Robinson Cano and the 3-0 green light

As baseball fans, when we're watching/listening to a broadcast, there are many phrases that we hear repeatedly throughout a game. One such phrase, utilized on pretty much every 3-0 count in a ball game, refers to whether or not a batter is going to get "the green light" from his manager to swing away. Generally, if a batter is either 1) legitimately good or 2) looks like a "slugger", the announcer will readily proclaim that "this guy probably has the green light". But which players are taking advantage of this freedom to swing?

On the Mariners, it's impossible for me to know who has actually been given the green light (unless I go talk to Lloyd, which seems like an unlikely scenario), but it's easy to look and see who has been swinging the bat on a 3-0 count. ALERT, ALERT: SMALL SAMPLE SIZES AHEAD. Based of the relative infrequency with which 3-0 counts occur in a single season, I'm not going to make any solid claims/assertions regarding the following information. It's mostly just here just for you to look at and think about. Maybe you'll go "Huh?" and scratch your head. Whatever. The following table shows the propensity of Mariners hitters to either swing at or take the next pitch on a 3-0 count this season. (I should mention that this information excludes intentional base-on-balls because batters don't have the opportunity to swing at these pitches... unless, you know.)

Overall, it doesn't seem like the Mariners are swinging at a ton of 3-0 pitches. This isn't surprising; they're not so good at hitting. I have no problem with ~90% of these hitters adopting a statuesque pose on every 3-0 pitch. As a team, the M's have only put the ball in play six times on a 3-0 pitch, and only two of those were hits: an RBI single up the middle by Smoak and this beauty by Seager. I was a little surprised that Cano has only swung at one 3-0 pitch this year (an RBI groundout). Being the best hitter on the team, you'd probably expect him to get the green light to swing away every time. And ~half of the 3-0 pitches he's seen this year have been strikes, so it's not as if he's received only complete garbage to swing at.

His seemingly low swing rate in 2014 led me to go back and look at his career 3-0 numbers. To do this, I used a combination of data from baseballsavant.com and baseball-reference.com, which limited my search to data from 2008 onward (Cano's first three seasons are not included). Surprisingly, Cano's 3-0 swing% during this period is actually lower than it's been so far with the Mariners: only 2.7%. Also, he has only one career hit on a 3-0 pitch. These numbers seemed pretty low to me... but maybe I've just bought into the idea, as stipulated by every baseball announcer ever, that good hitters will swing away when the count is 3-0. HAVE I BEEN THINKING ABOUT BASEBALL INCORRECTLY THIS WHOLE TIME???

To find out, I obtained some context for Cano's number by looking at a bunch of other top hitters. I limited my search to the top 25 hitters (by wOBA since 2008) who are currently playing who've had at least 150 PAs with a 3-0 count (again, excluding IBBs). Cano ranks 17th in this group. Sample size concerns might still be somewhat of an issue at 150 PA, but since strikeout and walk rates (which are closely related to swing%) have stabilized at this point, I reckon it should probably be okay. (I apologize for the two beefy tables in this post.)

I've sorted this by "3-0 swing%" to show that Robinson Cano has the second lowest swing rate (only Ryan Braun is lower). In contrast, the average swing% for this group of elite hitters is about 13%. In 183 opportunities, Cano has swung only five times. Although all 25 of these men are great hitters, it is a little disingenuous to directly compare Cano to players like David Ortiz or Albert Pujols. Cano is certainly more of a line drive hitter who can spray the ball to all fields, as opposed to a traditional "slugger" (his ISO is 21st in this group). However, if we go to baseball-reference and check out which players have the highest batter similarity scores with Cano, we see that Chase Utley and David Wright are two of his three closest comps. Conveniently, these two men are listed in our table above, and they both have significantly higher 3-0 swing rates than Cano (7.2 and 9.4%, respectively). Additionally, of these 25 men, Cano actually has the highest overall career swing rate (51.8%), so his hesitance to swing on 3-0 pitches seems particularly enigmatic. He has a very uncommon approach, which he appears to share with few other MLB players.

In closing, I am not saying that Cano should swing more on a 3-0 count. I'm merely marvelling at how infrequently he does so. He's obviously been a superb hitter throughout his career with his current approach, and the wide range in swing rates shown in the table above clearly demonstrates that swinging either a lot or very little on a 3-0 count does not preclude you from being an amazing hitter. Furthermore, hitting is highly situational. Looking at just the numbers, it's difficult to know what the typical context for Cano's at bats have been. Maybe it has made sense for him to seldom swing at a 3-0 pitch. I don't know! I simply found all of this to be very interesting and wanted to share it with you.

***All of the statistics herein were compiled on 7/23/14, so they do not include the last few days.

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A few questions...

1. Are you surprised by the infrequency with which Cano swings at 3-0 pitches? Or does this jive with your perception of him?

2. Do you endorse Cano continuing this approach as a member of the Seattle Mariners? Or would you like to see him jump on more 3-0 pitches, considering there aren't many other players on this team who have the skill to regularly knock him in after he takes his walks?