Continue or terminate Pirates 1B experiment?

(Jeff's Note: This is the first in what will be many blog posts that I did not write. I have asked some of my most loyal and vocal readers to contribute to the blog, so you will be seeing their bylines on a regular basis. Enjoy!)

By Mike

With Jeff Clement being a major disappointment to begin the season, I decided to take a more in-depth look into some of his advanced statistics to see if they provide any sort of explanation.  If you need a little more info behind some of the stats used, check out http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/glossary and/or leave a comment and I’d be glad to expand more on how/why it is useful.  All stats are from fangraphs.com unless otherwise noted.

Through his first 101 plate appearances this season, Clement has been a liability at the plate. Even after a modestly productive week, he’s still only hitting .196 average, albeit with a somewhat surprising .254 OBP, and has accounted for an estimated -6.3 runs with his bat this year. Surprisingly, he has performed well defensively with a UZR of 0.9, but that’s for another day. A little closer look indicates he is getting somewhat unlucky as his batting average of balls in play (BABIP) is only .230, a stat that universally hovers around .300 regardless of skill set. That average is abnormally low and a few more of his ground balls should be finding holes sooner than later. Of course, if you’ve seen more than a few of his at-bats this season you’ll know chance alone is obviously not his problem. There is occasionally an underlying reason for low BABIP and his batted ball info may explain most of it.

Compared to his career averages, his line drive percentage (LD%) is up slightly from 18.4 percent to 20.4 percent, he had a major drop of his fly ball percentage (FB%) from 39.3 percent to 32.3 percent and his ground ball percentage (GB %) greatly rose from 42.5 percent to 47.7 percent.  I believe that this is related to Clement seeing 4 percent more sliders and 3.1 percent more curveballs this year, and close to a 6 percent drop in fastballs and cut fastballs. This difference in FB%/GB% leads me to believe pitchers have figured out how to pitch to him by finding holes in his swing due to the noted over-twisting of his entire upper-body.

Here is a fantastic article on an analysis of Clement’s swing by Steve Carter (http://projectprospect.com/article/2010/05/13/revisiting-the-2005-draft-part-ii). It’s a lengthy read, but it documents how Clement has great power even though his entire upper body coils up through his swing, causing his swing to be “long”, or inefficient. Carter believes if Clement can become a “hips and hands” hitter, he could be a highly productive hitter, and compares his swing to Brian Roberts.

My inference would be that Clement isn’t able to get extended on sliders moving away from him due to this wasted swing motion. Comparably, because of the added motion, it is taking Clement too long to adjust to the slower moving curveball and he is simply rolling over the pitches. Both of these thoughts would explain the low BABIP and batting average.

So should the Pirates use his option to let him work on the swing in the minors? I think he has nothing left to prove in AAA. He’s had plenty of success there with his long swing and he proved he can get away with it in Indy. While re-inventing his swing will be difficult, major league pitching is the best way to learn this, and he needs to stay in the lineup until he proves that he can or cannot hit at this level.

Even if he never figures it out, the Pirates should at least keep him around until he throws the city his pizza party (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6fwiL7p6WE)

Crash Kings – Mountain Man