Pull LaPorta

by APV on Dec 14, 2010 4:19 PM EST

Matt LaPorta is critical to the success of the 2011 Indians, and possibly the 2012-2014 Indians. As the centerpiece of the CC Sabathia trade, LaPorta was supposed to bring a legitimate power threat to the Indians lineup. His minor league numbers (.296/.390/.563, 56 HRs across 242 games, mostly at the AA and AAA level) certainly suggest he should be a real power threat. But in 162 games split across two seasons, LaPorta has failed to show that power, with a line of .232/.307/.388. To be fair, that is not horrendous power, but it is a pretty terrible all around batting line for someone with all around batting skills. Injuries have of course been one possible excuse for LaPorta, with a series of minor to serious setbacks. But I would suggest another, perhaps even more classic problem...he hasn't been able to hit major league breaking stuff. Specifically, LaPorta's strong pull-happy approach leads to a huge number of weak outs to right field.

These two images (via MLB.com) should show some of what I mean:

Laporta1_medium

Laporta2_medium

The first image shows LaPorta's hits in Cleveland in 2010, the second shows his outs. Obviously, with the exception of a few singles and a freak triple, all of his hits are to center or left. In fact, according to fangraphs split data, in his major league career so far LaPorta's line on balls hit to right field is .123/.120/.151. In contrast, his lines to center (.376/.376/.624) and left (.332/.328/.588) are vastly superior. He is an excellent hitter with good power to center and left, but he couldn't kill a butterfly on most of his hits to right. And as the second image above shows, he hits a lot of balls to right.

It is probably not surprising that relative to his teammates, LaPorta sees relatively few fastballs. Across the past two seasons, he has only seen about 54% fastballs, well below league average and one of the lowest on the Indians team. Instead of getting fastballs, LaPorta gets a relatively large number of sliders (~20%), curveballs (~10%) and changeups (~10%), and he struggles with them. Fangraphs puts his run value relative to average on these pitches as right around -1 run/100 pitches. I suspect the reason is that he has a hard time pulling these kinds of pitches and most of them end up as weak grounders and flyballs to the right side of the field. I'd further guess that these problems don't manifest themselves as much in the minors because the quality of breaking stuff is not nearly as good.

Closely related to his struggles against breaking pitches is LaPorta's inability to control the inner half of the plate. LaPorta struggles mightily on pitches in on his hands, showing an inability to turn on these pitches and instead producing weak opposite field hits. The image below courtesy of foxsports.com shows this problem clearly:

Laporta3_medium

For LaPorta to become a good all-around hitter at the big league level he has to be able to better handle the off-speed and breaking stuff he is likely to face. He also has to get better at turning on inside pitches or fending them off till he gets pitches he likes. This does not mean he cannot be a pull hitter, but he either has to minimize the number of balls in play he sends to the right side or improve the outcome on those balls.

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Comments

Excellent stuff and depressing thesis. Matt’s inability to handle breaking stuff, if your analysis is right and that’s what it is, could be either linked to injury or just a straight skill deficiency, right?

Hopefully, it’s the former.

by afh4 on Dec 14, 2010 4:54 PM EST reply actions

I actually thought this was positive. My biggest concern is that LaPorta, because of the injuries, is simply broken and won’t ever be who he we thought he could be. But clearly, when he is pulling the ball, he is a great hitter, injury or no-injury. The positive spin would be that he just needs to make some adjustments to his plate approach and/or swing to prevent pitchers from taking advantage of him so badly. He is a good hitter with an excellent skill-set, he can make adjustments. The negative spin would be that he has a serious problem in his swing, something that doesn’t need adjustment but is in need of a major overhaul. Let’s hope for the former.

by APV on Dec 14, 2010 5:00 PM EST up reply actions

I guess I just hear “can’t handle breaking stuff” and that sounds like a player who can’t play in the majors, especially at 25.

by afh4 on Dec 14, 2010 5:02 PM EST up reply actions

Well..at the least it gives us a pretty good idea of what to look for in evaluating LaPorta in 2011. Right now he puts about 25% of his balls in play to the right side and an atrocious .270 OPS on those hits. Either he needs to lower that percentage or raise the performance…easy as that.

by APV on Dec 14, 2010 5:08 PM EST up reply actions

Matt’s swing appears to be fine; it’s his timing that is off. A change in approach and proper off-season preparation should allow him to connect on the off-speed stuff.

