I keep hearing Narron ragging on Dunn again about his K's again. They even brought in a hitting coach who's main goal is to correct this problem, but even if he can do it, is it worth it? Here's what I've come up with...
Let's first establish that Dunn was very unlucky last year. I accidentally deleted it, but his BABIP was like .277. Hitters have some control over BABIP, but since we're only trying to measure the effect of reducing strikeouts, all the other variable should be the same. I did the same thing for power by weighting the adjusted hits to the chance of each one becoming a single, double, triple, or homerun based on his previous three year outcome. Here they are in case you were wondering...
singles: .4688% doubles: .2236% triples: .0048% HR: .3029%
That gave him these adjusted stats...
683PA 561AB 327BIP 194K .244/.376/.524/.900 .280isoP 64singles 31 doubles 0triples 42HR
Let's say it's a perfect world and Jacoby is able to hack off 30 strikeouts without affecting Dunn's power at all. Here's his new numbers with the thirty extra ball put into play...
683PA 561AB 357BIP 164K .259/.388/.553/.941 .294isoP 68singles 32doubles 1triple 44HR
That kind of increase in production would be great, but everyone always argues that telling Dunn to cut back on his swing takes away the best part of his game...power. That makes sense, so I changed around the percentages of each hit outcome by lowering his HR%. The extra BIP's turned into singles, doubles, and triples, and I kept the same ratio between singles and extra base hits. Here's one possible effect of shortening Dunn's swing...
singles: .5100% doubles: .2437% triples: .0047% HR: .2416%
Here's his numbers according to the new rates...
683PA 561AB 362BIP .259/.388/.512/.900 .253isoP 145H 74singles 35doubles 1triple 35HR
Interestingly enough, that came out to the exact same OPS as Dunn's numbers without the reduction in K's. I hadn't planned that, but it worked out crazy perfect. This shows that even if Dunn loses some of his beastly isoP, the extra OBP and batting average will make him basically the same caliber hitter, actually better considering OBP is worth more than SLG.
Considering they've been threatening Dunn with this crap for the last couple years with out having any effect, I still have my doubts about whether or not Jacoby can even teach Dunn how to "play the game the right way", but if Dunn can manage to cut back on the whiffs a little, it's pretty likely that he will be a better offensive player next season, contrary to what a lot of people believe. But it's probably not going to be a huge increase in production, so it's basically up to the coaches on whether or not they believe it's a worthwhile cause to change the approach of a guy who's been in the league for six years. I figurd this would give me a clear answer, but I'm still kind of on the fence. At least Jerry Narron's got a clear stance on the issue.
