Tejada and Gibbons – Where’s the Power?

There’s been some discussion on the Orioles Hangout Message Board about the lack of power shown by Miguel Tejada and Jay Gibbons this season.  As seemingly every such discussion these days, this one began with the question of whether (a lack of) steroids has played a role.  I can tell you that I’m neither qualified  nor willing to answer that question.  One thing I do think I’m qualified to do, however, is to analyze a set of stats and try to gain some insight from that analysis.

I wrote this article towards the end of last season in which I talked about Tejada’s increasing tendency to hit more groundballs.  The fact is that the percentage of balls Tejada puts into play that are groundballs has increased every season since 2003 – from 44.04% in 2003 up to 52.59% this season.  This article received some criticism when it came out because many felt the reason for his increase in ground balls is because he’s being pitched differently due to a lack of protection from his teammates. 

What I didn’t say then that I should have said is that even if it is true that he’s being pitched differently, that’s not the point.  The point is that, for whatever reason, he’s putting the ball on the ground much more often than he’s putting it in the air – and the end result is fewer extra base hits.  Think about this – the Orioles clean up hitter is one of the most prolific single’s hitters in the game today.  Having a prolific single’s hitter in the cleanup spot isn’t exactly a recipe for offensive success.  To Tejada’s credit, his propensity for hitting singles as opposed to home runs has not kept this from being his best season in terms of RC/27.

To the data.  I put together this file to show my work.  First, let me explain what I did.  Tejada has been pretty consistent – he has put 579, 593, 572, and 575 balls in play the last four seasons.  I wanted to normalize things, so I multiplied all of his prorated all of his batted ball data to 600 balls in play.  I then put together the graphs to show his trends.  Yes, it would have been easier to just show the percentages, but I wanted to be different.

Check the top left graph.  On normalized basis, he has hit 264, 279, 283, and 306 ground balls the last four years.  He is on pace to hit 316 ground balls per 600 balls in play this season.  He hasn’t been quite as consistent with line drives – even though if you take out last season, he does have a consistent declining trend.

Fangraphs doesn’t separate outfield flyballs from infield flyballs, but I like to do so.  By not separating them, you get the bottom graph – which shows that he is reversing the declining flyball trend.  The problem is that he’s on pace to hit more infield flyballs per 600 balls in play – by a very wide margin.  That obviously isn’t a good thing. 

Look only at his outfield flyballs per 600 balls in play, and you see a trend you don’t want to see from your cleanup hitter.  The number of outfield flyballs he’s hit per 6oo balls in play – 189, 179, 177, 149, and 129.  So even if 20% of all flyballs he’s hits becomes home runs he’d end up with 26 home runs this year.  There are three problems.  One is that his best HR/OFFB rate over this time has been 19.2% (which would equate to 25 HR), another is that his combined rate the previous four seasons was only 16.5% (22 HR), the final problem is that only his 2007 rate is only 8% – which would equate to only 10 HR.  If I had to guess, I’d say he’ll end up with right around 20 home runs.

As a Tejada and Orioles fan, I’m really hoping that OH’er Frobby is right in that Tejada’s a slow starter in the power department.  My fear is that he will continue to hit so many ground balls, and that his career high .377 BABIP (which is likely helped by his high number of ground balls, but is hurt by his relatively low LD%) will come back to earth.  If those my fears come true, they may be wishing they had traded him while his value was still high.

Continue down on the PDF file, and you’ll see similar graphs for Gibbons – with his Balls In Play normalized to 550.

Thanks for reading.