Jason Beck had a good post last week on some comments made this spring by Ivan Rodriguez. The comments revolved around a change in his approach to the plate and his goal to see more pitches. As Jason points out this is crazy talk coming from a hitter such as Pudge, especially so late in his career.
The main thing about it is I’m just doing what I want to do and just be more selective at the plate, try to hit some strikes and take the balls. I’m just trying to see 4-5 pitches per at-bat.
A noble goal for Pudge but it got me thinking about how much patience other Tiger batters show. To take a look at how patient Tiger batters are I took a look at two stats in particular. The first stat is Pitches per Plate-Appearance which is a straight forward look at how many pitches the batter sees. The second stat is Walks per Plate Appearance which will show the percentage of plate appearances in which the batter works a walk.
The below table shows how the Tiger batters fared in each of the described statistics.
| Batter | P/PA | Batter | BB/PA | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brandon Inge | 4.23 | Gary Sheffield | .142 | |
| Mike Hessman | 4.21 | Miguel Cabrera | .116 | |
| Gary Sheffield | 4.06 | Magglio Ordonez | .112 | |
| Curtis Granderson | 3.98 | Mike Hessman | .088 | |
| Edgar Rentaria | 3.83 | Carlos Guillen | .087 | |
| Magglio Ordonez | 3.68 | Edgar Rentaria | .085 | |
| Miguel Cabrera | 3.68 | Brandon Inge | .081 | |
| Ryan Raburn | 3.65 | Curtis Granderson | .077 | |
| Jacque Jones | 3.64 | Jacque Jones | .069 | |
| Carlos Guillen | 3.61 | Placido Polanco | .058 | |
| Marcus Thames | 3.60 | Ryan Raburn | 0.54 | |
| Ivan Rodriguez | 3.51 | Marcus Thames | .046 | |
| Placido Polanco | 3.51 | Ivan Rodriguez | .017 | |
| Ramon Santiago | 2.84 | Ramon Santiago | .014 |
There were some surprises for me in these stats. Brandon Inge lead the team with 4.23 pitches seen per at-bat which didn’t quite mesh with my expectations. Brandon struck out at a high rate last year but also made pitchers work. Detroit’s other solid defensive replacement, Ramon Santiago, was at the other end of the spectrum seeing the least number of pitches per at bat and walking very little.
Mike Hessman showed that there is some difference between him and Marcus Thames, thought his average and slugging stats from Toledo look eerily close to Marcus. Hessman ranked in the upper half of the team for both key plate discipline statistics seeing more pitches per PA than Sheffield.
The Tigers haven’t been known in the past few years as being a particularly patient team. Of this past off-season acquisitions of Edgar Rentaria, Miguel Cabrera and Jacque Jones, Rentaria shows the most patience. Cabrera, while a very talented hitter already, is still a young batter so more patience will come with time but he already brings OBP. Jacque Jones shows the least discipline of the three.
If Pudge is looking to climb up the ladder, the good news is there is nowhere but up to go.
D-Town Baseball
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