A Quick Word On Jose Lopez
by Jeff Sullivan on May 4, 2010 12:16 PM PDT
in Seattle Mariners Stats
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PrintWe can talk about Ken Griffey Jr and Mike Sweeney all we want - and, make no mistake, those two are problems - but in all honesty, this offense is going to be a source of discontent until some of the guys who're supposed to hit start hitting. Milton Bradley's gotten it going of late, so he's exonerated from blame, but we've still got Chone Figgins hitting .209, and Jose Lopez hitting .233 with one home run. Nobody expected big big things out of either, but even given Figgins' ability to walk, that pair has been dragging us down from the top of the order.
What follows is not a comprehensive analysis. I barely have any time today, and I'm not even going to go into what might be wrong with Figgins. But when it comes to Lopez, I want to present to you a few images, courtesy of TexasLeaguers.com:
There you see Lopez's spray chart for the first month of each of the last two seasons. Below, you can see his full-season hit chart from 2009:
We used to make fun of Jose Lopez for the fact that pretty much all of his power came on fly balls he yanked down the left field line. Power down the line is the crutch of the weak. But so far in 2010, we haven't even seen that. Lopez has pushed his balls in play further to the right - or at least, the balls in the air - and he isn't strong enough to make that work. Remember that his one home run barely got out in a hitter-friendly ballpark.
It's not that Lopez isn't pulling the ball. He's pulled 54% of his balls in play to left field so far, against 53% a year ago. But he's putting more of them on the ground, and fewer of them in the air down the line. That's bad news for a guy we can't quit batting cleanup.
I'll leave the "why" to somebody else with more time and more insight. There could be something in Lopez's swing, or there could be something in the pitches he's seen. Or there could be nothing at all. But what I can tell you is that, until Jose Lopez starts getting ahead of pitches and yanking them in the air, he's not gonna provide a whole lot. Take the power away from an undisciplined hacker and all you're left with is a big sack of crap.
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What does everyone think about Bradley hitting clean up instead?
Or perhaps Kotchman? I could go with either one.
Milton Bradley apologist
by sanford_and_son on May 4, 2010 12:22 PM PDT reply actions
In a strange way I am willing to cut him slack for a bit as he has surprised at 3B.
If he is still doing this in June my patience will be worn. However, Wakamatsu needs to put him at the bottom of the order no matter what.
It's not like Mariner history is
replete with scads of great thirdbasemen.
I’d say Lopez has a chance to be the third best Mariner thirdbaseman of all time (assuming he can hit like he did last season).
This might be the definition of “damning with faint praise”.
Lopez isn't the problem -- not by himself
I could’a told ya this would be a light hitting team. It is. What I don’t understand is why we cannot score runs. You don’t need a ton of hits to score a couple runs. Yeah we got some bad breaks . . . but we are gaining a mastery of bad breaks . . . it just never stops.
The M’s run production has been pathetic. And that is being charitable.
You can blame the players if you want but I think its a managerial/coaching issue myself.
Need more emphasis on doing the little things.
mjc
mjc
No, we need more emphasis on the big things
We do plenty of the little things. We haven’t homered in a week.
by Jeff Sullivan on May 4, 2010 12:39 PM PDT up reply actions
I think there is some credence to M's not doing the little things.
In the bottom of the 8th the other day, Wak let Lopez swing away with runners on first and second with no outs when we desperately needed a bit of insurance. Sure the result was a line drive (avoid results-based analysis, right?) unfortunately resulting in a double play, but Lopez should’ve been bunting there. Sure, he’s your cleanup hitter but anyone can acknowledge this is a roster built for small ball. Was swinging away really the better play there statistically with the way Lopez has been swinging the bat? (Asking honestly, not rhetorically). To me, it doesn’t make sense to not play small ball in critical situations when that’s precisely what the team was built for.
In that situation, you're not playing for exactly one run, so bunting would have been bad
if it’s a 0-0 game and you need exactly one run to take the lead, then bunting would have been OK.
Sunday's game in particular hilighted this.
There were at least 4-5 balls that were hit right on the nose but just happened to be caught. Start smacking a few of those over the fence and unless Kenny Lofton is there pulling nightmare duty you’ll find it’s easier to score runs.
Don't even need to clear the fence, just finding outfield grass and we'll start scoring more
this team has had some awful luck to go with their lousy hitting and that’s not a good combination
Why does statcorner say Figgins has a .326 wOBA and a .634 OPS?
That wOBA can’t be right
Doesn't StatCorner wOBA incorporate steals?
Also, he’s slugging .279 with a .355 OBP, so that would be a useful offensive player with a low OPS
He's .300 wOBA without RBOE, add his 2 and he's up to .317.
Take away the sac bunt PA and he’s at .320. No GIDPs on the year (not sure how that would figure into the equation) and yeah, I could see how he’s nearing average, even without getting to his steals or non-steal baserunning.
Strangely,
I am not concerned about Jose Lopez he will get it going. What concerns me is there are so many Milton Bradley Apologists.
Milton Bradley is a considerably better hitter than Jose Lopez.
Plus he’s fun.
by Teej on May 4, 2010 1:55 PM PDT up reply actions 1 recs
What concerns me is that there are people who actually think Milton Bradley is bad at baseball/not awesome
by seattlebruin on May 4, 2010 1:56 PM PDT up reply actions 7 recs
I got into a twitter back-and-forth with @1077theend about him
Bad idea. I bowed out.
Mariners/D Broncos/BSU Broncos fan in Seattle
The first rule of Lookout Landing is...
I don't know that these charts prove what you're arguing Jeff
It seems he had very few balls pulled down the line during the first month last season as well, yet he still ended up with 25 dingers. It’s definitely true that he has more ground balls, which is concerning. But he really hadn’t started yanking fly balls down the line that frequently at this point last year either. I don’t have a huge amount of confidence that he’ll be able to repeat last year’s performance, and there is no way he should be hitting cleanup for this team. But at this point last year he wasn’t really on pace to do what he ended up doing, either. Really this whole offense has struggled to a ridiculous degree and had a ton of bad luck thrown on top of that poor performance.
I’m not a huge fan of Lopez myself (I voted “don’t like” in today’s poll), but I think the “sack of crap” argument is a bit harsh considering how well he’s performed in the field with his transition to third. I think he should be moved down in the order and given some time to work this out. If he still isn’t hitting by the end of next month, consider doing something more drastic.
But not as bad as Griffdawg or Moore...
Kind of sad that Jack Wilson is hitting better than Loafie right now.
by Avery Bowron on May 4, 2010 10:20 PM PDT up reply actions
Look at that 2010 picture again
there’s a void there in LF, a void that had BIP by this point a year ago.
by Jeff Sullivan on May 5, 2010 1:42 PM PDT up reply actions
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