Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
April 21, 2008
Zim's Sins

Barry Svrluga offers a good analysis of Ryan Zimmerman's problems:

But I'll go back to a point Acta made last week: Zimmerman is too often satisfied to swing at a strike, even if it's a pitcher's pitch on the low-and-outside edge of the zone. Zimmerman, at this point, sees himself driving those balls to right field and thinks it's a good at-bat. Acta's point is that the balls you truly drive go where players aren't - either over the walls or to the gaps. My scorebook has only two lineouts on this road trip for Zimmerman.

Some other interesting Zimmerman facts:

He has 86 plate appearances, and has had two strikes on him in 40 of those appearances.

He is 6 for 40 (.150) with two strikes on him.

He is 0 for 7 with a full count.

He has taken a ball one 27 times, or fewer than one in three plate appearances.

What does this mean? Pitchers are attacking him early in the count, and then - and this is my observation - getting him to chase after that. To this point, he's been too willing to chase.

Selectivity is a tough think to teach a major league player. Sammy Sosa learned it late in his career, but few do. He wasn't bad his first two years, drawing 61 walks each season. He's on a pace to draw about half that in 2008, so he needs to make some kind of adjustment.


Posted by David Pinto at 06:32 PM | Players | TrackBack (0)
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