What the Fukudome Happened to Kosuke?
When Kosuke Fukudome came stateside last offseason, expectations were fairly high. After all, the longtime Chunichi Dragons stud compiled a .305/.397/.543 career line in Japan, winning the league’s Central League MVP as well as taking home gold in the inaugural World Baseball Classic in 2006. Intrigued by his broad base of skills, the Chicago Cubs inked Fukudome to a four-year, $48 million deal.
While Fukudome’s power numbers figured to take a hit upon transitioning to Major League Baseball, his translated numbers still figured to be pretty lofty. Baseball Prospectus 2008 called the 31 year-old “someone who can get on base at a .390 or .400 clip while contributing in all facets of the game.” PECOTA called for a .289/.401/.504 line, and Fukudome’s most comparable players were promising: J.D. Drew, Jim Edmonds and Fred Lynn ranked prominently on the list.
Fukudomania swept the Windy City last spring, as the lefty batter got off to a searing start. He batted .327/.436/.480 in March and April, drawing a Bondsian 19 walks in 117 PA. May was also productive, if less powerful, as he hit .293/.388/.404 with 16 free passes in the same number of plate appearances. As the Cubs entered summer, Fukudome continued to contribute by posting a .264/.387/.402 line in June.
It was at that point, however, that the wheels fell off. July was a tough month (.236/.306/.382), but we hadn’t seen anything yet: August brought forth a sickly .193/.293/.253 showing that would make Tony Pena Jr. blush, and Fukudome’s descent continued into September and early October (.178/.288/.289).
So, what the heck caused Fukudome to transform him from an on-base fiend to an offensive drag who ended up plastered to the Cubs bench down the stretch? To try and answer that question, I examined Fukudome’s pitch data over the course of the season. I figured that as opposing pitchers became more familiar with Fukudome, they might have discovered a weakness in his game that would present itself in an increase (or decrease) in certain pitches thrown.
As it turns out, essentially nothing changed in terms of pitch selection as the 6-0, 187 pounder shifted from Fukudomania to Fukufourthoutfielder. And as I dug deeper into his tale of two seasons, it became apparent that lady luck had an effect on the proceedings. Here’s a look at some of Fukudome’s key indicators over his red-hot start and ice-cold finish:
March through June
340 PA 15.5 BB%, 19.5 K%, 20.1 LD%, 50.9 GB%, .133 ISO, .349 BABIP
July through October
250 PA, 11.8 BB%, 22.5 K%, 17.8 LD%, 50.1 GB%, .105 ISO, .251 BABIP
Sure, there are some differences between the two stretches, but nothing that comes close to explaining the gargantuan shift in performance. Rather, it seems that Fukudome had some pretty awful luck on balls in play from July onward. With each passing month, fewer and fewer ducksnorts fell in for hits:
Fukudome’s BABIP by month:
April/March: .392
May: .325
June: .317
July: .306
August: .217
September/Oct.: .194
While Lou Pinella seemed to lose confidence in his new right fielder as the season progressed, it doesn’t appear as though Fukudome’s true talent level changed all that much. In all probability, Fukudome is neither the star of April nor the scrub of September.
On the whole, Fukudome batted .257/.359/.379 with a refined approach at the plate (13.9 BB%, 20 O-Swing%). His strikeout rate was a little high (20.8%) and his .122 ISO was very tame for a corner outfielder. Luckily for Fukudome and the Cubs, his stellar defensive work (13.4 UZR per 150 games in RF) might mean that he could shift to center, putting less of an onus on his modest pop.
Of course, that won’t change Fukudome’s value in the vast majority of leagues, but he is still someone to consider taking a flyer on. Most people will focus on his finish, where he endured a see-a-black-cat, walk-under-a-dozen-ladders unlucky BABIP stretch, but Fukudome could be a good source of OBP in the later rounds.
17
most, obvious title ever.
I know, beyond cheesy. But I could not help myself.
One factor to consider is defensive positioning. Advance scouting on outfielder placement could account for some of his BABIP ‘bad luck’ — Kosuke does have a big habit of trying to flick outside pitches down the LF line or going for the gap b/w CF and RF on inside pitches. As scouts became aware of his tendencies, better-positioned outfielders could reduce his BABIP, no? Add in his diminished ability to drive the ball (see ISO), and we have the recipe for a low BABIP going forward as teams have adjusted to Fukudome.
Mike,
It’s possible that defensive positioning could have an effect, but it’s exceedingly unlikely that it would account for more than a little of the BABIP drop.
According to the scouting data on his ESPN player page, Fukudome hit 22% of flyballs to left and 18% each to center and right. That’s one of the more even distributions that you’re going to find.
Baseball-Reference also shows that Fukudome posted a .378 average and a .500 slugging percentage when he hit the ball to the opposite field.
Thanks for the reply. I’m not sure those stats provide anything especially relevant. More germane would be a comparison of Fukudome’s second-half (after the possible league adjustment) outfield BABIP versus a league average BABIP on all balls hit to the outfield, and also his first-half outfield BABIP versus second-half outfield BABIP… Not sure if B-R can provide that.
I checked for those sort of splits on B-R, but I could not come across anything like that.
And I do think those stats are relevant- you suggested that a positional adjustment may have accounted for Fukudome’s drop in production, but his spray chart is pretty much all over the place, not suggesting any particular “hot spot” where consistently puts the ball in play. That would appear to work against the idea of shading to a particular spot.
Fukudome’s MLB spray chart further illustrates his distribution of hits:
http://mlb.mlb.com/stats/individual_player_hitting_chart.jsp?playerID=493120&statType=1
Obviously Fukudome uses all fields, but there is no hitter in baseball that gets a shift where an outfield position is left unmanned. The point was that each outfielder could be shifted individually. That spray chart on MLB.com is great. Interesting that there is a sizable gap between SS and second base in the outfield where no singles landed all season, suggesting a LFer could play pretty tight up against the LF line. The difference this could make in his BABIP can’t be much, but it’s a factor beyond dumb luck, and would be exacerbated by Fukudome’s continually lessening power.
My main point to all this is that the luck argument isn’t very persuasive: there are quite possibly other factors that just don’t show up in the available splits, so I thought I’d raise an anecdotal possibility that I’d noticed over the course of the season.
I think the most important factor in Fukudome’s decline was his huge change in plate discipline. For the first 3 months, Fukudome had a O-Swing% of 16.17%, compared to 24.87% for the last 3. That kind of plate discipline leads to a lot of weakly hit balls that don’t fall for hits. It was obvious from watching games that Kosuke was simply not himself at the end of the year.
Wow, definitely. That is a huge percentage change, and would almost certainly affect his BABIP, not to mention explain how 3-4% of his ABs went for BBs to Ks. This would make for an interesting study, if one hasn’t already been done: O-Swing’s correlation to BABIP.
It looks interesting to me,thanks for sharing this out.
Does a hit chart measure the force of the hit?
I watched him against the Mets and Keith Hernandez hated his swing (at the time). Kosuke steps in the bucket/bails out and is only able to drive inside pitches. So even if he is able to get his bat on an outside pitch, it is always going to be weakly hit. There’s a big difference in staying in the box and driving the ball to all fields and being a pull hitter who has good enough bat control to push outside pitches in play, albeit very weakly.
Kosuke Fukudome should just quit playing baseball and become an umpire. See the name link for the proof.
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Bot.
that low and away stuff killed him, and pitchers figured that out around the time that o-swing went crazy.