Approach Design & Finding Baseball’s Harden’s- Part 2a
Earlier this month I set out to write about how one might design an approach for a particular hitter. This task requires an extensive amount of detail that changes based on so many different variables. This will be part A in a series about designing an approach for Corey Dickerson. Part A will be an overview so that we have a good grasp of as much significant context as possible, as well as a broad look at certain strategies to attempt or avoid. Part B will be an in-depth focus on the pitcher vs. hitter confrontation, and how to integrate certain game theory concepts into the said confrontation.
Overview: Corey Dickerson is a good hitter. Here is a basic look at his numbers from the last two years as well as his career totals. The first thing that jumps out is the k/bb rate. As you can see he doesn’t walk at all and we’ll get into why later. Despite not walking he has a career BABIP of .329 2,635 plate appearances. That’s a really good signal that his barrel skill is very consistent and that his batted ball profile makes him less susceptible to volatility.
Speaking of batted ball profiles, let’s take a general look at that as well. What really stands out here is his pull/oppo %. In 2018, Corey Dickerson was 8th in the entire league in oppo %. Now I’m not saying that is necessarily right or wrong, but I believe it is indicative of some possible changes that could yield positive results.
According to FanGraphs, Dickerson had a zone contact % 80.6. That mark was good for 246th in the MLB(League average is 85.5.) While there isn’t a correlation between WRC+ and zone contact % it might make more sense for a player with a 5% below league average zone contact % to not have the highest swing rate in all of baseball which Dickerson did (59.3%). This goes back to designing an approach that is congruent with the players’ talents.
Freak Skill
Dickerson does have one particular talent that stands out. Of all qualified batters in 2018, Dickerson was 3rd in wOBA with a .357 on all pitches on the edges of the zone. Others in the top 10 include J.D. Martinez, Mookie Betts, Mike Trout (because of course) Justin Turner, Daniel Murphy, and Jesus Aguilar. So what about the balls in the zone, and out of the zone? In 2018, Dickerson was 116 out 448 batters on pitches in the zone with a respectable wOBA of .401. However, on pitches out of the zone, Dickerson ranked 429 out 448 batters with a .183 wOBA. This would make sense as he has below average contact skills, and he is 3rd in all of baseball at swinging at pitches out of the zone. That recipe doesn’t make for an approach aligned with his strengths.
Dickerson is also 40th in the league in wOBA in two-strike counts, despite frequently being in them. I believe this has much to do with Dickerson’s ability to use the opposite part of the field. As you can see below, he gets 53% more production than the average player when going to the opposite field. I have no way of proving it but I believe this might be because Dickerson has an extremely deep average depth of contact. This would make sense because of how frequently he goes to the opposite field. If that is true, it may benefit for Dickerson to pull the ball more frequently, specifically in hitters counts where he can afford to take more risks in regard to making contact.
Since 2014 when he became a full-time player, Dickerson is one of just ten players in all of baseball to have a BABIP higher than .330 and a Slugging % higher than .500. That is an extremely rare combination of power and barrel skill. When I say barrel skill I mean that when Dickerson does put it in play, he is doing so at optimal launch angles and exit velocities and does so with a good deal of consistency. If Dickerson was more prone to volatility, we would see seasons where his BABIP fluctuates. The lowest of his any seasons was .285, in which it was his only season with a WRC+ under 115.
To illustrate this I decided to run a statistical analysis on Corey Dickerson’s batted ball profile, in comparison to the eight highest WRC+ left-handed hitters for the 2018 season. I did so for all batted balls, as well as all balls hit harder than 85 mph. The idea behind also looking at this analysis on balls hit harder than 85 mph is to see how consistent a player is when they are making solid contact. When looking at all batted balls players may seem more volatile than they actually are due to the nature of miss-hit balls. The two biggest things I was looking at was the average (mean) and the standard deviation. As you can tell from the chart below, for the most part, Dickerson measures up quite well compared to this “Elite Group.” The elite group was composed of the 8 highest left-handed hitters, not including switch hitters. From the perspective of average exit velocity, he is actually better than the collective elite group. He also has a smaller standard deviation in all metrics besides exit velocity on balls hit harder than 85 mph. This indicates that when he does put the ball in play, he has a great deal of success and that there isn’t a significant amount of volatility as previously mentioned.
