A Closer Look at Jason Bay's Power Outage

by Ari Berkowitz on Jul 29, 2010 3:03 AM EDT

As all of you have witnessed to this point in the season, Jason Bay hasn't been, well Jason Bay this year. He has only six homers thus far in 2010, a little less than a third of the amount he had last year at this same time. There are a few elements in Jason Bay's game that are uncharacteristically different this season and might be attributable to a new team philosophy focusing on putting more balls in play equating to fewer strikeouts and fewer walks. The Mets have a paltry team wide BB/K rate of .44 (9th worst in the majors) and an O-Swing rate (swinging percentage on balls out of the strike zone) of 31.9% good for second to last in the majors. When plate discipline becomes a team wide weakness one should attribute such failures to non other than the hitting coach. Swinging at balls is not the right approach if the Mets want to win baseball games. Anyways, back to Jason Bay.

When you compare Jason Bay's 2010 stat line to that of his 2009 one, you'll find three big differences. His homers, his walks and his strikeouts. Jason Bay has altered his hitting program (I'm looking at you Mr. Johnson) which entails him putting many more balls in play instead of being the high walk and high strikeout rate power hitter he has always been. While watching Saturday's Mets game against the Dodgers I noticed something about Bay I had never noticed before. Both his singles were groundballs pulled through the 5-6 hole. It dawned on me. Had Jason Bay been hitting lots of groundball singles to his pull field and fewer fly balls? I quickly went to the invaluable FanGraphs website and checked if I had gone crazy or if my gut was onto something. Lo and behold my gut was right.

Season	Split	BB%	K%	BB/K	OBP	SLG	OPS	ISO	BABIP	wRC	wRAA	wOBA	wRC+

2009	as R to Left	0.0 %	0.0 %	0.00	.441	*.912*	1.353	*.466*	.363	61.7	38.3	.566	254
2009	as R to Center	0.0 %	0.0 %	0.00	.342	.670	1.011	.322	.294	23.0	9.0	.421	159
2009	as R to Right	0.0 %	0.0 %	0.00	.267	.533	.800	.267	.214	7.7	0.4	.337	103

Season	Split	BB%	K%	BB/K	OBP	SLG	OPS	ISO	BABIP	wRC	wRAA	wOBA	wRC+

2010	as R to Left	0.0 %	0.0 %	0.00	.360	*.439*	.798	*.079*	.354	15.8	2.5	.351	120
2010	as R to Center	0.0 %	0.0 %	0.00	.406	.681	1.087	.266	.394	21.7	10.5	.460	193
2010	as R to Right	0.0 %	0.0 %	0.00	.196	.531	.727	.327	.146	4.7	-1.3	.293	81

If you look at his numbers to each field you'll notice that the only big difference is to his pull field, while centerfield and rightfield have essentially stayed the same. Jason Bay's wRC+ has dropped an astounding 134 points while his wOBA is also down a ton. While the drop in OBP is nothing to sneeze at, the drop in ISO (Isolated Power) is frightening. Let's look at Jason Bay's batted balls to try to get a better picture.

Season	Split	GB/FB	LD%	GB%	FB%	IFFB%	HR/FB	IFH%	BUH%	Pitches	Balls	Strikes

2009	as R to Left	1.65	22.6 %	*48.2 %*	*29.2 %*	3.5 %	*42.1 %*	9.6 %	0.0 %	629	216	413
2009	as R to Center	0.29	13.7 %	19.7 %	66.7 %	9.0 %	10.3 %	8.7 %	0.0 %	375	118	257
2009	as R to Right	0.15	9.8 %	11.5 %	78.7 %	20.8 %	8.3 %	0.0 %	0.0 %	224	82	142

Season	Split	GB/FB	LD%	GB%	FB%	IFFB%	HR/FB	IFH%	BUH%	Pitches	Balls	Strikes

2010	as R to Left	3.35	23.7 %	*58.8 %*	*17.5 %*	0.0 %	*5.0 %*	16.4 %	0.0 %	359	109	250
2010	as R to Center	0.45	19.8 %	25.0 %	55.2 %	1.9 %	3.8 %	4.2 %	0.0 %	313	106	207
2010	as R to Right	0.04	7.8 %	3.9 %	88.2 %	22.2 %	6.7 %	0.0 %	0.0 %	174	59	115

Wow. Jason Bay has morphed into Luis Castillo, pounding 58.8% of his pulled batted balls into the ground. About 10% of his flyballs to leftfield have turned into groundballs which is awful and can help explain his loss in homeruns. The more flyballs a hitter hits, the more extra base hits and homeruns he'll have. Jason Bay, being a pull hitter, has to raise that FB% to leftfield back up to around 30% if he wants to get his power back. But something else is also manifesting itself in these numbers. It looks like Jason Bay just isn't hitting the ball with as much authority as he was last year. If you look at his HR/FB% you'll notice the crazy 37% drop. Can this be attributed solely to luck or is there something else going on here? Jason Bay is probably suffering from some kind of combination of not hitting enough flyballs along with not hitting the ball as far, playing in Citi Field as opposed to Fenway Park and some tough luck. Here are a couple graphs from TexasLeaguer.com and a couple from HitTrackerOnline.com hat will hopefully help us come to a conclusion. (2009 first/third, 2010 on second/fourth)

