requirements are:

  • Heart of the strike zone (almost 99% of pitches called strikes and damn you CB Bucknor).
  • Fastball speed equal to or greater than 92 mph.

The three items I used to create the metric is:

  • Contact%
  • Foul%
  • Pull%

Enough of the background data, here is the 2013 leader board:

To show how bad the top hitters have contact issues, here is Brooksbaseball.net’s fastball description for the highest SLOW value players which saw at least 100 pitches in the plate’s heart

  • B.J. Upton: Against All Fastballs … a disastrously high likelihood to swing and miss
  • Justin Upton: Against All Fastballs … an exceptionally high likelihood to swing and miss.
  • Carlos Gomez: Against All Fastballs … a high likelihood to swing and miss.
  • John Buck: Against All Fastballs … an exceptionally high likelihood to swing and miss
  • J.P. Arencibia: Against All Fastballs … a high likelihood to swing and miss.

B.J. Upton really struggled with fastballs compared to previous seasons. His fastball run values per 100 pitches went from .51 in 2011 to .89 in 2012 to -.47 in 2013. Upton basically went from crushing fastballs to being owned by them. For him to turn it around in 2014, he will need to make contact with a few more fastballs.

Besides season to season comparisons, I ran 1st and 2nd half comparisons which stemmed from this comment by chri521 a few months ago.

I wonder if Segura ever showed up at the cusp the the “SLOW” Mash report list? Might lend credence to his fatigue if his batspeed is waning if he’s dropped well hit % and increased IFFB%?

Just last week, I looked at how Jason Kipnis and Jean Segura both struggled in 2013 season’s second half. To see if their bats slowed down, here is the first half to second half SLOW values  ranked by difference.

Kipnis and Segura both had decent overall SLOW values and little changed between the halves.

Name: 1H SLOW, 2H SLOW
Kipnis: 15.8, 24.5
Segura: 46.4, 40.4

One player at the top of the list who did change quite a bit was Mr. Mike Trout. He went from an 18 SLOW to 62.3 SLOW. Looking at his numbers, he basically went from above average against fastbalsl to below average. But over the course of the season, his overall SLOW values  evened out. In 2012, he had a  SLOW value of 38. In 2013, it was 38. Nothing to worry about, but it is always good to check.

Players always get labeled with a slow bat, but it is tough to tell for sure without watching a couple dozen at bats. I created the SLOW metric to find hitters who have problems catching up with fastballs. For 2014, SLOW can be used to find these slow hitters and then they can be closely examined to see if an injury may be behind the decline.





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.

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Nick Norris
10 years ago

Can you differentiate between a slow bat and a batter being surprised by fastballs aka bad approach or situational or count awareness?