Trading power for OPB and why Peter Gammons

September 18, 2014 by Peter Gammons 0 Comments

The days of the 400-something on base, 600-something slugging hitters are gone, with drug-testing and bullpens full of 96-to-100 relievers and, as several baseball people point out, a return to the strike zone as written.
What is interesting is how teams that not long ago looked the other way from hitters who had on-base percentages in the low .300’s will now accept the tradeoff to get power. So Nelson Cruz only has a .333 on base? He’s also leading the majors with 39 homers. Adam Jones is a free swinger with a .315 on base? There are only 14 other hitters with 25 home runs. Houston lives with Chris Carter’s .313 on base and the strikeouts because of 36 homers, the Orioles miss Chris Davis’s threat of 26 homers even if he’s a .300 OBP guy, and while Yoenis Cespedes may be a .300 on base hitter, the Red Sox felt they needed his power in the middle of their lineup.

Number of Players with OBP over .400 in 2014 – Victor Martinez
Number of Players with OBP over .400 in 2000 – 31
Buck Showalter says that because power is now at such a premium, 3-4-5 pitch at-bats to a Davis or Carter are the equivalent of 8 or 9 pitches because the pitchers work so hard to avoid home runs. “The threat of power is something pitchers fear,” says Burke Badenhop.
The major league average on base percentage has dropped nearly 20 points in five years, the slugging 31 points. We understand the drug-testing and bullpens, but several uniformed and front office personnel believe that because of the technology that so carefully monitors umpires, that the strike zones have been expanded from the belt-high strike to closer to the letter of the book. As one executive says, “everyone knows the difference in production between starting 1-0 and 0-1, or getting to 2-1 or 1-2. And with the decreased power, pitchers like Collin McHugh and Mike Fiers can now work the upper part of the strike zone without the fear of having six or seven guys in the lineup who can hit the ball out of the ballpark.”

Power Hitters

The impact of strikes, balls and the zone on production:

“No team can win with seven or eight .300 on base guys,” says one AL GM. “But what we’re looking at now is how to balance hitters who get on.”
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From A. Bartlett Giamatti’s “A Free and Ordered Space,” words to serve as a reminder to what one wishes for Rob Manfred a successful leadership, as well as owners and general managers trying to establish what their organizations are all about:
“Management is the capacity to handle multiple problems, neutralize various constituencies, motivate personnel; in a college or university, it means hitting as well as the actual budget at break-even. Leadership, on the other hand, is an essentially moral act, not—as in most management—an essentially protective act. It is the assertion of a vision, not simply the exercise of a style: the moral courage to assert the vision of the institution in the future and the intellectual energy to persuade the community or the culture of the wisdom and validity of the vision. It is to make the vision practicable, and compelling.”