But on a much wider scale. Let me just say how impressed I am but the immediate and thought provoking response. I had considered and dismissed the whole ball in play transfer as being useless (while still interesting for any that wan't to fiddle around with it - MLB Gameday BIP Location) on the basis of: different league, different pitchers, different conditions, and left it at friendlier park=good. I hadn't even considered that home park could completely reshape a hitter's approach. Maybe that's why Wakamatsu wants Kotchman to not try to hit homeruns, maybe his effort to hit balls out of the park leads to those 10-20 infield fly balls that are automatic outs. Did Jason Bay set a career high for himself in infield flies because he was trying to knock his home runs over the monster? Did Adrian Beltre find himself striking out more than he would have with the Mariners because he was trying to beat the left field fence? Would Jose Lopez come to camp every year with extra muscle mass if he wasn't trying to beat the same fence? It's a truly compelling concept that you've raised.
=== Pavlov's Dogs Dept. ===
Players get conditioned by their home parks. You want a study? It's called Psychology 102 in any accredited university. Every organism above bivalve :- ) develops habits according to the rewards and punishments occurring around it.
That's not a maybe. It's not negotiable. You, my friend, are the product of conditioning. So is every other human being from IQ 50 to 200.
....
But just because Dr. D lives to serve, he'll publish a little study in the structure we're familiar with. :- )
Let's take a look at the Rockies' splits in the Galaragga - Bichette - Castilla era. It's always quickest and simplest to isolate effects when you start with the reductio ad absurdum.
Just to start with, check the Rockies' K/BB splits in their expansion year, 1993:
- Home - 410 k, 228 bb
- Road - 534 k, 160 bb
Of course, breaking balls didn't crackle as much at Mile High, but still, ask any veteran Rockies watcher (such as G-Money) and they'll tell you that the Rockies hitters were conditioned to hit at home, and then they went on the road, and their games were messed up.
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=== Bichette ===
Many individual Rockies hit terribly on the road. Dante Bichette 1998, for example: a .297 OBP on the road and a sub .400 SLG. Bichette wasn't great, but he was better than a 61 OPS+ player. He hit 61 OPS+ on the road because he jacked up his swing in Colorado, and it didn't work on the road.
Check Bichette in 1997: .635 SLG at home, .365 SLG on the road. Visiting players didn't have splits like that.
Bichette in 1996: 1059 OPS at home, 697 on the road. Bichette was overrated, but he wasn't the 60-OPS guy he looked like when away from his home conditioning.
Here, let's chart that for Dante Bichette:
- 1995: 131 OPS+ home, 67 OPS+ road
- 1996: 137 OPS+ home, 58 OPS+ road
- 1997: 139 OPS+ home, 54 OPS+ road
- 1998: 165 OPS+ home, 87 OPS+ road
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=== 25 Men at a Time ===
Did visiting players -- the "control group" not conditioned by Coors -- hit for adjusted OPS+'s like that? Of course not. Here are the 1997 splits for Rockies batters, and NL batters visiting Coors for three games at a time:
- 1997 Rockies home: 118 OPS+ hitting
- 1997 Rockies road: 82 OPS+ hitting
- 1997 delta Rockies: 36 OPS+ points
- 1997 NL at Coors: 108 OPS+ hitting
- 1997 NL vs Rockies, their own parks: 91 OPS+ hitting
- 1997 delta NL: 18 OPS+ points
The results are amazing for 1996:
- 1996 Rockies home: 137 OPS+ hitting
- 1996 Rockies road: 59 OPS+ hitting
- 1996 delta Rockies: 78 OPS+ points
- 1996 NL at Coors: 112 OPS+ hitting
- 1996 NL vs Rockies, their own parks: 86 OPS+ hitting
- 1996 delta NL: 26 OPS+ points
What you were seeing, of course, in 1996, was that the Rockies got used to exploiting their home park, and they whaled away to the tune of a 55-26 record at home. Beautiful!
Except the Rockies' swings were warped, and for an entire lineup to OPS+ 59 on the road is truly pathetic. It's hard to find one ML player who keeps his job at 59, much less a whole team.
The 1996 Rockies are the reductio ad absurdum, an admittedly extreme case .... which, however, makes the principle clear and easy to understand.
