doug is right that Stubbs doesn't have zero power. It's that he doesn't HIT for power. Thats a big distinction.
He had a nice night. I wish this meant his problems were solved, but likely they aren't. I still think he'd be a better hitter in the middle to lower middle of the order, 5, 6 or 7.
Dubito Ergo Cogito Ergo Sum.
Actually, what he said made perfect sense. He just name dropped Juan Pierre which is obviously going to rub people the wrong way.Originally Posted by edabbs44
This is well put. Given his options he has to hope that someone like Stubbs "figures it out" so he can enjoy more games like last night's win vs Houston. In that game Stubbs was the sparkplug we all hope he can be. He led off with a hit and he immediately stole 2nd base. That stolen base was key to a manufactured run on Rolen's groundout. This run benefitted young Mike Leake and the Reds never trailed. Only Stubbs and Dickerson have the ability to begin a game in that fashion.
Pierre has a largely hit driven OBP, and he's a guy that has hit for a decent average in his career. Your OBP is fine if you walk 40 times AND hit .300. Here is the problem; That ain't Drew Stubbs. And it shouldn't be. Pierre has no power, where as Stubbs does not hit for power. There is a difference there.
People keep comparing Stubbs to Cameron, a comp I kept refuting because that wasn't what the results showed. I may have been in error there. In fact, I'd love it if the Reds would show him some video of Eric Davis. There is potential there to be similar. He does have power, though he has no idea of how to use it. Good speed, but not a great base stealer. Excellent defender. Totally wrong for the leadoff position. He needs to approach AB's like an RBI guy. Forget about the speed as the key instrument of his game, and let it complement it.
In other words, someone needs to teach him how to hit the damn ball hard.
Dubito Ergo Cogito Ergo Sum.
I agree there is a difference, but the distinction, thus far, doesn't quite apply in my opinion.
So far in 272 career plate appearances, he's still holding to a .152 isolated power and 3.3% home run rate. Those are still pretty respectable power numbers for a player in his first full season.
Will those numbers look the same if he keeps struggling for a few more weeks? Not likely. But at face value based on what he's done thus far, I think we'd all be pretty happy if he could sustain those power rates going forward.
"No matter how good you are, you're going to lose one-third of your games. No matter how bad you are you're going to win one-third of your games. It's the other third that makes the difference." ~Tommy Lasorda
I do agree in part with Dusty's comments at face value, though not his own personal philosophy in which he's speaking from.
But here's the thing: as others have mentioned, Dusty has always had OBP-challenged leadoff hitters. I don't think if the Reds' supplied him with one they'd be at the top of the lineup - unless they were a centerfielder. I know we like to joke about that, but there's seriously enough evidence that's how he would play it. He seems to have his own ideal of what constitutes a leadoff hitter.
"No matter how good you are, you're going to lose one-third of your games. No matter how bad you are you're going to win one-third of your games. It's the other third that makes the difference." ~Tommy Lasorda
I think that's silly. He values speed at lead off. If that guy played LF, 2B, SS, it doesn't matter, they'd be his guy. It just so happens that on most teams the CF is the fastest guy. It has absolutely nothing to do with what position they play. Now if that guy got on base, all the better, Dusty wouldn't have any problem putting them there.
School's out. What did you expect?
Beware September stats. Especially when the bulk of that power came against the hapless Pirates.
We are a month in, and the power simply hasn't shown up. Nor has the contact. He is walking though. I think Dusty has it right in this case, and with Dickerson. Both need to be more aggressive.
Stubbs lower in the order throughout his career has been a better hitter. He likes it there, so put him there.
Dubito Ergo Cogito Ergo Sum.
This.
I know many go bonkers here whenever Baker mentions OBP. But in this instance I think he's DEAD ON! He's not saying "hack away and lose the patience", he's saying don't sit on a pitch just for the sole purpose of "working the count". He's regularly getting behind in the count 0-1. I don't care WHAT count it is. He should be swinging at pitches he can drive and watching balls out of the zone. Right now, he's letting good ones sail past because they're coming early in the count. People tend to associate "aggressive" with "hacking". I don't think they're even closely related in Baker's mind.
This whole thing about the September stats is overblown.
Pitchers don't stop throwing hard. They don't suddenly have less movement. Players don't stop trying to win.
It's still major league pitching. The Reds did play three playoff teams and a total of four contenders over the last 4-6 weeks of the year. It's not like Stubbs was playing against one team the entire time.
"No matter how good you are, you're going to lose one-third of your games. No matter how bad you are you're going to win one-third of your games. It's the other third that makes the difference." ~Tommy Lasorda
It's way, way, way too early to panic on Stubbs. He will be fine IMO. Very talented guy.
If you're going to build with youth, you need patience with these young players. Stubbs is a perfect example.
Yes, try to bat him lower in the order if possible. Yes, he needs to learn to attack pitches he can handle, even early in the count.
But he looks like a potential starting centerfielder to me and I would just give him the opportunity and watch him take some lumps.
I agree with pretty much everything you said. Im not panicking over Stubbs right now. I don't think this start is his true ability, I don't know where that is, but I do think he is trying to work the count too much.
