Certain conjectures in baseball seem to arise more often than is logically explainable. Such as this doosie, which any casual follower of the prospect scene has been privy to at least a half dozen times: "Howie Kendrick is going to win multiple batting titles by the time his career is finished." Really? Kendrick has posted a .227/.267/.350 this year, and there's been talk of his demotion to Triple-A Salt Lake, with Pacific Coast League HR leader Sean Rodriguez slated to take his place. Multiple batting titles? That's happened thirty-eight times; here's the list: Nap Lajoie, Cap Anson, Bill Duffy, Big Ed Delhanty, Honus Wagner, Jack Daugbert, Ty Cobb, George Sisler, Paul Waner, Harry Heilman, Jimmie Foxx, Rogers Hornsby, Lefy O'Douhl, Luke Appling, Joe Dimaggio, Stan Musial, Mickey Vernon, Ferris Faine, Ted Williams, Hank Aaron, Pete Rose, Roberto Clemente, Tommy Davis, Phil Runnels, Bill Madlock, Tony Oliva, Dave Parker, Rob Carew, Carl Yastrzyemski, George Brett, Wade Boggs, Tony Gwynn, Larry Walker, Edgar Martinez, Nomar Garciaparra, Barry Bonds, Ichiro Suzuki and Joe Mauer. Next up, Howie Kendrick? What evidence do you have to support such a bold claim?
One commonly cited argument is that Kendrick absolutely destroyed minor league pitching over a 379 career game MiLB career; in fact, the argument can be made that Kendrick enjoyed one of the most prolific minor-league careers ever (extended stints highlighted below):
Adv-R ('03): .368/.434/.517 (63 G)
Lo-A ('04): .367/.391/.569 (75 G)
Hi-A/AA ('05): .367/.406/.614 (109 G, 63/46)
AAA ('06): .369/.408/.631 (69 G)
Kendrick spent quite a while in the pipeline, though to be fair, his extensive time of languish is partly organizational (see: Wood, Brandon)--most players do not need to post four consecutive seasons of .365+ BA to land in the majors. Then again, when you're being blocked by the force of nature that is Adam Kennedy, all bets are off. Kidding aside, Kendrick's farm club credentials are extraordinary, especially considering that they include a career OBP above .400 (.401) and a career slugging above .550 (.571), two plateaus that seem all-but-unreachable for Howie the big leaguer.
Yes, the majors have indeed been a vastly different story for Kendrick, and it hasn't all been attributable to injuries. First, let's acknowledge the blatantly obvious: Kendrick doesn't possess much in the way of plate discipline. Check out his base-on-ball and strikeout percentages in 2009, and over his three-year ML career:
BB%: 3.6% (2009); 3.2% (career)
K%: 17.6% (2009); 20.0% (career)
Vladimir Guerrero has a career BB% of 9.1%, Ivan Rodriguez of 5.1%, Jeff Francouer of 4.9% and Yuniesky Betancourt of 3.2%. Of these notorious free-swingers, only Francouer has a K% nearing 20% (19.6% career). Needless to say, this is not good, as Francouer is a career .254 EqA hitter, a slightly below average figure when considering all ML players, and a well below average one for a starter at the premium offensive position of RF.
Taking Vladimir Guerrero as our case study in productive free-swinging (and branding Francouer our poster-boy for hacker inadequacy), let's see how Kendrick stacks up. For any free swinger, it is imperative to consider how they fare when offering at pitches outside of the zone (note: the statistics we will be concerned with are denoted by an O- prefix for 'outside the zone'). As swinging at would-be balls is the M.O. of a hacker, we would expect Kendrick's O-Swing% to be well above the league average of ~25%. Indeed it is, by a formidable 12.2% over the course of his career. As you can see, Guerrero and Francouer stack up similarly:
Career O-Swing%: 37.2% (Kendrick), 38.1% (Guerrero), 36.4% (Francouer)
Likewise, we might expect his O-Contact% to be at-or-above the league average of ~60% if he is to beat all justified in his ~40% O-Swing%. However, an important caveat exists in this regard, which explains why increasing the number of attempts may actually lower the contact percentage, even for a proficient free-swinger. Many batters elect to expand the strike zone primarily to attack the proverbial "hanger," blatant mistake pitches that even a disciplined hitter may view as advantageous to offer at. As such, we can forgive Kendrick's O-Swing% for sitting slightly-below league average for his career, though he is toeing the lower precipice of what can be considered acceptable. Guerrero, on the other hand, is well above 60%, and sits over ten percentage points higher than his teammate Kendrick for their respective careers:
O-Contact%: 53.5% (career), 64.9% (Guerrero), 56.8% (Francouer)
This is more of a nod to Guerrero's transcendent hitting chops than it is a brazen indictment of Kendrick; Vlad, needless to say, simply occupies another plane of bad-ball adeptness. Still, all is not well for our boy Howie, as his performance on pitches out of the strike-zone nearly mirrors that of Francouer.
Extending the Francouer comparison further, the Braves right fielder has posted a 1.18 GB/FB ratio over the course of his career, ironically, an identical figure to that posted by Twins catcher and two-time batting champion Joe Mauer. Kendrick, on the other hand, is sporting a career ratio of 1.85 (1.89 in '09), placing him closer to Ichiro (2.35 career) and Juan Pierre (2.49) than Joltin' Joey. (For some additional perspective, Joey Gathright has a career GB/FB ration of 4.46, Adam Dunn of 0.72.) This is notable because Kendrick is a line-drive oriented hitter (20.0% LD% career) who is seemingly at his best when squaring up the ball and shooting liners to all fields. He is simply not, and will never be, a slap-and-dash type who amasses IF hits with pure foot speed. Additionally, Kendrick BABIP on ground balls has been within .001 of his career .246 mark each of the past three years, neither a terrible nor an aberrational number, but not overly encouraging for someone hitting as many grounders as Howie.