I think we all understand by now the value in pulling the ball, and while I certainly realize that it may not always be possible or even optimal depending on the various variables in a given at-bat, its value is undeniable. This graph demonstrates very clearly the difference between each direction of the batted ball. Even in an era where shifts are more prevalent than ever, we still see that pulling the ball produces 40–60% more production compared to the middle and opposite parts of the field. And while Dickerson is better at going to the opposite field compared to league average than he is when pulling the ball, you’ll see there is still a 38% difference in production compared to Dickerson pulling the ball opposed to going opposite field.
Again, I am not saying that using the opposite field is bad, I believe there is a time and a place for everything and being able to go oppo is an extremely valuable skill to have. As we can see from the graph above Dickerson has some legit skill going oppo when compared to his peers. When I think about using the opposite field, I think it is most logical to be more inclined to do so when the pitcher holds a significant upper hand based on the count.
Leveraging the count is something I mentioned in the first installment of this series. It seems to me that it would be common sense to take on extra risk when the hitter has less to lose. So, what does taking risks as a hitter look like? I believe that risk is “sitting” on a particular pitch or location in order to try to get the most optimal result possible, which as I demonstrated earlier is a batted ball to the pull side. A hitter can achieve this more often by hitting the pitch out further in front of the plate. This allows the barrel to accelerate longer resulting in batted balls in a higher exit velocity and a better chance of an extra-base hit. The numbers supporting this has been well documented.
When ahead in the count, it is my belief that Dickerson should attempt to pull the ball more often, even if there is a tradeoff in contact %. Even if he swings and misses more when ahead of the count, Dickerson is one of the best hitters in the league with two strikes, as we noted earlier.
So let’s take a look at how Dickerson performs while at different points through the count. An important note: these numbers are the WRC+ for all at-bats that work “through” a particular count, and not the WRC+ of an at-bat ending at a particular count. I think it is a very important distinction that gives us a very good idea how important getting into good counts are.
Compared to league average, Dickerson is a very good two-strike hitter but he is overall underwhelming while ahead in the count. Why might that be? Again, it is my hunch that part of what makes Dickerson a great hitter with two strikes limits him while ahead in the count, his willingness to go to the opposite field.
Now, let’s take a look at how Dickerson compares to the “Elite Group” when ahead in the count. We can see that on average he is going opposite much more when compared to the rest of the group besides young Juan Soto who also performed very similar to Dickerson while ahead in the count. Yelich who pulls the ball at a similar rate has a much higher hard hit %. I don’t ever want to an excuse a way that a hitter has success, but Yelich is very much an anomaly as demonstrated by his GB/FB rate.
The only other thing that stands out is the difference between Dickerson’s’ and the elite tier’s HR/FB rate. I looked into it and turns out that Dickerson’s flyballs have the lowest avg exit velocity out of the group. I believe this is because of how deep Dickerson may be catching the ball and going to the
opposite field with such a high frequency. Here is what is flyball spray heat map looks like.
Despite being last on this list, Dickerson has demonstrated more top-end exit velocity than both Freeman and Carpenter. However, he is still a good distance away from the top-end velocity of players like Harper, Ohtani, and Yelich. The players that are most similar in top-end exit velocity are the most pull happy of the group, Carpenter and Freeman. Juan Soto whose flyballs went to the opposite field even more than Dickerson had a lower wOBA.
Summary and Application
Dickerson has strengths. He is particularly good when putting the ball in play, and when using the opposite field. Even as good as he is to the opposite field, there is still more production to be had pulling the ball. The problem may be that he is using the opposite field too much, specifically when ahead of the count. When ahead in the count I believe it would benefit Dickerson to try to hit the ball more out in front of the plate and pull the ball to improve his production, even if Dickerson whiffs at more pitches. His current skill set, and perhaps the approach he currently employs, allows Dickerson to be one of the better hitters in the league with two strikes. Dickerson must also get himself into plus counts more often, something he doesn’t frequently do having the highest swing rate in the entire Major Leagues. It may be beneficial for Dickerson to decrease his swing rate to put himself into better counts more often. Dickerson is also elite at hitting pitches on the edges of the zone. It is my belief that Dickerson may be able to maximize that skill set by swinging more often in even counts where there is a clear swing in performance based on the count, for an example, the 1–1 Count. I also think it would benefit him to be more likely to swing in counts where the pitcher is much more likely to throw a pitch in or around the zone, like 3 ball counts. I will get more into scenarios like this and the strategies to employ against certain pitcher “families” in the next installment of this series.