But I do think Dusty will have a problem moving him down in the order because of his ability on the base paths. Drew has elite speed and is an elite base runner. I can't recall the last Red who had that kind of speed down the line and around the bases. While Dickerson is fast, Drew takes it to an entire different level. The key is having him find first base more often. I think the issue is that Dusty sees the first inning last night and says "thats why he is my leadoff hitter".
If he actually put a guy with a good OBP in the leadoff spot, he'd be able to say the same thing.
Only more often.
Juan Pierre and Drew Stubbs are very different players. Pierre is a good contact hitter with great speed and very little power. Stubbs is a poor contact hitter with great speed and decent power. This matters, a lot, a point which Dusty does not seem to understand.
First, Dusty needs to realize that for the majority of his career, Juan Pierre has been a sub-replacement hitter. When Pierre is hitting .280, he's hurting his team. I doubt Dusty gets this, but let's just assume Dusty was talking about the "good" Juan Pierre. In the years where he has had some value, he's acheived that value by hitting .300+, which resulted in a .360+ OBP, as Dusty rightly noted. Because Pierre has absolutely no power, this is the only way in which he can be productive. What Dusty does not seem to understand is that Pierre is a freak (in a good way).
Pierre's game is built upon two truly elite skills: contact ability and speed. Pierre has a career contact rate of 92.6% (95.3% in the zone, 83.8% out of the zone). In 2009 he was 4th in MLB, 2008 1st, 2007 4th, 2006 1st, 2005 3rd. I think you get the idea. Juan Pierre is one of the greatest contact hitters of the past 20 years. Because Pierre has no power (career ISO of .070), he doesn't stand to gain a whole lot by waiting for a particularly fat pitch. And because he has not power, pitchers aren't going to pitch around him -- he's going to see strikes. If he Pierre gets a pitch can put the ball in play, and he usually can, he might as well take a cut. Because of his skill set, Pierre's game is to put the ball in to play and run like heck. So yes, Dusty. You can be successful walking only 5.6% of the time; but you better either hit for a ton of power (like Soriano or Vlad) or make a ton of contact like Juan Pierre, David Eckstein or Placido Polanco. And even then, for the latter group, your offensive value is going to be marginal. That is not Drew Stubbs.
Drew Stubbs is not a good contact hitter; he never has been and he never will be. He struck out over 27% of the time in the minor leagues. He's at 30% thus far in the majors. His contact rate in the majors is at 73.8% (81.9% in the zone, 47.5% out of the zone). He's basically just 1 tier up from the lowest amount of contact you can make and still be a productive hitter, a tier populated by guys with crazy power like Mark Reynolds (63%),Ryan Howard (67%), Carlos Pena (70%), and Adam Dunn (72%). These are not guys who succeed by expanding their zone.
These types of hitters make up for their poor contact by a combination of not swinging at stuff they can't consistently hit well and by doing damage when they do connect. Because pitch recognition isn't perfect, especially for younger hitters, sometimes those pitches are in the zone. I promise you that Stubbs is not watching fastballs down the middle for the sake of taking pitches. It's that his effective zone is much smaller than a guy like Pierre's. In the event Stubbs isn't sure that he can make good contact, assuming he has less than 2 stirkes, he doesn't swing. This is the same approach almost every hitter takes. It's just that Pierre can make good contact with just about anything. Stubbs can't, even on some pitches in the strike zone.
We've had this conversation about Adam Dunn 1,000 times. Dusty simply does not seem to understand that there is a great amount of variation in the ability to put the bat on the ball among major league hitters, just like there is great variation in speed and power. Thus, Dusty sees strikeouts and a low batting average as largely a failure to swing at pitches that he imagines the player can hit -- even if they can't. Hitters succeed through a combination of contact, power, and discipline -- and if contact is your primary ability, it helps enormously if you supplement it with speed. But hitters of all types are most succesful when they maximize their strengths and minimize their weakness. Dusty wants Stubbs to maximize his weakness.
Stubbs, like Dunn before him, is not taking pitches because he likes to walk or because he only wants to hit HR. Stubbs takes pitches because he's he's learned that, because of his skill set, he can only be successful when he's being selective. For me, this is a perfect example of Dusty's primary failure as a manager. He simply cannot manage the team he actually has, only the team he wishes he had and the player he wishes his guys were. Yes Dusty, Stubbs is fast. But that does not make him Juan Pierre. Asking Stubbs to hit like Juan Pierre is like asking Paul Janish to hit like Adam Dunn. They have very different skill sets and need to approach their plate appearances accordingly. If you want Stubbs to emulate somebody, have him emulate somebody with a similar skill set, like Mike Cameron. Please, oh please, do not make the same mistake you made with Corey Patterson. Stubbs has strengths as a hitter, primarily one being knowing when to swing and when not to, but also the potential to crush balls that he squares up well. Don't take that away from him.
You maximize the production of an offense by maximizing the production of the players who comprise it, not by squeezing them in to predetermined roles of what you think an ideal offense looks like and asking them to change their approach to fit it.
Games are won on run differential -- scoring more than your opponent. Runs are runs, scored or prevented they all count the same. Worry about scoring more and allowing fewer, not which positions contribute to which side of the equation or how "consistent" you are at your current level of performance.
Stubbs has started 42 PAs with an 0-1 count, versus 25 PAs with a 1-0 count. Unsure how many of those first pitch strikes he swung at.
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