Discussed: hitting baseballs, enchiladas, bad wordplay, general mediocrity, wRC+, circular logic, being human
Colorado Rockies catcher Tony Wolters is a bad hitter. However, though still not good by any stretch, this year he is a little less bad. Such a notch-above-humdrum improvement gets one curious. I decided to explore this curiosity and had the chance to share my findings with Tony himself when we sat down together at a Mexican restaurant. Below is the transcript of our discussion, unedited.
Me: Hi Tony. Thanks for joining me here. I see you’ve already ordered. Looks like the Enchiladas Ole. Good choice. I’m a crispy chili rellenos man myself.
Tony: You’re 20 minutes late. I couldn’t wait any longer.
Me: Let’s get down to business shall we? The business of talking hitting.
Tony: Let’s do it.
Me: Ok, diving right in. Last year in 216 plate appearances you had a wRC+ of 45, which, let’s be honest, is disturbingly bad. If not for (Pat) Valaika you’d’ve easily been 2018’s worst Rockie at the plate.
Tony: Don’t forget Noel (Cuevas). And what’s wRC+?
Me: I’m glad you asked. It’s a stat that does its best to measure the actual value of a hitter’s output, placing a weight on each offensive event (singles, doubles, etc) in accordance to it’s relative impact on run scoring while also taking park effects into account, putting everyone on a theoretical even playing field, if you’ll pardon the wordplay.
Tony: Pardoned.
Me: For wRC+ 100 is league average. In 2018 you were at 45, 55 percent worse than your average Major League Joe.
Tony: Hitting is hard.
Me: Especially, it seems, for you. But what is really very interesting, in the most esoteric and not interesting sense of the word, is that this year you have improved slightly, at least so far.
Tony: Yes, this is true.
Me: Do you have any guesses as to how much you’ve improved with regards to wRC+, the obscure statistic the brief meaning of which you’ve just learned in between bites of enchilada?
Tony: No clue.
Me: Let me tell you: thus far in 2019 your wRC+ is 73! You are now just 27 percentage points below average, an improvement of more that 50 percent of your previous relative percentage!
Tony: I’ve been working hard. I transitioned from being a middle infielder to playing catcher when I was 21 years old, you know? Catcher is considered the most difficult defensive position to play in baseball.
Me: Yes, it’s pretty impressive what you’ve done in that respect over the last 5 or whatever years. Though I myself am suspect of the true value of defensive play, you are thought to be by many a quality defensive asset. German (Marquez), who as you know is the star pitcher of your team, is said to prefer you to all others (Chris Iannetta) as his catcher of choice.
Tony: Thank you. But what I was getting at is that I was an ok hitter in A-ball before I changed positions and that devoting so much time and energy to learning how to play such a super demanding position took away from hitting. I’m human after all. I can only do so much at once.
Me: Yes, yes. An unenviable position to be in, if again you’ll pardon the wordplay.
Tony: Pardoned again.
Me: The challenge for me, as a medium-quality armchair baseball analyst and fan of the Rockies, is to understand is this improvement to mediocre real? Is there meat on the proverbial bone? Are you going to regress to your old ways representing an actual zero in our lineup?
Tony: You do remember my game-winning hit in the Wild Card game last year?
Me: That doesn’t make you good Tony.
Tony: But do you remember it?
Me: I do, and it was glorious, but let’s not get distracted here. We want to know have you actually, like for real, improved because wRC+ is subject to the law of small numbers and can be very misleading this early in the season, what with only 76 plate appearances under your belt. So the question remains.
Tony: I would like to think I’ve improved, yes.
Me: And I would have to agree. Do you want to know why?
Tony: Tell me.
Me: Well at first glance most of your other peripheral stats are on par with what you usually do - walk rates, K rates, what-have-you. But looking at your batted ball numbers we find something that stands out.
Tony: What’s that?
Me: Batted ball stats tell us-
Tony: No, I mean what stands out?
Me: Oh. What stands out is your Hard%.
Tony: Hard%?
Me: Hard% tells us how often you hit the ball hard when you hit it. Hitting the ball hard is ideal, the thought being that the harder you hit baseballs the less likely you are to make outs.
Tony: Like how often I hit line drives?
Me: Not exactly. It tells us what percentage of your line drives are classified as being hit “hard”, as far as line drives go. Same thing for fly balls and ground balls. It’s relative to the type of contact you make. A hard fly ball might have the velocity of a medium line drive, but you still get credit in that scenario as far as Hard% is concerned.
Tony: Like exit velocity then.
Me: No. Exit velocity is a general look at the MPH of the ball when it leaves your bat regardless of what TYPE of contact you’ve made.
Tony: This all seems pretty in-the-weeds.
Me: Do you want me to prove that you are now a little bit less bad than last year or not?
Tony: Ok, so how often am I hitting the ball hard relative to the type of contact I make? It feels like a lot if you ask me.
Me: Relative to you relative to the contact you are doing it a lot - 33.3% of your balls to be exact. Compare that to 2018 when you hit the ball hard an abysmal 21.2% of the time.
Tony: Wow! Not bad! Not bad at all!
Me: Don’t get too excited, “not bad” is about the best we can say with reference to a 33% hard-hit-ball rate. You are literally in the “Average” designation for this statistic. Last year you were considered “Awful”. Trevor (Story), (Ryan) McMahon, Nolan (Arenado), and (David) Dahl are all above 40% - considered “Excellent”, the paramount of the Hard% classifications.
Tony: But isn’t this data also subject to, what did you call it?
Me: The law of small numbers.
Tony: The law of small numbers?
Me: That’s the beauty of it, no! Or I should say probably not as much! There is another stat called Contact% which is exactly what it sounds like: the percentage of time you make contact with the ball when you swing the bat. This stabilizes at only 100 plate appearances. Your overall Contact% is up just a tad, but your contact rate when you swing at pitches INSIDE the strike zone (Z-Contact%) is up 8%! To me this shows some real, actual improvement.
Tony: Even if I’m making more contact it doesn’t answer WHY am I suddenly hitting the ball harder than ever before?
Me: I don’t know, probably because you’re hitting more line drives.
Tony: That seems suspiciously circular.
Me: I told you I’m a medium quality analyst didn’t I?
Tony: Either way, what I really want to know is what does all of this actually mean?
Me: Nothing means anything, Tony. But in the slice of context we’ve chosen to carve out here, both here here and the cosmic here, because we’re all just figuring out how to get ourselves out of bed everyday, I’d like to think it means that we each have the capacity to make ourselves better, and that it’s only relative to what we were before, because if we look at it from a larger scale, with respect to others and how we stand up, then we tend to feel like we’re terrible, which is no way to go. I like your hair and mustache by the way.
Tony: Thank you.
Me: How’s your food?
Tony: Mediocre, at best.
Me: Everything’s a work in progress I suppose. Speaking of food, where is our waitress?