For those of you who read over at UW Dawg Pound you may know me as the basketball guy over there. If not, then hello, I am the basketball guy over at UW Dawg Pound!

When I saw the heat maps over at baseballheatmaps.com and got myself to wondering if Justin Smoak was swinging at different pitches, different locations, or if there was something else causing his struggles this season.

Obviously Smoak has not been hitting the ball as far this season, as referenced by Jeff. This likely shows he is not hitting the ball as hard. One other, more rudimentary method of determining how hard a player is hitting a ball is his HR/FB ratio, how many home runs he hits per fly ball. For example, the HR/FB ratio of Prince Fielder is 20.1% for his career. For comparison's sake, Brendan Ryan has a career HR/FB ratio of 2.7%. This does not take line drives into account however.

Smoak has a career HR/FB ratio of 11.3%. That is slightly above-average if going by the 2012 season (10.4%) as a barometer. This season Smoak has garnered a below-average HR/FB ratio of 9.5%. He is not hitting fly balls out as often as he has throughout his career. For somebody who was supposed to provide plus-power in the middle of the lineup that is bad news.

What Smoak has done is hit more line drives. His LD% of 18.1% is much higher than the 13.8% he accrued last season, but is identical to his career mark of 17.9%. A higher line drive rate should yield a higher BABIB, but Smoak has only been ever so slightly below his career norms in that regard (.256 season to .264 career, or less than one percent). It does not seems that is the issue.

As I looked more on his batted ball stats I noticed something that jumped out to me. He had an infield fly ball rate much much higher than in 2011. Then I saw that his 6.5% IFFB for 2011 was more likely the anomaly, as his career rate is 12.0%. This season his IFFB rate is as 14.3% This is significantly higher than the league average of 10.4%. Hitting infield flies is considered to be as bad as a strikeout. It basically is, as it gives no opportunity to advance runners and has an extremely low chance to fall into play for a hit. Stop hitting infield flies Justin Smoak! Just stop!

Wow I started this post talking about heat maps and now I haven't even talked about them. Time to get back on the trail, or whatever this is called. For those of you who don't know the heat maps track of the location of pitches a player swings at. Not whether he makes contact or not. This is from the perspective of the catcher and umpire as well.

Here are the pretty colors for Smoak this season:

via www.baseballheatmaps.com versus left-handed pitchers

via www.baseballheatmaps.com versus right-handed pitchers

Note that these maps are made relative to the league average.

Now lets compare them to the pretty colors from last season after his return from a fractured nose.

via www.baseballheatmaps.com versus lefties

via www.baseballheatmaps.com versus righties

What I see mostly is that Smoak is swinging less at pitches within the zone, down to about a league average amount, while swinging less at pitches within the zone. This is obviously not a model for success. However the cause for him swinging differently has yet to be determined. Is he somehow losing his grip on the strikezone? Is he struggling to recognize pitches?

I went to see if Smoak was being thrown differently, because at some point Jeff remarked in a post I am unable to find about how Smoak had a great eye when facing fastballs. So I went and looked and it seems like Smoak is actually facing more fastballs than last season. It has seemed to the eye like Smoak just has missed the fastballs he has gotten.

On a whim I decided to look at Smoak's heat maps this season for curveballs just to take a look. I found something very interesting: As a right-handed hitter (facing lefties) Smoak has ignored curveballs within the zone this. Take a look for yourself:

via www.baseballheatmaps.com versus left-handed pitchers

For comparison's sake, versus righties:

via www.baseballheatmaps.com versus right-handed pitchers

Smoak ignores curves as a lefty and swings at curves down and in as a righty. This could show a pitch recognition issue, or it could show a lack of confidence against curves. We have no way of knowing, but it is sure that Smoak does not like to swing at curveballs.

Smoak has struggled, and judging by these heat maps part of the issue stems from him swinging less at strikes and more at balls. Jeff's data shows that Smoak just plain isn't hitting the ball as far, which also could be and probably is a larger part than the swing distribution. Why Smoak isn't hitting the ball as hard is a mystery. Having little scouting ability I could not tell you if his swing looks quicker or slower, but I can tell you that the fact that he is a big man means most of his power will come from being able to extend his hands to hit pitches over the outer part of the plate. This is contrary to Dustin Ackley who seems to like pitches inside.