Swisher Swings (more)

Written by Josh W. | 14 September 2010

As I'm sure many of you know, Nick Swisher has significantly altered his approach at the plate this season. Earlier in his career, he was primarily a guy who would walk and strike out a lot while hitting for some pop. Another marker of his skillset was the fact that he always performed pretty poorly on balls in play; his career average BABIP (including this year's boost) is only .284 which is very below average. In this past offseason, Swisher and Kevin Long teamed up to make Nick a .300 hitter. To do this Swisher would have to reduce his strikeouts, increase his BABIP (by a lot), all while maintaining his homerun power.

At this point in the season it seems pretty conclusive that Swisher, while not a .300 hitter and will likely never be, has been pretty successful in achieving his offseason goals. The changes in his batting approach can be seen in his plate discipline numbers (via fangraphs):

Season	Team	O-Swing%	Z-Swing%	Swing%	O-Contact%	Z-Contact%	Contact%	Zone%	F-Strike%	SwStr%
Total *	- - -	18.8 %	62.6 %	39.6 %	52.2 %	85.2 %	77.0 %	47.5 %	53.8 %	8.9 %
2004	Athletics	10.9 %	73.0 %	43.0 %	20.0 %	87.0 %	78.9 %	51.8 %	47.9 %	8.7 %
2004	Average	16.6 %	69.6 %	45.8 %	53.7 %	85.1 %	80.0 %	55.1 %	58.4 %	9.0 %
2005	Athletics	17.6 %	61.7 %	40.2 %	44.7 %	87.2 %	78.1 %	51.1 %	55.4 %	8.6 %
2005	Average	20.3 %	68.0 %	46.0 %	51.8 %	88.3 %	80.8 %	53.8 %	59.1 %	8.7 %
2006	Athletics	17.3 %	66.1 %	41.0 %	40.7 %	79.4 %	71.0 %	48.5 %	54.3 %	11.5 %
2006	Average	23.5 %	66.6 %	46.1 %	57.4 %	88.5 %	81.0 %	52.6 %	58.8 %	8.5 %
2007	Athletics	16.6 %	61.7 %	37.8 %	49.0 %	85.8 %	77.2 %	47.0 %	52.8 %	8.3 %
2007	Average	25.0 %	66.6 %	45.9 %	60.8 %	88.2 %	80.8 %	50.3 %	58.7 %	8.6 %
2008	White Sox	18.9 %	59.5 %	38.5 %	57.7 %	86.2 %	79.0 %	48.3 %	51.7 %	7.9 %
2008	Average	25.4 %	65.4 %	45.9 %	61.7 %	87.9 %	80.8 %	51.1 %	58.6 %	8.6 %
2009	Yankees	17.3 %	57.0 %	35.7 %	55.5 %	85.7 %	77.8 %	46.4 %	53.1 %	7.7 %
2009	Average	25.1 %	66.0 %	45.3 %	61.7 %	87.8 %	80.5 %	49.3 %	58.2 %	8.6 %
2010	Yankees	26.1 %	68.9 %	44.8 %	61.9 %	88.6 %	79.8 %	43.7 %	56.5 %	8.9 %

As you can see by the highlighted values, this year Swisher is swinging almost 10% more than he did in 2009. The "average" rows are the league average for that year.

Now that we know he is swinging more, it is interesting to see where he swinging more:

2009: 2010:

swisherswingratescontour2009

swisherswingratescontourplotgood

*Big thanks to Dave Allen for helping me with the code to create these graphs in R. He's pretty much the pitch f/x guru of the entire interwebs, and you can find his great work at baseballanalysts and fangraphs.

The blue (2010) and black (2009) represent the 50% swing rate contour lines for Swisher. Inside the contour lines means that Swisher swings at least 50%, and outside of the contour lines means that he swings less than 50%. The x axis is the horizontal location of the pitches, while the y axis is the vertical location. The graphs are from the catcher's perspective.

In 2010, in terms of vertical location, he seems to be swinging much more at pitches low in the strikezone (the red box). He also seems to have expanded his zone a little more horizontally, swinging more at pitches that are up and in (from a lefty's perspective). Unfortunately, Swisher batted as a lefty a little more in 2009 than 2010, but the difference is small so I don't think it skews the data all that much.

Interestingly, even with the radical shift in batting approach, Swisher's overall production has been very similar to last year; he has a 140 wRC+ this year and had a 132 wRC+ last year. I'd wager that the true offensive talent of his 2010 skillset is roughly equal to the true offensive talent of his skillset in 2009. I suppose that makes me kind of neutral to this change in approach. Trading a walks-based approach for a BABIP-based approach is somewhat risky, as there is much more variation year to year in BABIP than plate discipline. In reality, this probably gives Swisher's current batting style both the potential for a higher ceiling and a lower floor. There's also the possibility that it helps him age better, as players who depend on "old player" skills (walks, power) early in their careers sometimes have limited longevity.