After finding our obscure leaderboard on baseball-reference.com (prior post), we discovered that:
So ...
Query: can a guy succeed by being so hyper-selective that he ends up looking at strike-three really often?
Well, we don't have to look too far, since the sorting function turns up two guys with profiles very similar to Ackley's in the first three columns. The fourth and fifth columns aren't on b-ref and I had to use a calculator.
| Swing% | Contact% | Looking/K% | LookingK/PA% | SwingingK/PA% | |
| Ackley | 39% | 85% | 42% | 7.1% | 9.8% |
| Marco Scutaro | 38% | 94% | 41% | 2.5% | 3.6% |
| Alberto Callaspo | 41% | 89% | 42% | 3.8% | 5.1% |
Looking at their career histories (linked above), you'll see that Scutaro's history is even more extreme. In fact, he has more called-strike-threes than swinging-strike-threes in his career, and an amazing 92% contact rate in well over 5,000 plate appearances. He only has 267 swinging Ks in 12 seasons.
Both Scutaro and Callaspo have low ISO (around .110, which is also where Ackley is now -- .109 career despite .144 his rookie year), and, as a result of their high-contact, only-swing-when-I-know-I'll-connect, but low-power approach, their value is, mathematically, pretty much dependent on BABIP.
Pretty much like clockwork, when Scutaro's BABIP is over .300, his OPS+ is over 100. Which makes sense when you look at his game.
Is that what we want from Ackley?
Well ... only if that's the best we can do.
Let's look at another guy who strongly resembles Dustin Ackley ... like, maybe, Dustin Ackley Circa 2011.
| Swing% | Contact% | Looking/K% | LookingK/PA% | SwingingK/PA% | |
| Ackley 2011 | 39% | 81% | 35% | 7.4% | 13.5% |
| Jason Kipnis | 39% | 80% | 32% | 6.9% | 14.9% |
| Troy Tulowitzki | 40% | 82% | 38% | 6.2% | 10.1% |
In other words, the 2011 incarnation of Ackley was just as selective (39% both times), but was more willing to swing-and-miss.
Obviously, there are plenty of guys who keep the bat on their shoulder 60% of pitches, and still have high-ISO success (unlike the Scutaro/Callaspo types), but they also have lower contact rates than 2013 Ackely. And 2011 Ackley was one of them.
How does this all come out in the math? Well, Ackley is not looking at a higher percentage of pitches, it's just that he's looking at a higher number of strike three's. He's making contact more often, but at the expense of ISO.
It seems that it's not so much that he's too selective, but that he's too selective at the wrong times ... perhaps because he's gotten overly worried about avoiding the swing-and-miss strike three?
Kipnis actually looks a lot like what Ackley ought to be: career .269/.347/.424 with .155 career ISO and 10.4% career walk rate. All that looked very achievable for Ackley in 2011.
I added some observations looking at leaders in L/so and L/so% from 2012 and 2013 to the other post. A lot of top 20% players in the game show up but looking at ISO is a definite separator.
In shouts the other day I pointed out that while his looking strikeout% is a career high his BB% is a career low this year. Looking at pitches with 2 strikes this year has only been negative for him.