The Sabermetrics of Texas Rangers’ Plate Discipline

The Texas Rangers offense is lacking the same type of plate discipline that they had in 2010.

In this article I will take a look at three different sabermetric statistics that suggest the Rangers need to show a little more patience and ability to put the ball in play at the plate.

• The first of those statistics is swing%.–Swing% is a measure of the amount of pitches that a hitter swings at. The Major League Average for swing% is 45.6%.
• The second is O-swing%–O-swing% measures the percentage of pitches that are outside the strikezone that a batter swings at. The major league average is 29.3%.
• The last is SwgStr%–Swing strike percentage measures the percentage of pitches that a batter swings and misses on. The major league average for this stat is 8.5%.

Swing percentage is an excellent indication of how selective a player is at the plate. With the major league average at 45.6%, the Rangers have seven players who currently are above that league average. Some of the Rangers aggression at the plate leads to success. However, Chris Davis, Julio Borbon, Adrian Beltre, and Josh Hamilton are all over 50% which decreases a batter’s chance at success by almost 10% once that batter is swinging at more than half the pitches he sees.

Josh Hamilton swings at 52.4 percent of pitches he sees which is in line with his career average. However, Adrian Beltre’s 50% mark is higher than his career average which explains why Beltre’s batting average is at .252 which is far below the .321 mark he hit at in 2010 as a member of the Red Sox.

Chris Davis holds the less-than-flattering honor of leading the team by swinging at 53.6% of pitches he sees. Davis struggles with pitch selection, and his talent has been masked behind a career strikeout percentage that is simply unacceptable at the Major League level.

Julio Borbon also struggles with his swing% and his average has been affected for two years. Borbon has an on base percentage of just .305 this season. Meanwhile Mike Napoli swings at just under 37.2% of pitches he sees.
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The next stat to be examined is O-swing%. The Major League average is 29.3%, and the Texas Rangers have a total of 6 players who swing at more than 30% of pitches outside of the strike zone. Unsurprisingly, the same four players that statistics would say swing too often, swing at too many pitches out of the strike zone. Josh Hamilton, Adrian Beltre, Chris Davis, and Julio Borbon all swing at 1 in 3 pitches that are outside the strike zone.

Let’s take a look at how the wild swinging affects a players success. For example, when Josh Hamilton was hitting less than .200 last May, he was swinging at more than 33% of pitches outside the strike zone. However down the stretch, Hamilton was more selective and hit over .400 in late July and early August. He swung at just under 29% of pitches out of the strike zone in August and September last season. But on the season he swung at over 37% of balls in 2010. Hamilton, though, is borderline Vladimir Guerrero-ish with the range of pitches that he can reach and drive.

Chris Davis swings at a team worst 36.5% of pitches outside the strike zone. Julio Borbon swings at 35.8% outside the zone, and Adrian Beltre swings at 34.1% of pitches out of the zone.

Last season, the Rangers were successful in the playoffs in raising the pitch count of opposing starting pitchers by being very selective at the plate. As a result, David Price, Matt Garza, CC Sabathia, Tim Lincecum, and AJ Burnett were often relegated to 5-6 inning starts as opposed to working deep into ball games. Texas kept these pitchers working, and Texas had a batting average of over .300 the third and fourth times that opposing pitchers went through the Texas lineup.
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The final stat to be examined right now is SwgStr%. Swinging strike percentage measures the percentage of pitches that a batter swings and misses on. 8% is the major league average which suggests that the Rangers swing and miss a lot at times.

However, Ian Kinsler has one of the best percentages in the Major Leagues. He swings and misses on only 2.5% of pitches.

But Chris Davis, Nelson Cruz, Josh Hamilton, Mike Napoli, and Yorvit Torrealba all swing and miss too much. There is no ifs ands or buts about it. With the exception of Torrelba, the other four swing and miss over 12% of the time.

Chris Davis catches air 18% of the time he swings, and Cruz is an unfortunate second, catching air 14% of the time.

The truly remarkable stat in this whole equation is this. Though the Rangers swing and miss more than the league average, they have struck out less than any team in the Major Leagues this season. I will repeat that.

Despite their propensity to swing and miss more than normal, the Rangers put the ball in play better than any team in the Major Leagues when they have two strikes on them.

So though the Rangers should show more willingness to work the count, they are putting the ball in play with two strikes which is a recipe for success in the big leagues. The Rangers have struck out just 222 times so far this season.

The statistical categories referenced in this article come from FanGraphs.

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