713 replies to this topic

[Mackus]

http://www.baseballp...p?player=430945

 

PitchFX says 53.8% of pitches to him this year have been in the zone.  I'm trying to find what the overall league percentage is, but having trouble tracking it down.

 

Still can't find a firm number on this.

 

Bartolo Colon leads the majors in Zone% this year at 60.5.  The lowest is Jason Marquis at 39%.  If you sum the Zone% of each of the 97 qualified starters and take the average, that number is 49.37%.  If you do the same thing with all 559 pitchers who've appeared at all this season, the average is 48.92%.  That's not weighted for innings or anything, just the average of the percentages so the total league average may be a little off, but that's a pretty decent approximation.

 

The same data source says Jones only gets 43.4% of pitches inside the zone this season, so he is seeing far fewer pitches inside the zone than most hitters, which makes sense given his style and matches what we think we see on a day-to-day basis.  That's way different than just adding up the zones from the chart I listed above, but I think I trust this number more, may just be a slightly different zone or something.

[SportsGuy]

It might have something to do with Davis batting behind him.

They should always attack Jones...his approach is too poor not to.

[BSLChrisStoner]

ESPN: Adam Jones' crazy, sort-of-good, odd year
http://espn.go.com/b...f-good-odd-year

[bnickle]

The 3rd lowest of all qualified ML hitters. However, the 2 below him Eric Aybar(7) and Salvador Perez(8) each have over 100 fewer ABs.

 

Alfonso Soriano has also only walked 9 times but even he has over 50 fewer ABs. So quite clearly Jones is the least patient ML hitter, at least in terms of actually taking a walk.

 

 

 

When this guys hit tool starts to slip a bit , he's gonna fall off a cliff. We have to hope he can maintain being a .280-.300 hitter for the duratiion of his contract because even if he slips into the .270 range he'll be a .300 OBP at best. Awesome to know we are going to be paying an .800 OPS at best guy 13-16 million over the next 5 years with shaky defense.

 

 

BTW...his OPS is currently under .800 at .792. Lost 100 points on that OPS in the last month. Was .890ish heading into June.

[SportsGuy]

The 3rd lowest of all qualified ML hitters. However, the 2 below him Eric Aybar(7) and Salvador Perez(8) each have over 100 fewer ABs.
 
Alfonso Soriano has also only walked 9 times but even he has over 50 fewer ABs. So quite clearly Jones is the least patient ML hitter, at least in terms of actually taking a walk.
 
 
 
When this guys hit tool starts to slip a bit , he's gonna fall off a cliff. We have to hope he can maintain being a .280-.300 hitter for the duratiion of his contract because even if he slips into the .270 range he'll be a .300 OBP at best. Awesome to know we are going to be paying an .800 OPS at best guy 13-16 million over the next 5 years with shaky defense.
 
 
BTW...his OPS is currently under .800 at .792. Lost 100 points on that OPS in the last month. Was .890ish heading into June.

Well, he did walk yesterday! Lol

And yea, that's why I wanted him traded.

[You Play to Win the Game]

I wasn't a fan of the contract itself, or the timing of the contract. He is a very overrated player.

 

To be clear, I'm still a fan, and he's fairly important to this team. But when I say he's overrated, I mean that he is not someone who should be perceived as a perennial All-Star, and/or gold-glover, yet that is the growing national reputation of him it seems.

 

This year, he is 14th in the bigs among CF'ers in WAR (30th ranked OF'er). Last year he was 7th in the bigs among CF'ers in WAR (19th among OF'ers).

 

Now, Fangraph's says he was worth $19.6M last year, and $7.6M so far this season. So he may live up to his contract, but he just doesn't do enough for me in order for him to justify accounting for anywhere from 13-17% of the entire team's salary (assuming a $100M payroll, which right now it's $92M).

 

So I agree with Rob, I was on the trade him side of things.

 

The thing is though, we're contending NOW. So in that sense, you can't just easily replace a guy like him either. To trade him, we would have had to get a pretty sure thing back with a slightly better skillset. Probably to a team that was married to getting a perceived "great" CF'er.

[DuffMan]

What makes it even more frustrating for me is that he bats right after Markakis.   I don't know how many times where I've watched Markakis go up there have a great at bat where he really makes the pitcher work, throwing 7+ pitches for the atbat.  THen up comes up Jones swinging at anything and everything.  Having Jones bat immediately after Nick really makes it stick out even more how different their approach at the plate its.

[Cisc-O's]

I am normally not a line up guy but Jones batting where does usually has negative effects on the game.  Now Do i believe that was a bad contract not at all I think Jones will live up to it.  I think he is in a prolonged slump right now that has been going for a month and a half but Buck does not act hastily with things?  I mean who is our clear cut 3 whole hitter right now?  I think everyone would say Davis?  If you look at runners just on base Jones has had 174 chances and 103 in scoring position to Davis's 103 chances and 73 chances with risp.  I think that is a problem that deserves to be look at don't you?

[You Play to Win the Game]

I am normally not a line up guy but Jones batting where does usually has negative effects on the game.  Now Do i believe that was a bad contract not at all I think Jones will live up to it.  I think he is in a prolonged slump right now that has been going for a month and a half but Buck does not act hastily with things?  I mean who is our clear cut 3 whole hitter right now?  I think everyone would say Davis?  If you look at runners just on base Jones has had 174 chances and 103 in scoring position to Davis's 103 chances and 73 chances with risp.  I think that is a problem that deserves to be look at don't you?

 

Good post, I agree.

 

I do think he'll live up to the contract, BTW - but I don't think it was money well spent for the Orioles given what we know about the payroll. JMO.

