DODGERS NEWS/RUMORS/AROUND MLB Thread

Damn that sucks. A potential trade candidate going down just gives more power to the other sellers

 

i'd like to rip the brewers, i really would
but i'm finding it tough to criticize them for scoring eight runs in three games -- which is eight more than we scored against the fags

 

Interesting tidbit on Chris Heisey: if he stays up for at least 9 more days in MLB, he will have acquired enough playing time to have the right to reject being optioned to the minors.

So they'll either find a way to option him in like a week or want him to stick around. Not anything that matters much but just an interesting thing to pay attention to if a move with him is made and seems weird

 

for those who were whining about losing all that hanley/kemp power...
dodgers lead the league in hr's
and joc is hitting/slugging/obp'ing better than hanley and kemp, and has more hr than the two of them combined

Where has Matt Kemp's power gone?
By Chris Towers | CBSSports.com —May 27, 2015



Matt Kemp is no stranger to slow starts, but this season feels a bit different.

Last season, Kemp also got off to a slow start after opening the season on the disabled list. He hit rock bottom on June 4, when he was hitting .238/.291/.398 51 games into the season. However, he also had 19 extra-base hits at the time, including five home runs, so there were reasons to be optimistic in spite of his inflated strikeout rate. He was still stinging the ball, so you could at least point to that as a positive sign.

So far in 2015, positive signs are harder to come by. Okay, he has his strikeout issues under control, posting a 20.9 percent mark that represents his best since 2009. However, he actually has the worst strikeout-to-walk ratio of his career thanks to a more aggressive approach, which wouldn't be such a bad thing if he were seeing results.

Generally speaking, a more aggressive approach at the plate can be a good thing, if it leads to more power. If you are getting good pitches to hit early in the count and making pitchers pay for throwing them, it's hard to fault a player for a low walk rate; unfortunately, that's not what we're seeing with Kemp.

Kemp is swinging at 52.2 percent of the pitches he has seen this season, by far the highest rate of his career, per FanGraphs.com. He is also making contact on 74.3 percent of his swings, also his best mark since 2009, so that's a good sign. However, he doesn't seem to be picking his spots especially well. In 2009, when Kemp made contact on 76.9 percent of his swings, he did so while swinging at just 31.0 percent of pitches out of the strike zone; in 2015, that number has jumped all the way to 36.3 percent.

When you're swinging at the right pitches, an aggressive approach can work out. That 2009 season saw Kemp hit .297/.352/.490, with a 14.4 HR/FB rate. He wasn't chasing pitches out of the zone as often, so it's not much of a surprise that his results were so positive.

This season, however, Kemp's batted-ball indicators are all moving in the wrong direction along with his more aggressive approach. He currently has the highest groundball rate of his career, to go along with his lowest HR/FB ratio. It's no surprise, then, that Kemp has just one home run, and is sporting an .092 ISO that is more befitting a slap-hitting middle infielder than a corner outfielder with five 20-homer seasons under his belt.

Other batted-ball data backs up what the other numbers are showing us; Kemp's power has disappeared. Kemp has yet to hit a ball 400 feet this season, as his lone home run traveled just 387 feet. Last season, he has 17 home runs travel at least 387 feet, and that is his furthest hit ball of the season so far.

Among batters with at least 50 at-bats tracked by Statcast on BaseballSavant.com, Kemp's average batted-ball velocity of 88.8 miles per hour ranks just 119 out of 230 players. His average batted-ball distance of 129.2 feet ranks just 178th. Since we don't have that data from last season for Statcast, it's hard to tell how far he has fallen off, but his hard-hit ball average has tumbled from 40.3 percent to 33.8 per FanGraphs. Based on that, it's hard to imagine Kemp was this much of a middle-of-the-road hitter by batted-ball velocity a year ago, when he hit .287/.346/.506.

So, we have a hitter who is hitting fewer fly balls than ever before, and is hitting the ball with middling authority overall. If that was all you knew about that player, you would expect a massive dropoff in power production, right? And that is before noting that he moved to Petco Park, a tough home park if there ever was one.

It is important to note that this is all just a measure of what Kemp has already done; whether it has any predictive value is up in the air. The data suggests that Kemp has simply regressed as a hitter, but it could just be a slow couple of months; he might be a mechanical adjustment away from looking right.

However, the Matt Kemp that was one of the best hitters in baseball over the last seven years hasn't show up through the first two months. This doesn't look like a case of bad luck.​

 

Kemp is barely, and I mean barely, hitting better then Jimmy Rollins :O and doing so as a bad defensive RF.