Reynolds Pulling

Mark Reynolds of the Baltimore Orioles shows a huge difference between his batting average and slugging percentage.  He hits .220, but slugs .482.  If you think of this in terms of bases per hit, his average hit is better than a double at 2.2 Bases/Hit.

Mark achieves this dubious distinction by trying to pull everything.  On inside pitches, that's expected:

Mark Reynolds, in play averge on inside pitches, 2011.Even on pitches in the middle, it's not such a bad strategy:

Mark Reynolds, in play average on middle pitches, 2011.On the outside part of the plate, it doesn't help much at all:

Mark Reynolds, in play average on outside pitches, 2011.Note that very few of his hits go the other way.  Four of those hits came on weak ground balls that he pulled down the third base line and beat out.  The following table summarizes his batting on various sections of the plate:

Mark Reynolds, 2011	Inside	Middle	Outside
Batting Average	0.218	0.253	0.194
OBP	0.336	0.302	0.328
Slugging Pct	0.571	0.589	0.315
Strikeout %	26.4	25.2	35.8
Ground Ball %	30.5	40.7	45.3

Note that Mark hits his best on balls over the middle of the plate.  He slugs extremely well middle in, but his only strength on the outside part of the plate comes from drawing walks.  The ground ball line tells a big part of the story.  Trying to pull those outside pitches results in weak contact and tons of ground balls.  Reynolds probably won't change his swing at this point, but he might be better off laying off those pitches as much as possible.

Arizona's Clutch Hitter

Rob Neyer recently wrote about whether the Arizona Diamondbacks could see a turnaround in the near future. One of the more interesting aspects of Arizona's 2010 season was that they were seventh in the league in OBP and fourth in SLG, yet finished eighth in scoring. As he notes, poor clutch hitting usually accounts for this disparity, but the Diamondbacks apparently did well in this area.

Among all players in the league with a minimum 50 plate appearances with runners in scoring position last year, Arizona had one batter in the Top 50 in wOBA (Mark Reynolds) and five in the Top 100 (LaRoche, Drew, Upton, Montero). Reynolds is an interesting case; while he had a fairly big drop off across the board from his 2009 numbers overall, he excelled in big spots.
Mark Reynolds - 2010

	AVG	OBP	SLG	wOBA
Overall	.198	.320	.433	.334
w/ RISP	.276	.414	.619	.441

	K%	LD%	HR%	BABIP
Overall	35.3%	13.2%	6.5%	.255
w/ RISP	27.6%	11.0%	8.2%	.325

Reynolds is a true outcome player. In 2010, he had the worst K-Rate of any qualifying major leaguer, while finishing in the top 6% in BB% and the top 4% in HR%. All those strikeouts really hurt his overall line, and dropped his OBP into the bottom 34% in the league. He may have gotten a bit lucky in clutch situations last season, as his BABIP saw a pretty big jump. However, it’s worth pointing out that in his last 551 plate appearances with RISP, Reynolds has hit .256/.365/.527 with 30 HRs for a .391 wOBA.
Mark Reynolds w/ RISP 2008-2010
Without Mark Reynolds' elevated numbers with RISP last season, the D-Backs would have likely finished a lot worse than 8th in scoring. Somehow, I don't think Melvin Mora will be able to replace that offense.

Clutch at the Corner

Let's take a look at the top clutch performers occupying 3rd base during the 2010 season.

Filter Criteria:
Performance by 3rd basemen when faced with 2 outs with runners in scoring position when their team was down by 1 run or tied.