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=== Dr's R/X ===
Too often we fail to appreciate the potential of players who are being punished by their home parks.
We get caught up in glancing at the normalized lines, and we shrug, "well, Kotchman would only hit 4 more homers in a neutral park than in Atlanta."
Not true. The real Casey Kotchman is not a Strat-O-Matic card; he is a chordate and a mammal. :- ) He might perform entirely differently in a different environment.
In Seattle, he'll have not only Safeco; he'll have Don Wakamatsu. His environment is changing radically. Intersected with his age-28 season, I'll cheerfully admit that this creates about as much lightning-bolt infusion as Dr. D could ask for a carcass on the slab.
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=== Dr's Prognosis ===
This factor will excite you IFF... you believe that there is something latent in Casey Kotchman, that has been suppressed by heavy park punishment.
I don't personally see that as being the case. I think the swing itself, the reaction time, the talent, is at issue to begin with -- that there isn't a lot there to draw out.
I also don't see Anaheim, Atlanta, and Boston as extreme punishment parks for Kotchman, nor Safeco an extreme reward park for him. It's tough to condition a steer with a foam-rubber baseball bat. You need a prod with decent voltage.
But that is interesting GB% road data Mal found, and Kotch fans can take comfort in one giant thing: the Mariners agree with them. :- )
Don't give Case my address,
Dr D
Comments
He's 27 this year, not 28
He sure is.
That's significant. I thought he'd had his age-27 season.
Absolutely he fished at those low away sliders because he was putting too much oooomph into his swing.
Safeco conditioned Beltre into shrill, ineffective hitting, as it eventually does 90% of RH hitters. They should change the park.
Kotchmans' IFFB is actually much higher to LF as is his FB% (which is normal). What isn't normal is that Kotchman hits the ball WAY harder to left field than to center and right (as evidence by the huge gap in LD%).
His power only translates to RF, buts its not frequent enough and he doesn't pull the ball very effectively. Over the past 3 years, Kotchman's SLG% is 150 points lower than the league-average left handed hitter on balls pulled to right field.
His production to left field trumps that of center and right. Maybe Wak wants him hitting the ball the other way more often to keep that advantage?
But this is precisely the interpretation that Malcontent strongly questions.
A 225-lb. Wade Boggs wannabe (juuuust a bit short of the 2:1 EYE) is not a first baseman I'm interested in. He would OPS+ oh, I dunno, 90 or something.
But the M's think they can take him to the next level...
While almost nobody is likely to recall this short-lived Fox Series, I'm loving this discussion. It strikes at the very heart of my fav part of the game to watch -- the part no one can see -- what is going on inside a player's head. Those voices inside the head can change a LOT of what happens externally. Anyone who has watched Safeco destroy RH hitters has first-hand evidence of the way the park can dismantle a player (eventually both at home AND on the road).
With Kotchman, I still view his failure to thrive as more than 50% mental. The way he responded to MOVING is my tell. He completely tanked when traded to Atlanta, (but was fine when starting the following season with them). He tanked even more dreadfully when moved to Boston in mid-season.
So, while I definitely appreciate the argument, I don't necessarily buy into the park effects chopping Kotchman (specifically) down. It takes TIME for a park effect to warp a hitter. Kotchman's resume has him DOA in both Atlanta and Boston, (and then improving the next season with Atlanta).
C'mon, Sandy. You know the doctors told us not to mention them once we were outside.
Beltre got warped in, oh, a couple of months, but that's an exceptional case. As opined above, am not sure that the Atl and Bos stadiums were so harsh anyway...
Great point on the *moving* thing. Who knows. Some guys are jarred at the "rejection" and there's the problem of adjusting to new pitchers, etc.
You're aware San-Man that some of the effects of park conditioning might easy take place on a subconscious level. I doubt the 1996 Rox were all consciously revising their swings to take advantage of Coors...
......................
Any thoughts Sandy on why Kotchman's numbers were SO off in Boston?
