Where is the hitting? (Part II)
Sunday, May 13th, 2007Yesterday, I summarized at what the Angels hitters have produced so far (or not) and today I will try to take a deeper look into the struggles of some Halos.
Shea Hillenbrand
While most Angels fans were not particularly happy when Stoneman signed Hillenbrand, hardly anybody imaged he would be such a disaster: Zero home runs, two doubles, two walks and only seven RBI in 102 AB. On a positive note, he’s not striking out much, only eight Ks so far. But obviously, he’s not having much success with his balls in play as his batting average on balls in play (BABIP) is only .245. However, Hillenbrand can hardly blame his bad luck, because when only 11.7% of your batted balls are line drives (his career average is 21.6%), you won’t get too many balls fall in for hits. Interestingly, what formerly were line drives are now fly balls, as his ground ball percentage stayed about the same. More fly balls than ground wouldn’t be so bad if Shea would just display any kind of power.
So is he done? That depends on how much of his struggles are due to the injury he suffered early this season. If you look at his batted ball graphs over at (the outstanding) fangraphs.com, you see that he has been hitting more line drives lately, which is a good sign that the bat speed (and hopefully, along with it his power) is coming back.
So while many are calling for Hillenbrand to be DFA, considering the positive trend and the fact the Angels lack any promising alternative (sorry Kendry), I would not give up on him yet.
Garret Anderson
Anderson, as you know, is currently on the DL with a torn right hip flexor tendon (what’s that?). Like Hillenbrand, he is not walking at all (one BB in 96 PA), but that’s about all the similarities you will find. Garret showed signs of power (nine doubles, one home runs), he hits line drives only slightly worse than in his career (19% to 22%) and his BABIP is an ok .296. However, his now minuscule walk rate together with his 13.7% strike out percentage (right around his career average of 14.1%) gives him a historic low 0.08 BB/K ratio, which is only tolerable if you hit for a LOT of (home run) power and frankly, that is something that Anderson is not able to do any more. So unless he starts to display a more selective approach once he returns (unlikely), cuts down his strike outs (how?) or displays the power of five years ago (impossible), he will only be a liability with the bat. The question is if Scioscia really benches Anderson in favor of Willits when he returns from the DL? Probably not.
By the way, if you wonder why Anderson and Hillenbrand have about the same batting runs above average (BRAA) and win probability added (WPA) scores (see yesterday’s post) when Anderson’s line of .263/.265/.389 looks much better in comparison to Hillenbrand’s .236/.257/.255, it’s because nearly all of Anderson’s hits came with nobody on base. And he’s a player who used to thrive in RBI situations. Go figure.
