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Old 05-02-2014, 10:25 PM   #53
RchW
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Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Toronto ON by way of Glasgow UK
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Quote:
Originally Posted by greenie25 View Post
Well, I'm not going to post that data for the past 12 seasons (which is why I used the MLB total instead of individual batter data), but looking at last season...

There were 140 batters in MLB that qualified for the batting title last year.

Sorting by wOBA, the Top 25% (37 hitters with wOBA ranging from 0.357 to 0.455) had an O-Swing % that was roughly 29% (rough calculation on my part). The O-Swing % range from quite high (Marlon Byrd tops at 40.7; 16 hitters at 30% or greater, including Carlos Gomez, Yadier Molina, Chris Davis, Michael Cuddyer, Robinson Cano, Miguel Cabrera, Matt Holliday and Giancarlo Stanton) to fairly low (Joey Votto lowest at 20; 9 hitters at 25% or lower, including Buster Posey, Mike Trout, Tulo, Joe Mauer, Joey Bats and Shin-Soo Choo).

The bottom 25% (36 hitters with wOBA ranging from 0.247 to 0.318) had an O-Swing % that was roughly 32.5% (again, rough calculation). A.J. Pierzynski had the highest (49.6), there were 21 batters at 30% or higher (a lot of guys I would classify as swings-at-anything hitters like Alexei Ramirez, Erick Aybar, Alcides Escobar, Jose Altuve, Ichiro Suzuki, Leonys Martin, Starlin Castro, Brandon Crawford and Darwin Barney) and 5 at 25% or lower (led by Russell Martin at 22.8% - surprised to see Dan Uggla and Elvis Andrus in this group).
This shocks me only because I think the Blue Jays swing at anything. This tells me that plate discipline is a dying art. Is it possible that the strike zone in-game is different than the Fangraphs data? It just seems like a big number.
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