Bay_jason_2009_scatter_medium

Where the 2009 data has a large cluster of light green (denoting a hit) in deep leftfield the 2010 data has an empty space of dark green (denoting unoccupied space on the spray chart). This supports Jason Bay's extremely low HR/FB% this season, Jason Bay just isn't hitting the ball as hard as he was one season ago. Last season, being a power and a pull hitter, Jason Bay hit the vast majority of his home runs to leftfield. This season three of his six homers have been hit to rightfield. Also, as shown on Greg Rybarczyk's website Hit Tracker Online, Jason Bay's "average speed of bat" for his home runs have decreased on average by 2.2 MPH. I don't know if this is siginificant but it still sheds some light on our Jason Bay dilemma. So now that it is pretty clear that Jason Bay is hitting the ball with less authority this season after hitting 36 homers last season, the question is why'd he change his approach? After all the famous mantra states "if it ain't broke don't fix it". So why did Jason Bay try to fix a non-existent problem? We can theorize all day long. One possibility is that he was scared he wouldn't be able to produce big enough power numbers given the fact that Citi Field suppresses the home run, or it could be Howard Johnson got to him (see Wright, David 2009), or it could be something else entirely. The question I want to answer is how did this happen?

Season	Team	O-Swing%	Z-Swing%	Swing%	O-Contact%	Z-Contact%	Contact%	Zone%	F-Strike%	SwStr%
Total *	- - -	*20.1 %*	63.9 %	42.4 %	*51.3 %*	81.1 %	74.2 %	50.9 %	57.3 %	10.8 %

2009	Red Sox	*20.1 %*	63.1 %	40.7 %	*48.5 %*	79.4 %	71.5 %	47.9 %	57.6 %	11.3 %
2010	Mets	*27.0 %*	65.6 %	45.7 %	*57.8 %*	81.0 %	73.9 %	48.4 %	57.6 %	11.7 %

As shown on the graph, Jason Bay has not only increased his O-Swing rate by 7% he has also increased his O-Contact rate by 9%. So while Jason Bay is making more contact in 2010, he is making weaker and poorer contact. Weak, poor contact generally leads to soft hit groundballs, so this looks to be the reason for the increase in GB% to Jason Bay's pull field, leftfield. This has led to a lower flyball rate to leftfield, his power field, which has effectively lowered Bay's power production to his pull field, thus leading to many fewer homeruns. So as you can see, everything in baseball can be traced back to plate discipline. The difference between the power hitting Jason Bay and the slap hitting Jason Bay is essentially taking seven more pitches thrown outside the strike zone every hundred pitches. These few pitches afford him the opportunity to wait for a pitch to drive and hit a flyball off of, equating to more home runs, instead of going out of the strike zone and making poor contact and hitting more groundballs. These slight changes for Jason Bay could be the difference between the power hitting, high OBP monster and the slap hitting 2010 version the Mets got. So Jason, try to be more patient, wait for your pitches and make sure to hit lots of flyballs to leftfield, even if it means striking out more. Oh, and for the future don't listen to Howard Johnson.

REFERENCES

-Fangraphs.com (the tables)

-TexasLeaguer.com (the balls in play spray charts)

-HitTrackerOnline.com (the home run spray charts)

This FanPost was contributed by a member of the community and was not subject to any vetting or approval process. It does not necessarily reflect the opinions, reasoning skills, or attention to grammar and usage rules held by the editors of this site.

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My First Post

What do you guys think?

by Ari Berkowitz on Jul 29, 2010 3:04 AM EDT reply actions

Tremendous work.

I’ll have to reread it tomorrow after I’ve gotten some sleep but the diagnosis looks very sharp to me.

by Jack Str on Jul 29, 2010 3:37 AM EDT up reply actions

A really great post

Lots of valuable info in this, as well as some good points made on how a hitting coach can indeed shape a hitter in some ways.

Travis Hafner is made of gold

by Super Mario on Jul 29, 2010 11:10 AM EDT up reply actions

Nice first post

Just a tip: Texas Leaguers pitch f/x charts won’t display the correct information if you hotlink them. You have to save/upload the graphs in another site (like imageshack.us).

In lobby campaign for Chris Carter.

by Michkin on Jul 29, 2010 2:48 PM EDT up reply actions

I tried and it didn't work, would love for someone to help with that!!!

by Ari Berkowitz on Jul 30, 2010 10:46 AM EDT up reply actions

Like this:

→Load the Texasleaguers pitch fx for 2009 and 2010.
→Right-click on the spray chart and select “save image as”. Save them on your computer.
→Go to imageshack.us and upload the images
→Post those image links in your fanpost

In lobby campaign for Chris Carter.

by Michkin on Jul 30, 2010 1:44 PM EDT up reply actions

No No No.