It's that Kotchman doesn't have much to spare. Let's say Casey's average (well hit) flyball falls something like 350 feet away, and then there's a a range of 40 feet in either direction of travel. So for all those lower range balls around 330, 320, 310 feet, it matters a lot how far away the fence is and how much the environment is taking away from travel distance. Over the course of a little less than a full season's worth of play, Kotchman had 7 homers away from Turner and 2 at. If you look at other mediocre lefty power hitters on the Braves (surprisingly there are 2 from Casey's team), Brian McCann and Kelly Johnson, over 5 seasons, McCann has 51 homers on the road and 40 at home. Over 4 seasons, Johnson hit 29 on the road and 16 at home. Admittedly a sample of 2 guys isn't great, but they jive with what the park effects suggest. I'm not saying Kotchman should have hit 10 extra homeruns last year, but maybe 2-4 extras, which would have kicked his overall slugging solidly over .400.
That is definitely not a split to sneeze at. Logic and theory are fine, but those are end results.
746 career road OPS vs 738 Home
Is he hitting less HRs at Home? Yes, maybe his home stadiums hurt him slightly in this regard. However hes hitting more doubles on the road and his Isop is .012 points lower.
Kotchman doesn't fit the profile of a guy that I think was hurt meaningfully by his home parks. Safeco is a better fit for his HR profile than Anaheim, but worse for his spray chart.
To put it another way, does it really change your evaluation of the guy if hes got a career 742 OPS and you think he deserved 750?
Either way, hes not the kind of bat you want at 1B (unless you think he can breakout).
Its messed about by how awful he was on the road in his disease season in '06(.350OPS) and how lucky he was in BABiP at home in '07(.330 at home led to a .915 OPS) in '08 his home away split was .665/.814, in '09 it was .672/.766. When you consider that most players perform better at home, it seems even more drastic.
One more reason to look for upside, his line drive has improved each year since 2007. 16% in '07, 17% in '08, 19% in '09
Ya, but I mean single-season splits just don't mean a ton.
Even his current career splits are too small of a sample to make any drastic conclusion.
True, but if you go further back theres not much of a pattern.
The fact that he had a 19% in '09 gives you some hope though.
then you're dealing with samples of 75-150 plate appearances. You want to talk about sample size...
by a 15 point BABiP swing at home, despite him having the better ball-in-play profile on the road, widening the gap. What's more, everything before 2007 should be viewed as random noise from a player getting occasional and inconsistant looks while he was trying to break in.
Fair point.
If you combine '04-06 you get 359 PAs which is still partial season. In those three combined seasons he had a 17.5 LD%.
So:
17.5
16
17.8
19.1
If I had to guess I'd put him at around 18% for next year, but the fact that he did better last season might point to some upside.
LD% is a bit flukish season to season though. You're better off with the larger sample.. Not that Kotchman has a ton of career MLB PAs.
His infield fly ball% on the road for his career is 14.1% (with a higher FB%) vs 9.5% at Home, which explains some of the BABIP spread. He makes a few more outs per season via infield flies.
That's not a maybe. It's not negotiable. You, my friend, are the product of conditioning. So is every other human being from IQ 50 to 200.
So you don't believe in free will, Doc? ;)
My take on Kotchman is he's got an ego the size of a mustard seed.
At age 22, he hit .836 in 143 PAs. Small sample - but 7 HRs and a 200 ISO and 75 patience score are wonderriffic for ANY 22-year old. And on that 2005 club, those stats trailed ONLY Vlad in OPS+. (122 to 154). He begins 2006 in a platoon with Quinlan. He starts slow - and a slow start turns into an outright drop dead slump which was the result of a VIRUS - (cost him 129 games). So, his 2006 stats are all tainted.
In 2007, he becomes the primary 1B in a straight-up platoon, (49 PAs against lefties all season compared to 459 PAs vs. righties). He posts a .296/.372/.467 (.840) line as a 24-year old.
In 2008, he's hitting .287/.327/.448 (.774) -- a bit of a sophomore slump, but certainly nothing to panic about for a 25-year-old with under 1000 major league PAs, who lost an entire season to disease. He gets traded away -- off a team that has double-digit division lead -- and that went 19-6 in his final month with the club. He'd had a great April, then slumped badly in May and June, (.693 and .590 OPS). But, he hit .733 for July, so he had pulled out of his slump -- and in point of fact, he his HRs in 3 of his final 4 games with Anaheim.
