Jose Lopez

by Graham MacAree on Apr 5, 2008 6:27 AM PDT in Seattle Mariners Stats

Although the season is still very young, Jose Lopez is looking like a changed man. He's taking pitches, pulling the ball in the air, and generally doing all the things we want out of him. Let's look at some numbers.

In 2008, Jose Lopez has seen 74 pitches in 16 plate appearances, good for a 4.63 P/PA. Out of those 74, he has swung at a grand total of 26 (and one was a sacrifice bunt!). Here's the breakdown:

74 pitches seen
44.6% (33) balls
20.3% (15) strikes looking
20.3% (15) in play
13.5% (10) foul balls
1.35% (1!!!) strike swinging

The numbers are from his B-Ref page, if you're curious. Anyway, his career numbers look something like this:

33.0% balls
17.4% strikes looking
22.8% in play
16.1% foul balls
7.37% strikes swinging

Normally, I'd look at this data and shrug it off as a sample size thing. However, scouting -can- give you valuable information when your data set's not as large as you like, and Lopez has certainly looked a different player so far this season. You can grab two things from the numbers: he's taking waaaay more pitches than the has in the past, and he's going to start striking out more often than he has so far this year (seriously, 1 swinging strike in 74 pitches? Even Barry Zito would be depressed if a lineup did that to him).

Watching him, it certainly seems like he has a plan. He takes the first pitch, takes anything he's unsure he can hit until he gets to two strikes, then he fouls things off until the pitcher gives him something tasty, which he tries to yank. I'm honestly not sure how well this will work when we start facing good pitchers (because taking the first pitch will leave him in a hole an awful lot of the time), but for now Lopez is perfectly content to force the pitcher to come to him rather than hacking away and getting himself out. It seems to be doing wonders for his confidence, too - he's actually looking like he knows what he's doing up at the plate, which is a refreshing change from last year.

This whole 'taking pitches' thing is a pretty cool development, and while Lopez isn't going to look this good all year (mainly because he can't possibly maintain his swinging strike %), taking this sort of approach is going to make him a much better baseball player. If he's playing like this as a result of being moved to the #2 spot in the order... well, it's nice to know that McLaren gets something right once in a while.

Keep it up, Jose. This is making you a lot more fun to watch.

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Comments

Agreed... Regardless of whether he keeps this up

Its a lot more fun to watch, and makes even a shitty game like yesterday's very watchable.

by thenatural on Apr 5, 2008 6:31 AM PDT reply actions

I'm rooting for Lopez

But it has to be said: Millwood, Padilla, Jennings, Trachsel.

by davidcameron on Apr 5, 2008 7:46 AM PDT reply actions

Yep

But the fact that he hasn't managed to get himself out against those clowns is a massive improvement over the first pitch popups.

by Graham MacAree on Apr 5, 2008 7:58 AM PDT up reply actions

Absolutely

by davidcameron on Apr 5, 2008 8:06 AM PDT up reply actions

and a lot of other people in our lineup

by phil333 on Apr 5, 2008 9:59 AM PDT up reply actions

I'm absolutely thrilled by Lopez's more recent approach at the plate.

I seriously couldn't stand Lopez's At-bats last year. He had no gameplan plan and often went up expecting random things to happen.

I don't usually remember at-bats but I love'd his at-bat vs. Jennings where he cracked his 3-run homer. Yea, sure it's Jason Jennings but watch Lopez's at-bat...I guarantee you that old Lopez would've swung at the 2-2 offering that was just missed the strike zone. By taking that pitch he got the meatball down the middle and clobbered it.

Lopez has been fun to watch so far. I wish I could say the same about the rest of our lineup which generally acts the same as it always does.

(image from the 2-2 Recap post)

Yea, I still love you, Beltre.

by ThundaPC on Apr 5, 2008 8:35 AM PDT reply actions

I'd have been angrier at Adrian

If not for what he had done in the at-bat previous. Which was awesome.

by Graham MacAree on Apr 5, 2008 8:36 AM PDT up reply actions

That's some crazy unexpected shit right there.

Small Sample Size or not.

Yesterday's Pants
A blog-thingy about the Mariners and stuff.

by BrettJMiller on Apr 5, 2008 9:22 AM PDT reply actions

I find myself actually looking forward

to Lopez ABs. Here's to hoping he can keep it up.

Oh, and this isn't diary worthy, but still amusing:
http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20080405&content_id=2494288&vkey=news_mlb&fext=.jsp&c_id=mlb

"slipped on a step" and had to get 12 stitches? This is a worse excuse than Kaz Sasaki's.

by redwolf75 on Apr 5, 2008 11:11 AM PDT reply actions

Be nice to have a solid Jose in our lineup.

Whether or not he keeps up what's he's done in the first four games, at least now I'm hopeful the M's will keep Lopez around for a while. There's a lot of talent in there and I'd just as soon we were able to use it, instead of shipping it off to a team with more patience.

by OldFan on Apr 5, 2008 12:26 PM PDT reply actions