Hitting is an important part of baseball, however, hitting is actually really hard. Players have to read pitches and identify the right approach for them. So, seeing a lot of pitches is a good idea?
Firstly, let’s look at which player saw most pitches in the 2020 season. Against Jose Ramirez, pitchers threw 1146 pitches last season. He did let pitchers work a lot. Carlos Santana let pitchers throw 1123 pitches last season and Francisco Lindor let pitchers throw 1118 pitches in 2020. It seemed that the Indians batters did let opponents work a lot last year because they tended to see more pitches. Pitchers threw 1112 pitches against Cavan Biggio. Max Muncy and Christian Yelich each let pitchers throw 1110 pitches. These six players all had at least 240 plate appearances in the 2020 season.
Let’s dig a little bit more. Last season, Jose Ramirez saw 4.51 pitches per plate appearance and seeing more pitches is a good idea for him since he batted .292/.386/.607 with 17 home runs. Christian Yelich saw 4.45 pitches per plate appearance, nonetheless, he had a very disappointing 2020. Yelich only batted .205/.356/.430 with 12 home runs. Maybe Yelich was too patient in 2020? Yasmani Grandal, Max Muncy and Carlos Santana each saw at least 4.40 pitches per plate appearance. But, they probably weren’t satisfied with the outcomes. Grandal was hitting .230/.351/.422 with 8 homers. Grandal’s OPS was .773 last season, and previously, he posted an OPS of .848 in 2019. Meanwhile, Muncy and Santana each failed to hit .200.
Additionally, there were many batters who saw a lot of strikes last year. In 2020, David Fletcher from the Angels saw 257 strikes and did not swing. Cavan Biggio saw 231 pitches in the strike zone and decided not to swing. Mike Trout saw 226 pitches that were called strikes. Max Muncy and Mark Canha each saw 225 strikes and they didn’t swing. Did they wait for some pitches that they were looking for?
Finally, maybe being patient is not a good idea? Cavan Biggio was called out on strikes 29 times in the shortened 2020 season. Mike Trout was struck out looking 26 times last year and Evan White also had 26 strikeouts looking. Joey Gallo was called out on strikes 25 times last year. Victor Robles and Jorge Soler each saw the third strike without swinging 22 times. There could be several reasons. Maybe pitchers did fool them pitch by pitch, maybe these batters just did not expect the pitch to come or sometimes pitches were on edge of the strike zone and they decided not to swing.
So, being patient is really a good idea? Jose Ramirez had a high P/PA and he wore out opposing pitchers. Seeing more pitches seems to be a good way for him and he did hit well last season. However, it did not work for some players last season as we can see that some players had a high P/PA but did not hit well last year. David Fletcher and Mike Trout each saw a lot of strikes in 2020, Fletcher’s batting average was .319 and Trout slashed .281/.390/.603. It might be hard to get a great answer to tell whether it’s a really good idea to have a high P/PA or see many pitches at bat. For some players such as Christian Yelich, perhaps it’s better to be more aggressive?
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