But when I wanted to talk about the stats that favored him being in the leadoff role, no one wanted to talk about stats. They wanted to talk about foot speed (?) and bunting and a bunch of other stuff that's not all that important to batting leadoff but is instead just stuff most famous leadoff hitters also do well.
Now that I try to deviate from stats and point to sheer results (offensive output), here come the stats.
If I can make a comment on the stats you just mentioned, I will.
OBP has two main components, quite obviously: hit rate and walk rate. By hit rate I obviously mean batting average. By breaking down these components and comparing them to what is known about each component, you can discern if:
1. Kelly Johnson's .375 obp last season was a fluke
2. Kelly Johnson's .333 obp this season is a fluke
3. Kelly Johnson's .333 obp this season represents a dropoff in skill level.
I think we can agree that his .375 last season was certainly helpful in the leadoff role. He was constantly on base for Chipper and whoever was batting cleanup. That's a great situation to be in. In baseball, though, there are skill declines here and cases of bad luck there. On the surface they look the same. At age 32, Mark Langston was essentially done as an effective starter. At the same age, Roger Clemens, a similar pitcher, looked equally done. One bounced back and the other didn't. That's why you can't automatically label Kelly as declining or a victim of bad luck without really looking at it closely.
Like I said, there are two main components of obp: hit rate and walk rate. Walk rate is easy to look at, because that's always in the hitter's hands. Major league pitchers aren't walking batters less or more from year to year, so this is really in Kelly's hands. Unfortunately, KJ is walking less than last year. This is something to genuinely worry about. His walk rate, usually around 12-13%, is this year at 9%. That's bothersome and it indicates KJ is pressing at the plate, swinging at too many pitches. This is also evidenced by his pitches per PA count. Last year he saw 4.12 pitches per plate appearance. That's very selective (ml hitters average 3.8). This year he's below the 3.8 average at 3.76. While he is seeing more strikes than he did last year, it's not so much more that there's a huge problem. He's having a problem after he's getting those strikes, though. He's working 3-0 and 2-0 counts just as much as he did last year. Last year, though, he saw 3 balls in 26% of his trips to the plate. That's pretty amazing. This year that number's down to 19%. Perhaps he has tinkered with his approach, or maybe TP has, but Johnson needs to get his patience back to where it was last year to get that walk rate back up into the 12-13% zone.
Now, hit rate, or batting average. Batting average is affected by many things, like defense, luck, randomness, ballpark, etc. We know there are two facets of batting average, though, that are completely in Kelly's control: home runs and strikeouts. If he jacks one out, there's no luck of defensive positioning or risk of a great play to get him out, provided he hits it deep enough. If he strikes out, he's got no one to blame but himself. His home run frequency is oh so slightly up this year, and he's even hitting fewer fly balls. That's a good sign. The strikeout rate is down this year, from 19% to 16%, another good sign.
Everything else is not exactly in his control. Greg Maddux used to talk extensively about this, and he's really the first person I learned this from. Maddux would sometimes be surprised by the results of games, in that days when he had weak stuff he'd throw a shutout while days with great stuff he'd get shelled. When he had the great stuff but still gave up numerous runs, he'd say "they just kept dropping 'em in." On other days, he'd have better luck, but the key here is understanding that randomness and luck plays a major part. Another near-proof of this randomness is the wild fluctuations of the statistic that measure it - batting average on balls in play (essentially batting average that excludes home runs and strikeouts). This stat, babip, has no rhyme or reason. It's just random. Some really unique players it treats nicely (ichiro) and some unique players it treats poorly (I don't have an example off the top of my head but if you need one I can definitely find one). I wouldn't consider Johnson that unique of a player. Maddux is a really good example of how babip can alter stats, if you want to check it out. I'll let you do it on your own if you want, but look at Maddux in 1998, 1999, and 2000. 1999 stands out with era and hits allowed, but everything else is in line with what he was doing every year. Maddux didn't change his approach any. He didn't change his habits. A change in his game isn't what caused him to get worse in '99 or better in '00. He called it luck back in the day, so that's what I call it now.
Using some research we can make a guess as to what KJ's babip should be. Last year his babip was .330, higher than expected, so that .276 average was probably a little higher than it should've been.
This year his expected babip is .291 and his real babip is .302. That means he's even getting a little lucky on his swings.
So it boils down to one of two things:
#1. Kelly Johnson is pressing and needs to work on something, most likely his pitch selection
#2. Kelly Johnson's had a slump that so severely impacted his stats that at this point in the season, it's still too early to rely on the season data as truly indicative of what he can do, as the slump will still constitute a large chunk of his season to date.
There's no way to know whether it's one or the other. You're going with #1. I'm gonna go with #2, because I'm an optimist and because he's entering his prime, so the odds are certainly in his favor. With guys his age and his experience level, it's more likely to be #2 than #1.
But that's not to say it can't be #1.
There's a whole 'nother matter of comparing him to the other options at leadoff, though, and that's still the bulk of my reasoning that we should leave him there. There's just not anyone else better suited for the leadoff role.
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