The 'new' Adrian Gonzalez
The All-Star first baseman has changed his approach in Boston, but he's just as effective
Dave Cameron
FanGraphs
ESPN Insider
When it comes to hitters, it's fair to say the Boston Red Sox have a type. They targeted David Ortiz for his patience and power when the Minnesota Twins gave up on him, outbid the rest of baseball for J.D. Drew's patient approach at the plate and drafted Kevin Youkilis -- who was famously labeled The Greek God of Walks in Michael Lewis' "Moneyball." The Red Sox like hitters who work the count and take pitches, and this philosophy of hitting has led to the team having the highest walk rate of any team in baseball since 2003, which happens to be the year Theo Epstein took over as the team's general manager.
Therefore, it made complete sense when the Red Sox gave up a big chunk of their farm system to acquire Adrian Gonzalez from the Padres this past winter. Gonzalez fit the type perfectly, having drawn 212 walks over the prior two seasons and showing one of the most patient approaches of any hitter in baseball. He was viewed as the quintessential Boston hitter, and it was no surprise that the Red Sox chose to replace the free-swinging Adrian Beltre with a player who was more their style.
Only a funny thing has happened to Gonzalez since he arrived in Boston -- he has stopped taking walks, and is producing as a very different type of hitter than what the Red Sox might have thought they were getting when they traded for him. Through his first 164 plate appearances in Boston, Gonzalez has drawn just 11 walks, and two of those were intentional. To put that in context, he has one fewer walk than noted swing-at-anything maven Ichiro Suzuki, and only one more unintentional walk than Jeff Francoeur, whose aggressive approach at the plate has made him a lightning rod for criticism over the years.
When a usually patient hitter stops walking, it is often referenced as evidence that the player is pressing or trying to do too much. It is a common explanation for why hitters are slumping, especially if they've changed teams and are feeling the pressure of living up to their new city's expectations. However, Gonzalez isn't slumping at all. He's hitting .329/.378/.566 and he's on pace to have the best offensive season of his career. So, how do we explain Gonzalez's success while also understanding that he's doing it in an entirely different way than he was in San Diego?
<OFFER>
I think the key is to understand that Gonzalez has never been as patient a hitter as his walk rate would suggest. In November of 2009, I wrote an article for FanGraphs suggesting that the huge spike in his walk rate had less to do with Gonzalez's skills and more to do with the inferior talent that the Padres surrounded him with. Since he was the only offensive threat in San Diego the past two years, pitchers had no real reason to challenge him, and thus he was fed a steady diet of pitches out of the strike zone.
In Boston, that's obviously not the case, as Gonzalez is surrounded by other quality major league hitters. Pitchers can no longer simply put him on base and expect to get an inning-ending double play from the next batter due up. Gonzalez, apparently buoyed by his chance to swing the bat once again, has taken advantage of the change.
So far this year, Gonzalez is swinging at 48.7 percent of the pitches he's been thrown, way up from where he was two years ago when he set a career high with 117 walks. Additionally, he's making more contact than he ever has before, putting the bat on the ball 84.9 percent of the time compared to a career contact rate of just 77.5 percent. The biggest difference is on pitches out of the strike zone. He's making contact on 77.9 percent of pitches outside of the zone, compared to just 57.9 percent for his career. By swinging more often -- and perhaps more importantly, missing less frequently -- Gonzalez is finding himself in at-bats that end more quickly and are less likely to result in a free pass.
Why is Gonzalez making more contact? It's impossible to pin it down to any one factor, especially considering we're still dealing with just more than one month's worth of data, but it seems like Gonzalez is taking advantage of the Green Monster and a far more hitter-friendly environment than he was used to in San Diego. For his career, 27 percent of balls he has put in play have gone to left field, and he has a career batting average on balls in play to left field of .337. This year, 33 percent of the balls he has put in play have been to left and his BABIP on balls hit to the opposite field is .459. The ability to pepper balls off of the tall wall in Boston has likely emboldened Gonzalez to chase pitches on the outer half of the plate with more frequency, since he's confident that he can get enough on it to bounce it off the Monster rather than having a left fielder track it down in Petco.
Gonzalez is swinging at more pitches out of the strike zone than he has in any other year of his career, and he's getting better results on balls hit to left field than ever before. It is unlikely that those two changes are coincidental, especially considering what we know about how Petco and Fenway treat hitters. With better hitters around him and a short fence inviting him to swing away, Gonzalez is returning to the more aggressive approach that he showed earlier in his career.
While I doubt that Gonzalez will end the year with the kind of walk rate you'd expect from a hacking middle infielder, it's also unlikely that he'll post the same kind of walk totals he did in San Diego. Gonzalez likes to swing the bat, and now that he's been given some protection and a better ballpark in which to do so, he seems determined to prove what he can do when he's allowed to swing regularly.