Only 3 regulars for Anaheim would finish with OPS+ over 100 in 2008. Kotchman was one of them. But, Kotchman (and his 101 OPS+) gets replaced by Tex, while guys like Figgins (82 OPS+), River (86 OPS+), Anderson (97 OPS+) stay behind.
I think when he landed in Atlanta - he was depressed. I think his .237/.331/.316 (.647) line with Atlanta in '08 was a direct result of being ROBBED out of a guaranteed post-season appearance.
By 2009, he had an entire off-season to get over it - and adjust to becoming Atlanta's 1B. Now - Atlanta did NOT opt to platoon him. For the FIRST time in his entire career, he was playing every day -- which also means, it was the first time he was facing lefties on a regular basis. He's certainly not good against lefties -- (.642 for '09). But his BB/K ratio against them wasn't awful (11/14). He had a miserable .255 BABIP against lefties in '09, which indicates to me he was hitting very defensively against them. But, it's his first time with any real exposure. Pretty normal.
And here's where it gets REAL interesting. Nice April (.798), poor May (.703), slump in June (.566 - complicated by a brief stint on the DL). But, he comes back (when) - in JULY. He hits .320/.427/.507 (.934) in July, (including 4 HRs that month - the same number he hit in July of '08). He hit HRs in 2 of his final 4 games in Atlanta.
Ding! Welcome to Boston.
In Beantown, he's not even the primary in a pure platoon. He's splitting time with Victor Martinez at 1B - (and Youkilis). He went from: "Our 1B for the future" -- to "But, he's only a platoon guy" -- to "You're our third option for a 1B".
I think - for a sub-25 guy -- getting THAT CLOSE to fulfilling the dream of being an MLB first-baseman heading to the World Series ... to an afterthought roster filler in a span of two years -- and **TWICE** getting deadline traded during your best hitting week of the season ... well, let's just say I don't personally know ANYBODY who would've handled that well.
In Boston, I think he didn't hit because, frankly, given the circumstances, he didn't really see the point.
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All that said. IF I am right, then one could easily make the argument that he's a mental midget, who is going to be a production headcase, (the hitter version of Weaver) - and shouldn't be counted on for anything.
But, I think a stronger case can be made that he's a potential fringe star - who could potentially make a MASSIVE upward jump in production, if he is given the proper mental coddling that his particular psyche needs. The good news for Seattle? Going back to full-blown platoon is a significant promotion from where he last was. They don't really need to go the Branyan route of risking him against lefties, (especially with Garko on board). BUT, if Garko gets hurt or something, then the club opting to play him both ways (for awhile) is that kind of mental nudge that could push his performance against RIGHTIES through the stratosphere.
From my perspective - I don't think there is a player in the entire Ms organization who could benefit more from seeing a "We Believe in You, Casey!" sign at a game. My 3,000 mile away armchair psychological profile of the guy says - you build up his confidence - you'll see a change in the way he looks at the plate - and perhaps a giant leap forward in production.
No question that Kotchman is unsure of himself relative to, say, Matt Tuiasosopo.
Which is a little odd, considering the glam he got when he was coming up. But Tui has been getting his confidence installed since he was a toddler.
33% free will, 33% genetics. The mainframe can't figure out what the 1% is.
The massive, dreadful, OMG down-side of all this. Two years running he has been deadline traded. What is the #1 pre-season DREAM for a deadline trade this year? Ms get Adrian Gonzo. If Kotchman pulls the you're-punted trifecta this year, it'll be 2015 before his self-esteem returns. I don't think all of the "We need AG" talk is doing Kotch any good -- and knowing how astute the club is in regards to psychological issues -- I think they're running a SUPERHARD sell job on Kotchman for *HIS* benefit. Simply put - if *HE* believes he's getting the July 31 heave-ho ... he's going to hit about as well as Richie Sexson's little sister.
LOL
Thank you for doing this chronological summary of his numbers. We've all read the basic arguements and the numbers multiple times, but the chronological connection of his ups and downs with mental events here (and the disease) is very useful though speculative. Definately will be one of the big stories to watch unfold this year - are the scouts right saying his swing is too slow, etc., or will the team/coaching + park changes + "belief system" (ugh, I used the phrase) help him rediscover his potential... I'm optimistic, anyway.