All of these statistics that I've thrown at you are not meant to suggest that Kendrick can never be a .300 hitter (on the contrary, I expect him to hit at or above .300 most years), or that Jeff Francouer is somehow closer to a batting title than him. Rather, it simply indicates that Kendrick would be well served to put the ball in the air more often; if he were to do so, the comparisons with Francouer would quickly cease. Again however, a caveat is necessary. According to a very interesting article on FanGraphs.com, the 'line-drive rate' in Angel Stadium is a mere 0.84 (with 1.00 being league-average for the number of batted balls coded as line-drives). This means a line-drive is 14% tougher to hit in Angels stadium than in, say, Yankee Stadium (1.00). (note: In fairness to our comp, Mr. Francouer, his home park of Turner Field is sporting a line-drive average of only 0.86 itself.) The reasoning behind this low figure is difficult to ascertain, but Southern California's air/weather conditions along with a degree of scoring bias is more-than-likely to blame.
Even if he does develop into a .300 hitter, Kendrick is going to need to be extremely fortunate (see: Mueller, Bill; .328 in '03) if he is going to win a batting title with his current (career) peripherals. But forget batting titles--this season, Kendrick has been terrible at the dish, a negative VORP guy, and thus a detriment to his team. However, he is certainly not as bad a hitter as he has shown. What is to blame? Consider the following data:
BABIP: .346 (career); .329 (2006), .382 (2007), .362 (2008), .258 (2009)
...which more or less speaks for itself. But to understand what ails Howie, we need to go deeper. How are we to explain a BABIP that is 88 points below his career average; can it all be purely chance? Short answer: no. His BABIP in '09 is not a black box, and can be explained in a variety of ways, none of which by itself represents a decisive answer. The first way is to write-off his career average as a tad high, perhaps by as many as 20 points (over what he can expect for his career). For comparison, Vlad Guerrero has posted a .322 BABIP over a much larger sample size, not uncommon for an elite hitter. Year-to-year fluctuations are to be expected, but still, .258!? Even in an off-year, this is still 10 to 15 points below what we would expect for Kendrick. Have pitchers simply begun to adjust? The numbers suggest that Kendrick is seeing approximately the same distribution of pitches this year as he has in any other, perhaps slightly more fastballs, but heaters have never given Kendrick any problems; to simplify:
Off-Speed% ((CB+SL+CU+XX)/TOTAL): 40.2% (career), 37.3 (2009)
What he has been able to do with just about any pitch, however, has changed markedly in 2009. Aside from the aforementioned 57.8 GB% (which is about 10% higher than would be considered 'ideal'; Guerrero, 44.3% career), Kendrick's line drives are also way down. As Kendrick has played in Angel Stadium his entire career, the absolute percentages may be slightly misleading, but the relative percentages are startling, nonetheless:
LD%: 12.5% (2009), 20.0% (2008), 15.9% (career)
A one year drop-off of 7.5% is really quite puzzling, and a 12.5% mark for the year is downright discouraging, as ~20% is the mark of a vey good-to-elite hitter. If forced to pick one statistic that sums up Kendrick's struggles in 2009, LD% would be at or near the top of the list. It is hard to maintain a BABIP when one's line drive percentage takes such a major hit; grounders and fly balls simply don't find as much open real estate as liners.
Kendrick has been snowballing in recent weeks, and as his numbers continue to decline, his already pedestrian defense has suffered as well. It's hard to prescribe a minor-league stint for him, as well, as he has nothing left for him to accomplish the MiL level; to compound this, anything less than a resounding success could be potentially demoralizing, as Kendrick has experienced only prodigious productivity at all minor league stops. Perhaps the best thing for both Howie and the Angles is just to allow him to hack his way through this tough patch (or hold out until he inevitably injures himself), hoping that the other bats around him show some signs of life (for instance, off-season acquisition Abreu (picked up, for all intensive purposes, instead of ManRam), has one measly homer and a .382 SLG through 47 G). One way to stimulate the lineup: promote Brandon Wood and give him some g*ddamn AB's. Erick Aybar (.279/.309./.395) and Maicer Izturis (.262/.301/.291), who at one point batted third this season...with a .291 SLG...batted in the three-hole...with a .233 EqA...THIRD, IN A F*CKING MAJOR LEAGUE LINEUP...is Mike Scioscia just toying with Angels' mgmt, seeing how much ridiculous bullshit he can pass as "strategy" before he gets fired!?!?
Returning to the topic at hand (though it's unfortunate that my runaway thought trains are incapable of pulverizing the gigantic ignoramus that is LA of A's manager): Erick Aybar and Maicer Izturis are not quality major league shortstops. Brandon Wood, on the other hand, who has yet to get hot in the Triple-A PCL, is still posting a .288/.365/.576 through 37 games, and thus should constitute a major offensive improvement given the opportunity. Wood, a notrious streak hitter, has never been given enough AB's at the big league level to truly show what he can do. Because his manager is a stubborn, antiquated jackass, plain and simple. Wood and his career MiL SLG of .894, can most certainly help the offensively anemic Angels at short or third (3B Figgins, EqA of .270, after a blisteringly hot 17-game stretch). Once he is allowed to get in a groove, the characteristic hot streak that will inevitably ensue might be able to mask the ineptitude of the Angels other hitters, or at least take enough pressure off Kendrick so that he may resume his ascent towards adroit hacking before '09 is lost for good.
