Whats The Deal With Hunter Pence?

He’s not a hunter, and he’s not a pence. What’s the deal?

This off-season, Hunter Pence signed a five-year; $90 million contract to roam spacious right field in AT&T Park for the foreseeable future. Since signing that contract, Pence has 8 hits in 57 plate appearances. His .246 OBP is nearly 100 points lower than his career average of .338. Not a world-killing OBP, but good nonetheless. What’s the source of the problem? Is it like Belt, trying to whack it over the wall leading to bad hits? Is it impatience? Is it sheer bad luck? I’ll explore the problems plaguing Hunter Pence early in the season.

I’ll admit, I went in with a little bias. I assumed Pence was striking out a ton and failing to take any walks, all while hacking at the ball. It’s been frustrating watching Pence (who was one of my favorite players when he was with the Astros) be so ineffective early in the year. Unfortunately for my eye test, but fortunately for Pence, neither of those is true.  Hunter Pence has a career walk rate of 7.4% and a K rate of 18.3% (for a career 0.4 BB/K ratio). So far this season, Pence is actually more patient than he’s been in his career. He has an 8.8% walk rate, and a 17.5% K rate; these is a rough 0.50 ratio, and if this pace holds up, it would be his best such ratio since he had a 0.53 rate in Houston in 2009. So it isn’t that Pence is having a bad time at the plate, he’s actually having a good time taking walks and avoiding strikeouts (for Hunter Pence).

He’s also being patient. He’s #59 in pitches per plate appearance at 3.75 P/PA. While this hasn’t translated into hits, it shows that Pence isn’t just getting up there and hacking at the first thing that comes his way. Interestingly enough, I wrote the first paragraph before doing the research. This is an apology to Brandon Belt. Since Belt is getting a ton of strikeouts and not many walks, I assumed he wasn’t getting a ton of pitches per plate appearance. I was wrong. Belt’s in the top 40 (#38) at P/PA. I am so sorry Brandon, please forgive me. While Pence seems to be making good decisions at the plate, is he connecting? His swings outside the zone are up slightly, and his swing percentage in the zone is down like mad (13% lower than his career average). This, to me, says he’s either getting squeezed or having trouble seeing which balls he should be swinging at or which balls he should be taking. Overall, his contact rate is almost exactly in line with his career average. Pence may not be seeing the ball that well right now, and this could be contributing to his low batting average. However, that doesn’t tell the whole story. He doesn’t seem to be hacking wildly (compared to his career norm).

A lack of patience & wild hacking don’t seem to be Pence’s problem thus far this year. Then what is it? It’s my old friend BABIP. BABIP, in short, is a measure of how lucky or unlucky a player is getting with his hits. It stands for Batting Average on Balls in Play, and the “luckiness” of the stat can be described in two different scenarios:

(1)    A weak dribbler that rolls up the line but never goes foul; this is a hit. Should it be a hit? Probably not. But it is.

(2)    A line drive hit on a rope that goes straight to the first baseman; this is an out. Should it be an out? Probably not. But it is.

Those are the two extremes that drive BABIP. All you can do is put the bat on the ball; unless you hit it over a wall (any wall, really, including those in foul territory, a ton of factors are outside your control. So far this year, those factors have conspired against Hunter Pence.

Pence’s BABIP sits at a cool .175, meaning that 83.5% of Pence’s hit balls that ended up in play are going for outs. The league average is around 70%. That seems like it’s some really nasty bad luck for Pence (who sports a career .317 BABIP), but he doesn’t seem to be getting good wood on the ball. His line drive rate has plummeted and it seems to have been replaced by useless old popups. This would account for the fact that his HR/FB ratio has also crashed to the earth—it’s hard to hit homeruns when just about one out of every 5 or 6 balls you put in play are harmless pop outs. Luckily, Pence is a professional hitter and knows how to play the game of baseball.  Pence’s luck will come around as he gets better wood on the ball (hopefully by rethinking his approach, given that he seems to not be seeing the ball very well).

All in all, after looking at the factors behind Pence’s dip in production, I’m not worried. Pence is notoriously streaky, and the Giants have played well despite Pence not doing too hot. Hopefully he’ll start to pick it up soon and we can get Ol’ Crazy Eyes back.

Throwing A Wet Blanket on Brandon Belt

As the second weekend of baseball winds down, Brandon Belt stands tied with Mark Trumbo and Pedro Alvarez for the most home runs in baseball with 5. Now Trumbo, thanks to the Australia series, has done it in more games, but the three of them are the home run leaders right now. By all accounts, Belt is a lock to hit 25 home runs, and maybe even more. People are buzzing about Belt’s power, but maybe they should pump the brakes a little bit on Brandon Belt. There are a few reasons why we should probably temper our expectations for Mr. Belt. His peripherals, the park factor and the nature of his home runs lead me to believe that this early-season surge may add a dinger or two to his year-end total, but people calling for a 30+ home run year may be slightly disappointed. I anticipated a breakout for Belt, but to somewhere in the 22-25 home run range. He just happened to get a big bunch of those out of the way early on.

First, his peripherals. Belt has taken one walk this year in 49 plate appearances. One. Compare that to his 14 strikeouts this year and you can see that Belt is going up there lacking his trademark patience at the plate (he has a career 23.2 walk rate, meaning he gets a walk between every 4 and 5 plate appearances) in favor of trying to hit balls out. This rate is completely unsustainable, and there are only a handful of people in the league with as many strikeouts as belt with one or fewer walks:

Chris Johnson, Khris Davis, Everth Cabrera, BJ Upton, Josh Donaldson & Brad Miller

None of these players really profile out as superb hitters, especially Upton. Miller is just learning the league and Johnson is notoriously bad at taking walks. Krush Davis’s big knock was that he flat out cannot take a walk to save his life. When you look at the K/BB ratio, Belt is not in good company.  I know what you can say to this, and that is “small sample size!” Well my question to you is: what makes this small sample size statistic different than Belt’s ISO that is over 100 points higher than his career average, or the fact that one out of every three of his fly balls went over the wall. While Belt’s output thus far has been impressive, it’s been created by an unsustainable approach at the plate.

Second, Brandon Belt plays in one of the most notoriously spacious ballparks in baseball. Ask Madison Bumgarner and Brandon Crawford, a home run that is a home run in nearly every park isn’t a home run in AT&T Park. Bumgarner hit a shot to the warning track and Crawford hit a massive shot to Triples Alley, neither of which left the yard. Both would have been out in most ballparks, but AT&T isn’t most ballparks. In every year since 2011, AT&T has landed in the bottom five in home runs per game. This will be a problem for Belt going forward, as four of his five home runs were on the road, and at least one, maybe two, would not be a home run at AT&T park, as the following overlay shows:

I guess that last paragraph was sort of a two-fer. AT&T Park won’t sap Belt’s power; I anticipate his power surge causing his doubles to go through the roof. I just wouldn’t expect his hits to land on the other side of the fence as often as they have through the first couple weeks of the season. While I hope I’m wrong, I want to caution Giants fans to not lose their mind when it comes to Brandon Belt’s potential this season.