A Bit More On Carlos Peguero's Swinging Ways

While chatting with a fellow LLer on the topic of Carlos Peguero, I wondered aloud if Carlos Peguero was the least disciplined hitter in baseball. Sure he swings at everything, but how does his lack of discipline compare to the rest of the league? At 50, 100, and 140 PA cutoffs (Peguero is at 142 PA on the season), there isn't a single position player with less restraint than Peguero. Also, for fun, here's what happens when you set the cutoff at 30. R.A. Dickey and Kyle Lohse, Carlos. Woof.

But swinging at the highest percentage of balls out of the strike zone isn't the whole picture, right? It turns out that Peguero is also leading baseball in overall swing rate. He swings a lot. We know this. Invariably, when discussing people with Peguero's general swingyness profile, Vlad Guerrero or Alfonso Soriano's names get brought up as they too swing at everything. In their honor, here's a chart comparing the various discipline stats for the highest OSwing% rates in baseball at 140 PA. 

Click image for full size

Soriano and Vlad really do swing at everything too. I'll now ask you all the question I once asked seattlebruin while standing in the third deck at Angel Stadium looking down at the Mariner dugout: What immediately stands out to you, looking at that? Correct. Griffey's ass is enormous. Also, Carlos Peguero does not make contact with anything. That swinging strike rate is the highest in baseball amongst players with 100 PA. While Carlos Peguero is whiffing on all of the balls out of the zone he swings at, he also is terrible at making contact with strikes. In fact, only Kelly Shoppach has a lower Z-Contact rate in that 100 PA group. League average is 87.9%. Go down the list of O-Swing maniacs and you'll find that no one else is below an 80% Z-Contact rate with the exception of Miguel Olivo. The rest of the guys make contact with strikes and Sandoval makes contact with extraterrestrials. If Carlos Peguero wants to swing at everything, he'd better at least punish strikes when a pitcher accidentally throws him one.  Right now he doesn't appear to have any idea where pitches are going or how to make his bat touch them and that makes for a bad hitter. 

Additional note that a Jeff Tweet reminded me of: Peguero has seen just 7 PA against left-handed pitching. Holy shit is he terrible.