IST: Cubs vs Phillies

beckdawg said:

I don't think he's as far off as you do. His BABIP right now is .254. If you lop another 50 or so points on to his average and OBP he'd be at roughly .250/.360/.400 which is basically where he was in 2015 though he hit for more power then. And it's definitely not all bad. He's significantly cut down on his pulling. He's currently at 35.8%/34.3%/29.9% for pull/center/oppo. Given how drastically they had played him in shifts this is probably a good thing long term going the other way and what not. And I've mentioned this before but he's near the league lead in pitchers per plate appearance. You could possibly argue he should be slightly more selective and maybe that's why he's not quite hitting balls in play as well as you would like but long story short here, I think this is something he'll work though. There's too many good signs here for it to be a true "problem."

Given my previous talk on Baez I would contrast that with Schwarber at the moment. The reason I pointed out Baez when I did is at that point he didn't appear to have a lot going for him. That's since changed a bit but with Schwarber I can sit here and tell you his walk rate is stellar and he's seeing a ton of pitches. Even if you get out those are still good at bats because you're wearing down the pitcher. And obviously while you want a better batting average at a .317 OBP he's still usable. Maybe you argue to drop him a bit in the line up which I think is fair but I don't really see the point in sending him to AAA because he probably just dominates AAA again. He needs to see MLB pitching.

Honestly just looking at the numbers it appears like he's just missing some pitches. He's basically turned line drives into infield flies and his HR/FB rate is down. To me that sure sounds like a guy who's not squaring up pitches like you'd like but eventually that will come.

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DanTown said:

So Schwarber's strike outs are weird

- His swinging strike is only 10.7% (that's basically not an issue)
- His z contact is 82.9% (that is super low)
- His contact rate is 75% (thats fairly low)

The fact of the matter is, Kyle is swinging and missing at a lot of pitches in the strike zone (17% of the time) but his swinging strike percentage is fairly low. The numbers are basically saying Kyle Schwarber is one of the worst hitters in the league at making contact at pitches in the zone. He has had low z-contact before but I'd be shocked to see Schwarber struggle so much with pitches in the zone. Either two things are going to happen

1. He's going to get better at hitting pitches in the zone
or
2. His 2015 season is a mirage (ala Shane Spencer or some other flash in the pan) who actually really struggles with contact hitting and will be a bad ML hitter

I guess I'll leave that up to you to decide.

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