The All-Star first baseman has changed his approach in Boston, but he's just as effective
Dave Cameron
FanGraphs
ESPN Insider
When it comes to hitters, it's fair to say the Boston Red Sox have a type. They targeted David Ortiz for his patience and power when the Minnesota Twins gave up on him, outbid the rest of baseball for J.D. Drew's patient approach at the plate and drafted Kevin Youkilis -- who was famously labeled The Greek God of Walks in Michael Lewis' "Moneyball." The Red Sox like hitters who work the count and take pitches, and this philosophy of hitting has led to the team having the highest walk rate of any team in baseball since 2003, which happens to be the year Theo Epstein took over as the team's general manager.
Therefore, it made complete sense when the Red Sox gave up a big chunk of their farm system to acquire Adrian Gonzalez from the Padres this past winter. Gonzalez fit the type perfectly, having drawn 212 walks over the prior two seasons and showing one of the most patient approaches of any hitter in baseball. He was viewed as the quintessential Boston hitter, and it was no surprise that the Red Sox chose to replace the free-swinging Adrian Beltre with a player who was more their style.
Only a funny thing has happened to Gonzalez since he arrived in Boston -- he has stopped taking walks, and is producing as a very different type of hitter than what the Red Sox might have thought they were getting when they traded for him. Through his first 164 plate appearances in Boston, Gonzalez has drawn just 11 walks, and two of those were intentional. To put that in context, he has one fewer walk than noted swing-at-anything maven Ichiro Suzuki, and only one more unintentional walk than Jeff Francoeur, whose aggressive approach at the plate has made him a lightning rod for criticism over the years.
When a usually patient hitter stops walking, it is often referenced as evidence that the player is pressing or trying to do too much. It is a common explanation for why hitters are slumping, especially if they've changed teams and are feeling the pressure of living up to their new city's expectations. However, Gonzalez isn't slumping at all. He's hitting .329/.378/.566 and he's on pace to have the best offensive season of his career. So, how do we explain Gonzalez's success while also understanding that he's doing it in an entirely different way than he was in San Diego?
<OFFER>
I think the key is to understand that Gonzalez has never been as patient a hitter as his walk rate would suggest. In November of 2009, I wrote an article for FanGraphs suggesting that the huge spike in his walk rate had less to do with Gonzalez's skills and more to do with the inferior talent that the Padres surrounded him with. Since he was the only offensive threat in San Diego the past two years, pitchers had no real reason to challenge him, and thus he was fed a steady diet of pitches out of the strike zone.
In Boston, that's obviously not the case, as Gonzalez is surrounded by other quality major league hitters. Pitchers can no longer simply put him on base and expect to get an inning-ending double play from the next batter due up. Gonzalez, apparently buoyed by his chance to swing the bat once again, has taken advantage of the change.
So far this year, Gonzalez is swinging at 48.7 percent of the pitches he's been thrown, way up from where he was two years ago when he set a career high with 117 walks. Additionally, he's making more contact than he ever has before, putting the bat on the ball 84.9 percent of the time compared to a career contact rate of just 77.5 percent. The biggest difference is on pitches out of the strike zone. He's making contact on 77.9 percent of pitches outside of the zone, compared to just 57.9 percent for his career. By swinging more often -- and perhaps more importantly, missing less frequently -- Gonzalez is finding himself in at-bats that end more quickly and are less likely to result in a free pass.
Why is Gonzalez making more contact? It's impossible to pin it down to any one factor, especially considering we're still dealing with just more than one month's worth of data, but it seems like Gonzalez is taking advantage of the Green Monster and a far more hitter-friendly environment than he was used to in San Diego. For his career, 27 percent of balls he has put in play have gone to left field, and he has a career batting average on balls in play to left field of .337. This year, 33 percent of the balls he has put in play have been to left and his BABIP on balls hit to the opposite field is .459. The ability to pepper balls off of the tall wall in Boston has likely emboldened Gonzalez to chase pitches on the outer half of the plate with more frequency, since he's confident that he can get enough on it to bounce it off the Monster rather than having a left fielder track it down in Petco.
Gonzalez is swinging at more pitches out of the strike zone than he has in any other year of his career, and he's getting better results on balls hit to left field than ever before. It is unlikely that those two changes are coincidental, especially considering what we know about how Petco and Fenway treat hitters. With better hitters around him and a short fence inviting him to swing away, Gonzalez is returning to the more aggressive approach that he showed earlier in his career.
While I doubt that Gonzalez will end the year with the kind of walk rate you'd expect from a hacking middle infielder, it's also unlikely that he'll post the same kind of walk totals he did in San Diego. Gonzalez likes to swing the bat, and now that he's been given some protection and a better ballpark in which to do so, he seems determined to prove what he can do when he's allowed to swing regularly.
