Comments on: Power to All Fields

By: neuter_your_dogma

neuter_your_dogma — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 16:38:23 +0000

Best success against Howard is a lefty. Against lefties his power disappears.

By: schmenkman

schmenkman — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 16:20:06 +0000

Also, Howard has more HRs on the road than at home…

By: schmenkman

schmenkman — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 03:11:55 +0000

Jeremy, “1. I just like Gonzalez more than Howard. I think he’s a better power hitter when you factor in ballpark adjustments. I’m probably biased.”

The data doesn’t seem to support this — Howard has the better career road stats:
Gonzales: .370 OBP, .565 SLG, .935 OPS, 17.3 PAs per HR
Howard: .371 OBP, .584 SLG, .955 OPS, 14.1 PAs per HR

By: Brent

Brent — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 16:03:46 +0000

I love the retrosheet data, but whenever I read that so-and-so is the greatest of all time based on an analysis of retrosheet data, my immediate reaction is that baseball history is much longer than the retrosheet era. Let me through out another candidate (and a Phillie to boot)–Gavy Cravath. We know that 78% of his career home runs were hit at the Baker Bowl and that he was famous for his opposite field shots that took advantage of the short right field wall. No, we don’t have retrosheet data, but newspaper accounts often record where home runs were hit. It would be an interesting comparison.

By: Mike K.

Mike K. — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 15:36:10 +0000

My thought: as someone with such extreme ability to hit opposite-field homers, how will Howard age? To me, the easiest comparison to Howard is Pat Burrell, as far as context and body type goes. And PtB has now possibly fallen off of a cliff.

But he is a classic pull slugger. So does his case provide any insight for Howard?

By: petejohn

petejohn — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 14:53:50 +0000

So why Howard pulls off the ball so damn much in his slumps is beyond me. My head coach used to be at the University of Northern Iowa and they were in the MO. Valley Conference before axing their program. They played against Howard and MO State (then SW Missouri State) and apparently they had their best success burying the ball in on his hands. Seeing as how he’s not shown much power pulling the ball, it seems he was on to something.

By: Jud

Jud — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 09:44:26 +0000

aj – I think you made a mistake with regards to ARod. You looked at the BABIP column instead of ISO. His ISO to the 3 regions is; .382, .324, .347. That seems to me to be a good definition of “power to all fields”

By: Dave Cameron

Dave Cameron — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 04:20:19 +0000

Yeah, i I think this new data should encourage a lot of us to start looking at platoon splits among things that we’ve generally ascribed to not be repeatable skills, specifically BABIP and HR/FB. This is ripe ground for deeper exploration.

I can see that there could be a real difference, based on different pitch types, location, arm slot, etc… Weaver’s infield fly percentage is twice as high against RHB than LHB, for instance – that’s obviously going to have a big impact on his BABIP. But we need more evidence from more pitchers, and it needs to include Pitch F/x data and be adjusted for park and defense.

By: David Appelman

David Appelman — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 04:05:57 +0000

Yep, it’s ALL balls to the left side. I’m just splitting the field into 3 equal pie pieces. Doesn’t matter the distance the balls go. You can see the batted ball breakdown by left/right/center if you want to dig deeper.

By: Jeremy

Jeremy — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 03:39:09 +0000

Thanks for the response.

1. I just like Gonzalez more than Howard. I think he’s a better power hitter when you factor in ballpark adjustments. I’m probably biased.

2. Thanks for the info on the HR/FB platoon splits. I do know that sidearmers exhibit extreme platoon splits in general, though I’ve only looked at the data in terms of run value, not BABIP or K/BB or HR/FB.

3. No argument with that.