Or maybe it’s a star thing? Kwan’s loud entrance last year immediately put him in the upper echelon of Guardians’ batters, right there with José Ramírez. Is it a leadoff hitter thing? Christian Yelich is the current league leader in called strikes fully outside the strike zone (12), and he’s batted leadoff for the Brewers in seven of their 10 games. Is this a Kwan thing? He came to the big leagues with a reputation for being a selective hitter, which perhaps was internalized by umpires. Several unanswerable questions arise from this trend. He led the team in both categories, with 24.5% of his pitches being called strikes and 2.9% of those being fully outside the zone.Ĭalled strikes against the Guardians in 2023 Batter This trend is not simply a 2023 thing, either, as Kwan led the team last year with 76 of 2,643 called strikes being fully outside the strike zone. Using Baseball Savant’s zone, we can see that, of Kwan’s called strikes, five have been fully outside the strike zone (2.14%). That he might also have more called strikes is not a huge leap either, but the location of the strikes is making a difference. As the leadoff hitter, it’s obvious that Kwan will have the most plate appearances and, thus, it is logical then he would see the most pitches of anyone on the team. Called strikes against Steven Kwanįrom Kwan’s 233 total pitches seen, we can isolate 48 called strikes, or 20.6% of all pitches he’s faced, the most on the team. However, another trend that is slightly more static has emerged, and it might explain Kwan’s plate discipline numbers through the first nine games of the season: Umpires keep expanding his strike zone. These numbers have fairly large swings daily at this point in the season, on the order of a full percentage point in some cases, so it must be taken with a grain of salt. All those rates mentioned previously are now closer to last season (2022 numbers in parentheses), with his swing rate now 40.3% (37.7%), swinging strike rate 4.6% (3.1%), and walk-per-strikeout rate 1.00 (1.03). With more than twice as many plate appearances (55), his stats are coming down toward “normal” - if you can call a sample size of one season normal. This was only through 25 PA, so it was officially nothing, but worth watching. In my piece last week, I looked at some way too early things that might be trends and included the fact that Steven Kwan had big differences in his 2022 versus 2023 swing rate, swinging strike rate, and walk-per-strikeout rate. As we wait for numbers to stabilize as sample size grows, most of us are futilely looking for anything in the data that might be something.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |