The shadow of Wilkerson
DMZ · April 21, 2008 at 12:00 pm · Filed Under Mariners
2008 line in 54 plate appearances: .182/.308/.250
Career average: .249
Last season he hit near that: 2005 (.248)
Career OBP: .353
Last season he got on base at that clip: 2005 (.351)
Career SLG: .448
Last season he hit for that kind of power: 2007 (yay!) (.467)
Ground/fly ratio: .81 2008, .81 career
Line drive percentage: 12.1% 2008, 21% career. Last time he hit that many line drives: 2005 (24%)
Ground ball percentage: 39.4% 2008, 35.2% career
Fly ball percentage: 48.5% 2008, 43.7% career
Infield fly ball percentage: 31.3% 2008, 8.5% career
Percent of fly balls that go for home runs: 0% 2008, 13.4% career
Batting average on balls in play, by year, from 2005:
.317
.296
.280
.242
Comments
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Yeah, but remember, he’s a professional hitter.
That IFFB% rate is pretty sweet. How about we get some Ponies to do their things and get those numbers to his career average.
Vidro’s the professional hitter.
Not to sound rude, but what exactly are you suggesting Derek? So it looks like he fell off. What else is new? Seems to be the story of the Ms.
I’m no baseball expert, but is that what they call “a cliff?”
Or at least free fall.
[no, you cannot]
Small sample size. Has Wilkerson ever had a month like this before?
Speaking of Mariners with old player skills. . . .
From what I remember BABIP, IFFB, and HR/FB small sample sizes at 30 aren’t exactly falling off the cliff numbers. His BB and K rates are close to career averages. To me it looks like some bad luck and he will turn it around to be with Wilkerson of norms. 44 AB’s isn’t much of anything. He also has no infield hits to pad the stats like Turbo did last year.
Although it’s quite moot to discuss it because Wilkerson will not get pulled unless he assaults Bavasi, how bad is Wlad’s injury?
I smell what you’re cookin’, DMZ
Also McLaren isn’t letting him hit against LHP (1AB) which he has a better line against throughout his career. They are close to even but there is no reason to platoon a guy who doesn’t need it. If anything sit him against RHP.
You could go look that up.
What would that mean?
Perhaps Breadbaker and HamNasty are implying all those numbers go up by 2-5% points?
Baby steps Bob, baby steps.
In July 2003 his line was .200 / .263 / .352
His career average for July, his worst month, is .216 / .314 / .405
So if he doesn’t get better, he’s going to get worse.
He’s never been a high average guy, but where has his power gone?
I think the point is that Wilkerson won’t be able to sustain this level of futility for the whole season. IIRC IFFB% is generally regarded as unsustainable and will revert to his career norms, yes? Same with fly balls that go for home runs, and obviously once his IFFB start turning into OFFB more of them will start dropping in for hits and his BABIP will start to go up as well.
(The rest of this is my rather uninformed speculation, I’m fairly new to all this and still feeling things out)
However. The decrease in LD% and the huge increase in IFFB% would indicate to me that he’s not making solid contact with the ball. I’m not sure what skillset would dictate that, but my intuition says… bat speed? A slight loss in bat speed leads to him guessing a little on pitches, but his K% is actually down to his career bests from ‘04 and ‘05 of ~25%, compared to ~32% last year and ~36% in ‘06, so on second thought I don’t imagine that’s the problem. The age of 31 seems a little early for bat speed to start going as well. His BB% is up to his career bests of ~15% from ‘03/’04, from ~13%/10%/11% the last three years, so it doesn’t appear as though his eyesight or reaction time is going either. I don’t know the mechanics of hitting well so I won’t speculate on it, but could he have made some adjustment (intentionally or unintentionally) that could be causing him to make poor contact? Specifically, getting “under” the ball too much it seems.
Unless he’s got some nagging injury that’s causing a change in his swing/approach at the plate, or if he’s made some intentionally change (if this was the case I would hope they’re working on fixing it), it seems like he’s just had some bad reads on pitches and/or has gotten tough pitches to hit, and his luck will turn around, hopefully sooner than later.
How off am I here?
If only we had a Fukudome. . .
DMZ- To me that means he gets the BA up to .240 something .330/.420ish setting him around the .750 OPS. Which is not great or even that good for a RF, but I don’t see him continuing this trend. I don’t expect much out of Wilk but I expect more then the M’s got so far.
I’m curious as to how. Aside from contacting Baseball Info Solutions and asking them for batted ball data by month, I can’t seem to find a source that splits things up that fine. B-Ref has a lot of valuable month by month data, but no batted ball percentages. Fangraphs has the percentages, but by year (or year to date in this case), but not by month.
I was bored enough to try… and fail miserably.
17 – Seconded. Unfortunately, the past is the past.
BR has BABIP in their monthly splits.
19 – BABIP is actually pretty easy to calculate. It’s (hits-HR)/(AB-K-HR+SF). Copy & paste the month by month data from baseball-reference and throw in that equation. Unfortunately, I can’t find GB/FB/LD% by month either, but that can get you BABIP.
Nevermind, guess you don’t need to do that.
Wilkerson’s career worst months:
april 2004: .211/.326/.316 – season: .255/.374/.498
july 2005: .236/.314/.340 – season: .248/.351/.405
april 2006: .225/.289/.382
july 2006: .172/.250/.313 – season: .222/.306/.422
june 2007: .179/.286/.373 – season: .234/.319/.467
april 2008: .182/.308/.250
And his BABIP in each of those months:
April 2004: .263 – season: .292
July 2005: .316 – season: .315
April 2006: .347
July 2006: .205 – season: .292
june 2007: .200 – season: .274
April 2008: .242 – season: .242
Jeff Pentland is a great hitting coach and I believe he will get Wilkerson turned around. But if he does not, how long will(should) the M’s stick with him.
Judging by historical M’s decisions, they’ll probably stick with him longer than they should. If he keeps hitting this poorly I’d expect him to get cut around the All-Star break. Carl Everett made it to July 26th hitting .227/.297/.360, which is starting to seem very Wilkerson-esque, even if he does improve.
Call me an old softy, but I enjoy these statistical “is-what-it-is” articles.
16. I think you have it spot on. Basically, we’re not doctors, and if it is a mechanical problem he’s having, it’d be difficult to diagnose it from here. Unfortunately, all we can do is wait for him to come out of his slump. Despite concerns about his numbers, for the most part I think we can expect him to come out of this at some point. And I think we can probably expect the M’s to give him plenty of time to come out of it.
Personally, I would like to see the team thinking about finding a replacement for him if he’s not coming around, especially by the All Star Break, if not sooner. Wlad? If not someone from Tacoma, then perhaps a trade? Is that unrealistic?
Yeah, but the question was to find similar months for him. Numerically we can find similarities in BABIP and whatnot, but to really see if Wilkerson has been this bad with infield flyballs, lack of line drives, etc, we need to have more data we can compare.
Unfortunately, we don’t have that. We can only assume that his other bad months had similar ball in play problems. Then again, if there isn’t another month with similar ball in play problems, we can’t know if this is his deep end plunge or just “one of those months”.
It’s also not that important. Wilkerson was not someone we thought would be incredibly valuable anyway.
Imagine if we sign Thomas though. Having three guys who walk as much as Sexson, Thomas, and Wilkerson hitting 5,6,7 would be devastating to pitch counts. Also Thomas could protect Wilkerson a little better than Joh.
Wilkerson has faced the average to just above average right hand pitchers. And he is getting owned. Lets see how he does against pitchers like Beckett, Haliday, Vazquez, Verlander, Carmona. My guess is he does not even get walked! It is gonna get real ugly for him…
Yes, if this was 3 or 4 years ago. Also, think of all the GIDP. Problem is we don’t know if Richie has made a mental and/or mechanical adjustment, if age has finally caught up with Thomas or if injuries have finally taken care of Wilkerson.
Bonds is still the best solution out there.
Brad Wilkerson on April 8th:
“I’m not swinging the bat for crap right now.”
I thought it was interesting that two weeks ago he was saying that it wasn’t mechanical, but not seeing & recognising pitches: “I want to be aggressive, but I have to be patient to get into a good count,” Wilkerson said. “I feel like I’m going up there and swinging at some pitches early in the count I shouldn’t be swinging at. The swing is there, it’s just mentally right now I’m a little off.”
Can I get a “Happy Felix Day” ?
Well, at this point he’s over his career rate for walks (15.4% vs 13.5%) and under his K rate (25% vs 30%). I’d venture to guess his pitch recognition is fine. What stands out from Derek’s post is that he’s not driving the ball- at all. 31.3% IFF?!? Good grief.
Although it’s quite moot to discuss it because Wilkerson will not get pulled unless he assaults Bavasi, how bad is Wlad’s injury?
According to the TNT, Wlad’s injury isn’t serious.
Since we are on the topic of Wilkerson.
ESPN Top 10 Plays catagory:
Adam Jones 1
Wilkerson 0
I don’t thing it’s too early to pull the plug on Wilkerson.
I’d rather see Willie in right field than have Wilkerson continue to be unproductive. If they are both going to hit for crappy averages with no pop, why not have someone with some speed in the lineup? Not to mention, Willie is 100% grittier.
Until we find a permament solution, of course.
Yeah, sorry… The guy was/is a bad deal. Willie isn’t a power guy either. I think we need to risk it on youth. Another point: Coco Crisp made $3.8 million last year. Yeah, he fell off towards the end… He is younger, a switch hitter, can field at any of the three positions… With a little plate discipline (like not swinging at everything that comes near him), he could be back to his Cleveland numbers. We are paying Wilkerson $3 million bucks… Sorry, one is undervalued or one is overvalued. Even at his Boston numbers, he might be worth trying to get. Boston wants young and homegrown. Maybe give ‘em a little something and pick up his contract.
Wilkerson: if healthy should be .240-.350-.440, minus an adjustment for Safeco. I’m sure that is what Bavasi was looking at when he signed him. The data that DMZ seems to point that he should get back to that range.
WFB career is .260-.314-.328
Brady H, tell me again why we want to start a utility infielder in the outfield?
Because it doesn’t matter what he’s capable of doing. What matters is what he is doing, which is hitting .182/.250/.380. And even as a utility infielder, he’s got more range in the outfield that Wilkerson.
I’m not saying make him the permanent right fielder, just in the meantime. Read the post below it: “until we find a permanent solution.” i.e. Bonds, Thomas, Balentin.
.308 OBP, sorry.
I agree with the sentiment of 41… Just do not agree that Thomas or Bonds are ‘permanent’ solutions. I believe that they are longer-term, short-term solutions that likely don’t deserve more than yearly or “‘lowercase’ multi” year deal.
I was roundly ridiculed when I made the argument that Wilkerson’s horrific 2007 away stats might be a cause for concern. That allegedly small 2007 sample size might be more indicative than most thought.
Ugh.
Maybe I am seeing something that isn’t there?
Looks to me like a guy that has been hitting an usual number of infield flies, and therefore has a low BABIP.
Unless his skill set has changed so that he will always hit a lot of infield flies for ever after?
I must be missing the stats that show his skill set has actually changed for the worse.
At what point do you admit Wilkerson was a mistake?
Also Paul B, those stats at the top indicate that, with the exception of SLG, Wilkerson’s numbers have been declining since 2005.
How does the data seems to point that he should get back to .249/.353/.448?
At what point do you realize that I didn’t like the signing, wrote about his decline and reasons for pessimism at the time, and –
never mind. You don’t understand what people were disputing, and that’s fine. But you could at least do us the courtesy of reading what we wrote.
Here?
At what point do you guys stop flying off the handle, and jumping to the wrong conclusion?
I was speaking in terms of the M’s, not you DMZ.
Jeff, I am certain DMZ can take care of himself.
To be fair, currcoug your post previous to that was pretty much, ‘I told you so’. No one really likes that.
Perhaps a better way would’ve been to say, ‘Back when we were discussing Brad’s signing I made mention of his away splits that most posters didn’t share. Could this be a continuation of ?’.
Oh, that’s what I get for using the arrow brackets.
I meant to say that if you stated why you were concerned about his road stats and brought that to the table people might not take your post as an ‘I told you so!’.
Tread lightly.
I think Currcoug is being misunderstood, he was using a “royal you” (is there such a thing? like the Royal “We”), and was simply asking “At what point do the Mariners brass admit Wilkerson was a mistake?”. No attacks to anyone, though it’s understandable how it could come off like that.
DMZ and/or Dave – Could one of you confirm/deny the ideas put forth by myself/paul that these numbers indicate that Wilkerson should rebound back in the direction of his career numbers? I mean it’s great to put those stats out there and make us think and draw our own conclusions, but at some point we’d like to hear what minds far more trained in this than our own have to say about it as well. (Would also be interested in hearing a rebuttal/critique of my post on the Frank Thomas entry if it’s not too much trouble, I’m still new to this and find it all fascinating)
Thanks
Sorry for the triple post, but just realized the answer to the Wilkerson question is on the Cliff post.
Terminator,
Yes, that is exactly what I was asking DMZ.
Galaxieboi,
Thank you for the courteous manner in which you offered advice. Your version would have been more tactful, although I expect DMZ’s response would have been much the same.
Jeff,
I assume the heavy-handed “Tread lightly” remark was directed at me. To quote Sarek: “…threats are illogical, and payment is usually expensive.”
Nice.
Ouch. Just Rick Roll’d us all. I made sure to pass it on at work to feel better about myself.