Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
November 03, 2008
Process and Talent
Mark Ellis

Mark Ellis
Photo: Icon SMI

Recently, the Athletics appear to be suffering from playing hitters with good process at the expense of talent. If you remember Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, the A's encouraged good process at the plate. They'd praise a player who struck out looking on an outside pitch, but have words with someone who swung at a ball, even if it resulted in a good outcome.

This resulted in 2008 with a number of players on the team who can draw a walk, but don't hit:

2008Batting Avg.On-Base Avg.
Mark Ellis.233.321
Jack Cust.231.375
Daric Barton.226.327
Jack Hannahan.218.305

All of these players show good process at the plate, as indicated by earning a much higher OBA than batting average. They're good at not swinging at bad pitches. The problem is that they're bad swinging at good pitches. The whole point of developing good selectivity, good process, is to get the batters better pitches to hit, so they can smack the ball around. If a team's hitters don't have the talent to execute on good pitches, then why have them on the team?

Jack Cust is a good hitter, in the mold of Rob Deer, Ken Phelps and Adam Dunn. None of these, players however, should be the best hitter on a team. If you think about the greatest hitters of all time, or even today, they hit for average in addition to getting on base and hitting for power. They possess talent to go with their great selectivity at the plate.

The Athletics will claim they can't afford those players. Fine, they're not going to sign Mark Teixeira or Manny Ramirez to a big contract. Oakland, however, is not developing those players, either. The players they bring along have the process, but not the talent that makes the process effective. Until they find batters who can turn good pitches into hits, they are going to continue to wallow in walks that fill but fail to drain the bases.


Posted by David Pinto at 08:42 AM | Team Evaluation | TrackBack (0)
Comments

My thinking is this if you can't afford to spend the money to bring in the big bat's and great hitters maybe you should'nt be a owner in MLB. The talent is about the money, so if you can't show them the money well let me say if you refuse to show the money then you will remain a door mat.

Posted by: Benjamin norris at November 3, 2008 12:10 PM

My thinking is this if you can't afford to spend the money to bring in the big bat's and great hitters maybe you should'nt be a owner in MLB. The talent is about the money, so if you can't show them the money well let me say if you refuse to show the money then you will remain a door mat.

Posted by: Benjamin norris at November 3, 2008 12:10 PM
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