In several interviews with Hunter he talks about the diet of sliders in the bigs versus the minors and realizes he has to adjust. He mentions he knows it will take time to adapt, but it will happen. Sean Berry (Hitting coach) mentioned about specific adjustments in Hunters mechanics around August and an improved approach at the plate. Now, I know this can mean anything (or nothing) but watching him at bat the last few months of the season there was an obvious difference. He took more pitches and ended up with more BB’s fewer K’s and more hard hit balls. His slg% sky rocketed in September and 1/2 his hits were for extra bases. He looks alot more confident at the plate, and has the type of mentality that leads me to beleive he is determined to adapt. Keep in mind Hunter has never really “not hit” he has always found a way and I believe the Big’s will be his biggest test but one I’d bet he can pass.

Seriously, the Bill James projection has me concerned that cutting Pence loose may be a mistake. Any more reassurance out there that this is the right thing to do?

http://www.baseball-reference.com/pi/bsplit.cgi?n1=pencehu01&year=2008

Say we weighted Pence’s .269 average from 2008 as 60% of his projection, and his .322 average from 2007 as 40% of the projection, we’d get an estimated BA of .290 on the nose.

If we “clean up” a little bit and adjust his 2007 BA using the same weighting system…

.269 (.6) + .258 (.4) = .265

..you get an estimated BA of .265

On a different note, both Bill James and Marcel have him hitting .290. With all the question marks surrounding him, don’t you think those projections are pretty lofty?

I didn’t say he showed zero improvement. I think it’s plausible that second half improvements mean more for young players who still have development time remaining. But we also have to keep in mind what he did in the first half, and cannot throw out 382 PA of performance and just focus on the last 260 PA, concluding that this is his new standard of performance.

The purpose of the article is certainly not to bury Pence, but simply to point out that there are some negative indicators that need to be improved upon.

Using some of the great features on this site, we can break down the components that went into Pence’s modest improvement in walk rate during the second half:

O-Swing%, July: 28%
O-Swing%, August: 39.5%
O-Swing%, Sept./Oct: 25.6%

Perhaps Sept./Oct. is a harbinger of things to come, but averaged together, those months look pretty similar to April-June:

April: 33.1%
May: 27.8%
June: 31.5%

If you weigh these numbers based on PA, you get:

April-June: 30.72%
July-Oct.: 31.35%

He did hit the ball with more authority, and perhaps that will continue. But I stand by the main point of the article: the plate discipline needs to improve.

Thanks for your reading and input!

Pence was considerably better in the second half, but we still have to evaluate his season as a whole. I suppose one could theorize that Pence made sweeping changes, but there are reasons to doubt the predictive value of big swings in performance between the first and second halves of a season:

http://www.insidethebook.com/ee/index.php/site/article/do_first_half_second_half_splits_mean_anything/

His first half was abnormally poor, his second half abnormally good. Combined, he posted a line rather similar to his adjusted 2007 performance.