Putting Lamb’s Numbers Into New Light
Since Buscher took over the third base job from Lamb, the offense has looked better and the team has been winning. This basically validates my claims over the offseason that the Twins don’t need a slew of new stars, they just need to upgrade to average production in a few of the worse spots in the lineup to complement the Mauer/Morneau core.
But Buscher’s hitting isn’t what I want to talk about today. Rather, it’s Lamb’s lack of it. Coming into the season, Lamb showed some promise as a guy who could produce a reasonable facsimile of 3B Numbers. He was coming off a few years of hitting 10-12 HR in half a season’s worth of ABs, and the hope was that the added consistency of playing every day would make a difference for him.
Instead … crater. Black hole. The same production as we’d get from Nick Punto, except that Lamb can’t pretend to be good in the field.
What happened?
His line drive percentage is 16.7%, down from his career rate of 20.5%. Following this, his BABIP is down to .253. His HR/FB rate is just 1.2%, down from 10.6% last year. (Juan Pierre’s career HR/FB is 1.2%.) And 11.6% of his balls in play are infield popups.
He’s also seeing fewer pitches per plate appearance, 3.5 vs his typical 3.9-4.1 .
Decreased HR/FB is an indication that a player’s bat speed is decreasing; decreased pitches per PA is indicative of lost discipline or plate vision, and may account for the ugliness of his balls-in-play data: he’s swinging at more pitches out of the strike zone, and making weaker contact when he does manage to put the bat on the ball.
The same is true of both Gomez and Young, who are among the league leaders in “swinging at balls out of the strike zone,” and Young’s power/discipline numbers are also worse than expected. What is happening with these new acquisitions?
I don’t have any real answers, but my guess is that other teams have this thing called “batting practice,” where the players “practice hitting baseballs.” The Twins very cutely hold infield practice where they practice the fundamentals of fielding a grounder and throwing it to first base. So when we bring in players from other teams, they stop being able to hit because they don’t get to practice any more, they’re stuck in a lineup of similarly undisciplined and weak hitters which further drives down their performance, and then the manager gets mad at them because they’re bored with doing the same drill that their 8 year old son learned in little league two weeks ago.
It’s not Lamb’s fault that we signed him. It’s not Lamb’s fault that he got so much playing time to “prove” that he could live up to his “track record.” I would have thought that the “inability to perform at even minimal levels” would have been his fault, but I’m not so sure any more. It’s quite possible that Gardenhire just isn’t doing anything to help his players hit.
I ask again … what exactly do the Twins do in practice? Because it’s not translating onto the field.
4 comments4 Comments so far
Leave a reply
Hey, great numbers on Lamb. How can a player just collapse like that? It’s baffling.
What do the Twins do in practice? I think you guys have touched on this before, but it’s an organizational philosophy on hitting and one that is outdated. We teach our guys to hit it to the gaps, move runners over (i.e. “productive” outs), hit for average, and there’s a complete lack of plate discipline. Lamb, Harris, Young, and even Monroe are all hitting significantly worse than their career numbers. As you explained, Lamb could just simply be declining, as with Monroe. Maybe Lamb really can’t handle playing everyday. It’d be interesting to see what Lamb’s and Monroe’s collapse rates were for this season. Unfortunately I don’t have a subscription to BP.
As for Young and Harris, I think you could put more blame towards the coaches, like Gardenhire and Vavra. For Harris, his minor league numbers and his first full season in the majors last year do not point to the type of production he’s giving us this year. And at age 27, he should be improving, not declining. Similar situation with Young, although I think his potential has been overblown, his track record does not indicate a .692 OPS in the majors. However, if you look at his numbers in AAA and the majors, they’re not that great. He was a below average corner outfielder last season.
And then there’s guys like Morneau and Cuddyer, who have seemingly lost all home run power. Morneau is a guy who should be hitting 40-45 homers a year, but I think they’re teaching even him to hit to the gaps and hit for average. I would take a 30-40 point drop in average to see a 30-40 point increase in slugging. And I’m hoping Cuddy has just been thrown off this year because of injury. I’m fearing that we gave him a contract based on one good year, and that we’ll pay for this going forward by getting fairly average production from right when we need him to be one of the guys who’s above average.
Bottom line is that it starts in the front office and with the coaching staff. I honestly think they all need to go, with the exception of Rick Anderson.
Collapse rates, courtesy of BP.
Mike Lamb: 39% Craig Monroe: 31%
I don’t know how valuable that information is…
Joe Mauer: 36% Justin Morneau: 27%
But given that both Mauer and Morneau have had a rough year within the last three years, the collapse rate calculation probably punishes them more than it should.
Well, I guess that explains something for Lamb and Monroe. Not sure how it’s calculated.
Just one question. Does Gardenhire think there’s a rule that because you normally bat your catcher third that you then have to bat your catcher third in every game? I don’t know how else you explain batting Redmond third. He should be batting eighth with everyone else up one spot in the order.
Gardy’s said that he wants to keep everyone in their “groove” by keeping the lineup as static as possible. Even if that means putting an 8/9 hitter in the 3 hole once a week. I guess.
I don’t know. I find it hard to imagine that a major league hitter would somehow be “confused” by hitting 5th instead of 6th, or something.
(Or maybe this goes hand in hand with Gardenhire’s desire to ensure that none of our players are “major league” caliber hitters.)