Reader Joel wanted to see this and I was looking for something to do today so here it is. Adam Dunn has struggled so far this year when it comes to hitting the ball as he is hitting .162 and slugging just .243. He does however have 16 walks on the year which leads all of baseball. Lets take a look at the pitches he has seen this year.
There are 100 Balls on that chart and just 111 combined of everything else. It doesn’t look like Dunn is expanding his strikezone much at all and only seems like he has a weak spot outside of the zone on the ball low and right below the outside corner of the plate. When he has swung the bat this year, it is generally on pitches within the strikezone. Some of his struggles could be chased back to the fact that his batting average on balls in play is .200 (when its generally ~.300 league wide).
9 responses so far ↓
1 Joel // Apr 16, 2008 at 6:09 pm
Thanks Doug! I meant to ask this earlier, but are these graphs from the pitcher’s view or the catcher’s view?
I’m assuming all In Play outs are counted as swinging strikes on here? I think it’d be nice to have those differentiated, if it’s not too hard. Even better would be if you could do a flyball versus groundball. Just a suggestion.
As for Dunn, my suspicions seem to be validated by the graph. Pitchers don’t look like they are challenging him too much. I guess they’d rather take their chances with Edwin.
2 jinaz // Apr 16, 2008 at 6:28 pm
Dunner’s line drive rate is down as well so far this year, just 11% (compared to 17-23% the prior years). ‘Course, it’s hard to hit a line drive when they aren’t throwing the ball over the plate. The guy has more walks than strikeouts after all, and he strikes out a lot!
-j
3 Joel // Apr 16, 2008 at 7:49 pm
And Doug, if you are looking for ideas for tomorrow, maybe you can see if we can tell what is happening with EdE? Thanks! You’re saving me from having to set up my own database, and lord knows I wouldn’t get any work done for my real job if that happened.
4 orangeandbrown // Apr 16, 2008 at 8:23 pm
Doesn’t he seem like he fouls a lot of strikes off? From a quick glance, it almost seems like he’s picking good pitches but failing to really hit them.
5 Doug Gray // Apr 16, 2008 at 8:52 pm
Joel,
The view is from the catchers view. As for Edwin, that sounds like a good idea for tomorrow.
Justin,
Yeah, tough to hit it on the screws when they aren’t throwing it over the plate at all. Dunn is seeing more balls thrown than strikes right now, so odds of him getting pitches to lay into aren’t very good right now.
6 Doug Gray // Apr 16, 2008 at 9:01 pm
Orangeandbrown,
Dunn swings and fouls a pitch 37% of the time he swings. In comparison, Edwin does it 41.25% of the time, Griffey does it 35% and Phillips does it 34.7% of the time. So no, it doesn’t seem like he is out of whack with other guys on the team at least.
7 Chris @ RLN // Apr 17, 2008 at 2:59 am
It looks like the umps are beating him up outside - is he that unusual in that regard?
FWIW, Baker thinks Dunn’s fouling off the few good ones he sees (per Fay’s blog).
8 Doug Gray // Apr 17, 2008 at 5:41 am
Chris,
That seems to be going around a little bit with everyone. As for Bakers comments, yeah, Dunn is…. so is every other player in baseball I am sure.
9 RandoLL // Jun 4, 2008 at 5:51 am
Hi, I’m a fan of MLB…
I came here by searching Pitch f/x stuffs.
I wrote an article about Adam dunn, using pitch f/x system.
I think this method is another way to analyze batters…
If you’re interested in him, please take a look at,
http://bronxbomber.tistory.com/52
thank you!
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