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.