Bang the Drum Slowly

Yoda: "I cannot teach him. The boy has no patience."


Obi-wan: "He will learn patience."



While watching one of the Twins-A's games last week, I was noticing how A's batters never seemed to swing at the first pitch, something I'm used to the Twins doing constantly. With the A's using the Billy Beane (aka Moneyball) approach to baseball, patience at the plate should be expected. For years, the Twins have used the TK/Kirby Puckett approach: Be aggressive! With Luis Rivas and Jacque Jones gone, Luis Castillo aboard, and Joe Mauer continuing to mature as a big league hitter, we can expect the Twins to show a little more patience than in years past. I decided to take a look at some of the numbers.

I don't know of a place to find the statistics I was looking for (taking first pitches, pitches per at bat, etc.), so I looked back at all of the at bats in the Oakland-Minnesota series, and tallied whether batters took or swung at the first pitch. Oakland's numbers were not very surprising:
79 of the 110 batters took the first pitch (71.8 %)

What did surprise me was the lack of Twinkies swinging at the first pitch- 74/110 batters took the first pitch (67.3%). Part of this can be attributed to a discriminating eye: the Twins took first pitch balls 46 times (28 strikes), while the A's took first-pitch strikes 42 times (37 balls).

The top three guys in the Twins' batting order are definitely the most patient. Through the first 9 games of the season, Stewart took 30/38 (79%) first pitches, Castillo took 28/33 (85%), and Mauer took 23/30 (77%). Of the 7 first pitches Mauer swung at, three were hits, and one was a sacrifice fly, which brought home a run. Of course, the rudimentary stats I'm using don't take into account hit-and-run calls, pitchouts, etc.

It turns out espn.com does track pitches/plate appearances. The Twins rank 8th out of 14 teams. Looking at the AL leaders, Justin Morneau ranks 15th overall (4.06 P/PA), Tony Batista is 23rd (3.98), and Castillo is 25th (3.93). It's surprising to see Batista's name listed there, since he definitely doesn't have a reputation for drawing many walks (only twice in his career has he eclipsed 30 BBs). However, his career 3.87 P/PA isn't that much lower than what he's averaging right now. However, f a guy is know for only one thing, blasting home runs, it makes sense that he'd be pitched around a fair amount.

Not surprisingly, Torii Hunter is last among Twins regulars (3.33 P/PA). Of the 16 first pitches he's swung at however, he's connected for 4 singles, a double, and a home run, and only 4 outs.

Although Morneau's pitches/plate appearance is tops on the team, he has only 1 walk, to go along with 13 strikeouts. It's good to see him working the count, but I hope he can learn to lay off some of those ball fours.