Navigation: Jump to content areas:


Pro Quality. Fan Perspective.
Login-facebook
Around SBN: The Most Dangerous Division in Sports

Patience

Jack Hannahan in his natural environment. (Getty Images)

I was writing this up as part of the upcoming series preview, but felt it needed its own post to help highlight the significance.

When I first heard about the Jack Hannahan trade, one of my favorite parts about it was his plate discipline. Actually, aside from the whole would-not-impress-us-with-his-hitting-even-at-LL-softball aspect of Hannahan's game, I loved every bit of the Hannahan trade. You should too. Hannahan rules.*

Anyways, back to my point. Hannahan takes lots of pitches and I was encouraged by that. Friday's game illustrated what I looked forward to so much. He struck out twice and walked twice, but even the walks were beside the point as he saw 22 pitches over his four plate appearances. I love it.

Ryan Langerhans is cut from a related, but much more awesome cloth, like silk to Hannahan's rayon. In that he also takes a lot of pitches. Those two have replaced (or mostly in Hannahan's case) Endy Chavez and Adrian Beltre, neither of the two great disciples of long plate appearances. All in all, here is a breakdown of our pitches seen per plate appearance, by month.

April: 3.63, 29th in MLB
May: 3.73, 23rd
June: 3.77, 23rd
July: 3.91, 13th

Ryan Langerhans joined us right when July began. Hannahan not long after. No, it is not solely the fruit of those two studly beings, but it is not important right now to figure out which Adonis to pin the medal of praise upon. It is just noteworthy that so far with our "new" semi-standard lineup, we have been running plate discipline numbers that put us in the top half of the league for the first time since that laughable early stretch to begin 2008.

Star-divide

* at things not directly related to making contact with pitches and putting them in play for hits.

Comment 33 comments  |  0 recs  | 

Do you like this story?

Comments

Display:

A group is more informal

Any random person can create a group and associate it to someone/something (I think Graham created the LL group before he was actually an LL admin/contributor). A Page is considered more “official” (although there are plenty of unofficial pages out there), and the actual individual who creates and moderates a Page doesn’t have to use their real name, i.e. all of Jeff’s posts on the new LL Page show up as by “Lookout Landing” and not “Jeff Sullivan.” And I believe multiple people can admin the Page and all of the posts still show up as by LL. Hope that clears it up…

by appleshampoo on Jul 21, 2009 1:55 PM PDT up reply actions  

At what point does the scale tip from Langerhans to Willits?

Or is that more of a third axis, like maybe a pitches/swing?

It's hard to convince people to let you eat them if you're an asshole. - Thingray

by Faux on Jul 21, 2009 1:06 PM PDT reply actions  

At what point do you consider a guy a Langerhans type (takes pitches, hits good ones) or a Willits type(takes pitches, ducks instead of swinging)?

And where would you place Hannahan on that spectrum?

It's hard to convince people to let you eat them if you're an asshole. - Thingray

by Faux on Jul 21, 2009 1:15 PM PDT up reply actions  

Ah.

When they actually do something (i.e. slugging) with the pitches they hit.

I do not have enough info yet on Hannahan to say one way or the other, but I am leaning big time toward Willits.

by Matthew on Jul 21, 2009 1:19 PM PDT up reply actions  

The Luis Castillo plan....

if you didn’t see Dave Allen’s post at Fangraphs on him, check it out.
A guy who can’t hit has made himself a ~ league average bat simply by rarely swinging.

by marc w on Jul 21, 2009 1:30 PM PDT up reply actions  

I don't really want to think...

About the kind of fruit that studly beings bear.

by Nadingo on Jul 21, 2009 1:25 PM PDT reply actions  

Comments For This Post Are Closed


User Tools

By reading a game thread of your own volition you agree to accept all liability for any and all damage done to your delicate sensibilities.

FanPosts

Community blog posts and discussion.

Recent FanPosts

Small
Starlin Castro's fit with Seattle
Kawasaki80_small
Lists! So many lists!
M_s_hat_copy_small
OT -- May 22nd In Memoriam
Ichiro_small
Why do managers and media members hate walks?
Wbc_029_small
Friday Morning Music Thread
Small
Dustin Ackley BP swing vs game swing
Beastquakerwallpaper_small
More on the Struggles of Smoak
Randy2_for_sbn_small
Albert Pujols 2012: Three Retrospectives
Small
On Batting Orders
Niehaus_small
More on Dustin Ackley and the strikezone

+ New FanPost All FanPosts >

Yahoo_full_count

Sexy People

Wbc_029_small Jeff Sullivan

Small Matthew

Claw_small JY