[Matt]

I am normally not a line up guy but Jones batting where does usually has negative effects on the game. Now Do i believe that was a bad contract not at all I think Jones will live up to it. I think he is in a prolonged slump right now that has been going for a month and a half but Buck does not act hastily with things? I mean who is our clear cut 3 whole hitter right now? I think everyone would say Davis? If you look at runners just on base Jones has had 174 chances and 103 in scoring position to Davis's 103 chances and 73 chances with risp. I think that is a problem that deserves to be look at don't you?

Those opportunities are exactly why I have been saying all year batting Davis 5th is stupid.

[Mike in STL]

What makes it even more frustrating for me is that he bats right after Markakis.   I don't know how many times where I've watched Markakis go up there have a great at bat where he really makes the pitcher work, throwing 7+ pitches for the atbat.  THen up comes up Jones swinging at anything and everything.  Having Jones bat immediately after Nick really makes it stick out even more how different their approach at the plate its.

Not to mention he hits in front of Davis. How many more RBI would Davis have if Jones was on base more? Or how many more ABs would Davis have if Jones didnt leave him on deck as much.

[BSLChrisStoner]

Sports on Earth: The Free-Swinging Adam Jones
http://therotation.s...ing-adam-jones/

 

 

 

Jones has walked twice in the last week now. Maybe his 2.5% BB%, will start to move closer to his 4.9% BB% of last year.

[hallas]

I feel like he may have made an adjustment.  I'm not entirely sure if this is "real" (I think might just be guessing slider low/away) but it's at least leading to better ABs.

[Jon Shepherd]

http://baltimorespor...ike-at-history/

[You Play to Win the Game]

Good stuff here. My only complaint with Jones is that I never felt he would live up to his contract, and still don't feel that he will. Despite my criticisms, he's still one of my favorite O's though. At the end of the day, the O's shouldn't have signed him 2 months into the best start of his career. They should have done that first, or looked to trade him. The timing the O's approached that deal with probably added about $20M or so to the life of the deal, IMO. 

 

In any event, it's very frustrating when your alleged team leader tries to fix his plate discipline issue by attempting to "cover more of the plate", thus resulting in less power and obviously, as you alluded to, even less walks... which no one really thought was possible.

[BSLChrisStoner]

An awful lot to agree with here.

 

There are a lot of positive about Jones, that should be recognized and enjoyed. Positives which I think can often be obscured by frustrations with his plate discipline, and decisions in Center.

 

For me, I've become very frustrated at Jones seemingly often avoiding the cut-off man, and throwing to 3rd or home... often letting runners take extra bases. He has had some defensive highlights this year. A few more plays run down. I recall a play in Oakland earlier this year. Last night was as good as it gets.  I've always thought his defense was not as good as the accolades he has received, nor quite as poor as the defensive metrics look at him. Somewhere in-between, and an average ish CF.

 

Overall, I agree with the conclusions that he would be better in left (but I think we are 2-3 years away from that ever being considered), and that his offensive production last year is what is needed. He was strong in April and May. Poor in June. Starting to wake-up in July. Hopefully he finishes with a flurry.  Looking at the possible reasons for the differences in ISO are interesting. Was his production through 5/31 pretty much identical to last year?

 

This next line is not really in response to the article, but just my opinion overall with Jones. I like him  a lot for the player and guy he is. I try not to get overly down on the player I wished he was. I can say though, I would like to see Jones asked more about his plate discipline, and about why defensive metrics do not like his play in CF. Ideally you would like to see the guy, want to address the issues which do exist in his game.

[McNulty]

Jones is likely the worst defensive player on this team, which speaks to how good the defense is.  I agree that he's an average CF defensively. 

 

One thing that is consistently overlooked, is how he suits up every day.  The ability to play every day amounts to huge value.

 

I do wish he'd figure out how to command the strike zone like Davis has.  We all do.  I'm done hoping he improves.  If he can maintain his current production I'll consider myself happy.

 

Good article.  I was wondering about a lot of the things you addressed there.

[mweb08]

Good article Jon.

I knew Jones' walk rate was awful this year, but I didn't realize that it's historically bad. Wow.

On a related note, while Jones is a good player and seems like a good dude, he's one of the more frustrating O's for me in recent years. In large part due to what is mentioned in this article.

[bnickle]

I'll tell you what really chapped my ass with Jones. A couple of weeks ago on the Fox broadcast  they had mentioned that Jones hadn't walked in x number of ABs. He asked Rosenthall to go look up the record because he was going to break it.

 

 

Now, do I really think he was going to go out of his way to specifically break that record. No, but it speaks to his approach at the plate and his willingness to try and improve his plate dicipline.  I think he has little desire to try and implement BBs into his game. Like so many other things with Jones, it speaks to his unwillingness to really be better. He'll talk a good game about doing this differently and doing that differently and getting better here and getting better there but it's pretty empty words when you watch the same thing day after day, year after year.  

[You Play to Win the Game]

Now, do I really think he was going to go out of his way to specifically break that record. No, but it speaks to his approach at the plate and his willingness to try and improve his plate dicipline.  I think he has little desire to try and implement BBs into his game. Like so many other things with Jones, it speaks to his unwillingness to really be better. He'll talk a good game about doing this differently and doing that differently and getting better here and getting better there but it's pretty empty words when you watch the same thing day after day, year after year.  

 

Or regress even, which is what he's done this year. I mean, who honestly thought Jones would come back this year LESS disciplined? And he talks about how much he admires Nick and his approach at the plate. It's just frustrating.

 

I realize that at this level, wanting to do something, and being able to are completely different things... but there's little doubt that he's able to be better than this.