Kind of trending back to Joey Votto being told to be more aggressive, one of the things Dusty Baker gets ripped on is his constant talk about how on base percentage is overrated because a batter shouldn’t be up there trying to walk. That turns into the thought that Baker tries to get his players to swing at everything (which of course doesn’t hold much water since he did coach Bonds for 10 or so years who has some of the best plate discipline ever). Anyways, with the off day yesterday I didn’t have much to take a look at so I decided to just chart the pitches the Reds swung at versus the pitches the Reds took.

Now obviously as noted yesterday, there are about 50 pitches missing from the data but still enough to get an idea of how the Reds were choosing to approach the plate. To me, it looks like the Reds were a lot more willing to swing at pitches on the left side of the plate than the right side. It will be worth following this type of situation on specific players as the season goes along to see which players have the best strike judgment. We all have our idea’s of who those players are, but this will be a good way to confirm or deny what we think.