Your first post is supposed to elicit “this should be a fanshot” type replies. This is way too good.

by wobatus on Aug 3, 2010 10:40 AM EDT up reply actions

you wouldn't be lobbying for the position of hitting coach, would you?

"I only wanted a few things out of life -- a wife, children, to play baseball and to hunt deer." - Turk Wendell

by Rey-O on Jul 29, 2010 8:54 AM EDT reply actions

I was thinking the same thing...

How is it that this is apparent to Mr. Berkowitz but not those paid to know these things.

by MookieTheCat on Jul 29, 2010 7:18 PM EDT up reply actions

Nice work, now somebody tell Bay

Hey, wait! I'm having one of those things. You know? A headache with pictures?

by KeithsMoustache on Jul 29, 2010 11:17 AM EDT reply actions

+1

by RyanZ on Aug 11, 2010 2:29 PM EDT up reply actions

Hmm, I'm wondering if I'm related to you

John Olerud, Hall of Famer. Got a nice ring to it.

by squid92 on Jul 29, 2010 4:46 PM EDT reply actions

Excellant Write-up, very well done

"I reject your reality and substitute my own"
-Adam Savage

by blueandorange4life on Jul 29, 2010 4:59 PM EDT reply actions

Well done

I only skimmed through it, but the main point that I got out of it is that he’s getting on top of the balls that he pulls to LF and this is something I’ve noticed all season. For whatever reason, he’s not getting any loft and he’ll either get on top of the ball and weakly ground out or hit a line drive on the nose into LF (not a bad thing, but at the same time, that’s why he’s basically become a singles hitter). My question is how does a guy like this completely lose his swing? Is it a loss of confidence? Change in mechanics? Poor coaching? Aging and loss of bat speed?

The one and only mistermet on teh Interwebz!

by Steve Schreiber on Jul 29, 2010 7:31 PM EDT reply actions

Exactly Correct

misterment,
The troubling part is that I’ve been catching up on my 2009 Red Sox games in order to notice any differences. I only noticed to extremely slight differences, this is why I believe it was a philosophical change and not a mechanical one. Change #1: His hands were a little higher up last year (well now his bat’s on his shoulder altogether). Chang #2: He was closing his legs and exploding just a tad faster last year, do I know if that makes a difference? no clue. Anyways, it could be that Jason Bay’s eyes got screwed up some how and he’s not seeing the ball well meaning that offseason LASIK would fix all his/our problems.

by Ari Berkowitz on Jul 30, 2010 2:11 AM EDT up reply actions

I'd add injury to your list.

Even a small one can throw a guy’s swing off.

Also, some guys simply lose enough of a fraction of bat speed combined with a minute deterioration in eye-hand co-ordination, coupled with a slight change for the worse in eyesight, and they can no longer hit major league pitching with any kind of authority. Any one of those things are all it takes to turn a power hitter into a singles hitter. Bay would be far from the first to have gone from being a very good hitter at age 30 to out of the league at age 33.

He may get it back, but this may be his new level of performance. Or a plateau on his way to worse.

by Jack Str on Jul 30, 2010 3:44 AM EDT up reply actions

SWING AWAY

Bay is not helping the Mets as is. He should start swinging for the long ball except when bases are empty and the one run homer won’t matter much. Trying to hit a homer with runners on was the reason he was signed. Unless Jerry and Omar did in fact want another Castillo which would not shock me.

by rah0785 on Jul 30, 2010 5:54 AM EDT reply actions

Interesting data

I just have a hard time attributing it all to HoJo. I’d like to think that an experienced major league hitter like Bay wouldn’t drastically change his hitting approach as a result of a new coach, and in any event, could that account for a such a precipitous drop in power? On the other hand, it’s certainly not dissimilar to what happened to Wright last year, and HoJo (and the Mets’ approach to hitting in general) is one constant there. But then again, Wright managed to turn things around this year, so you’d think that if it were based on an overall team/organizational approach to hitting (the Bernazard oppo-insanity) then this would no longer be an issue.

Also, with regard to O-Swing, I recall earlier this year that the O-Swing numbers were up across MLB (not just on the Mets), and there have been suggestions that this could have something to do with small variations in how the data is gathered and entered, and not with actual player performance.

I think that the decline in bat speed, and the almost unfathomable decrease in HR/FB, are the most disturbing facets; it suggests that even when he does what he should be doing (hitting the ball in the air), it’s not going very hard or very far. I suppose we’ll see what happens when/if the Mets get rid of HoJo, but like Jack Str above, I’m skeptical that all, or even most, or this can be blamed on a hitting coach.

by dontstopbelieving on Jul 30, 2010 11:11 AM EDT reply actions