"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge..." C. Darwin

by Spidey on Dec 14, 2010 6:02 PM EST via mobile reply actions

With how often he loses the grip on his bat and sends it sailing into the seats, I think something there isn’t right. His his clear way too early, and he swings around the ball.

by xrickx on Dec 14, 2010 9:09 PM EST up reply actions

Great, great stuff. Thank you

by stuart dean on Dec 14, 2010 8:35 PM EST reply actions

This is great Adam.
One thing that always struck me about MaTola last year was the way that the ball jumped off his bat to LF. Even when it didn’t look like he was making solid contact, the ball would carry much further than you would have thought.

by The DiaTriber on Dec 14, 2010 8:50 PM EST reply actions

one slightly alarming number comes from hittrackeronline.com. LaPorta’s average speed off the bat on his HRs was 102.1, while the league average was 103.3. That is possibly evidence LaPorta’s bat speed is not great. In 2009 LaPorta’s number was 106.2. There are other ways of potentially explaining this, but this could be an indication of health/injury issues.

by APV on Dec 14, 2010 9:57 PM EST reply actions

That would seem to explain his troubles on the inside half of the plate, no?

"An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools" -Hemingway

by notthatnoise on Dec 15, 2010 9:59 AM EST up reply actions

A hip injury would drain some bat speed, so hopefully we have a healthy LaPorta next year

by The Grimace on Dec 16, 2010 1:39 AM EST up reply actions

Bats, they are sick. I cannot hit curveball. Straightball I hit it very much. Curveball, bats are afraid. I ask Jobu to come, take fear from bats. I offer him cigar, rum. He will come.

by emd2k3 on Dec 14, 2010 11:39 PM EST reply actions 1 recs

Maybe nitpicking a bit, but I’m having trouble finding strong support in the presented data for the thesis that LaPorta can’t hit the breaking ball. I see that he only hits well when he pulls the ball and that he sees a disproportionate % of breaking balls – but (for me) it is a leap from there to concluding he’s hitting breaking balls weakly to right. I would want to see what his stats are by pitch type. Better yet (if possible) do that breakdown within each of the 9 pitch location zones. I appreciate the work you’ve done here and maybe I’m just not understanding something.

by CaptainPenny on Dec 15, 2010 9:16 AM EST reply actions

It takes a little effort to get pitch by pitch breakdowns on how batters fare against specific pitches…enough that I didn’t do it here. But there are several indirect clues about LaPorta’s problems. First, there are his performance values against different kind of pitches compiled by Fangraphs.com. These numbers give the run value generated per 100 pitches of a certain type relative to league average numbers. So far in his career, LaPorta has been below average on all fronts, but has been relatively better against fastballs (-0.38 Fastball, -0.19 Cutter) than against breaking pitches (-0.96 Slider, -1.21 Curveball) and changeups (-1.08). To put these numbers in perspective, only Drew Sutton and Chris Gimenez in limited playing time put up lower production numbers off curveballs. He is bad on breaking stuff, he is bad on balls hit to right field. He is good on balls hit to center and left, therefore, he must be hitting many of these pitches to the right side of the field. Against RHP these pitches will typically be breaking away from LaPorta making them difficult to turn around and pull. Alternatively, especially against LHP when these pitches will be breaking inside on the plate, he is probably turning a lot of these pitches into weak groundballs to the left side of the field. A few other indirect clues about this…LaPorta was in the top third of the team last year in swinging at pitches outside of the zone (33.7%), but in the bottom third of the team in making contact with those pitches (59.0%). This is a point not captured in his hit data above, but is reflected by his relatively high swing-and-miss rate (11.5%), only beaten by Shelley Duncan and Russell Branyan among semi-regular players. Even with pitches in the zone we see this patter. LaPorta is one of the best players on the team when it comes to swinging at strikes (68.1%), but is in the middle of the pack at making contact on these pitches (86.2%). Again, these numbers would be better if we could break them down by specific pitch type, but I think the total picture strongly suggests he has a problem with breaking pitches.

by APV on Dec 15, 2010 9:40 AM EST up reply actions

Thanks for the extensive reply – I appreciate it and it was helpful. I’ll try plowing through the fangraph data and see if anything jumps out at me. Another question – any evidence that LaPorta had trouble with breaking pitches in the minors?

by CaptainPenny on Dec 15, 2010 11:46 AM EST up reply actions

There’s the fact the Brewers were willing to trade him. Does that count?

by Jay on Dec 15, 2010 5:23 PM EST up reply actions

That’s a negative, sir.

by CaptainPenny on Dec 15, 2010 6:08 PM EST up reply actions

Over the past two calendar years, 309 hitters have gotten 500 or more big league PA. LaPorta ranks in the bottom 10% in terms of fastballs seen.

Courtesy of David Golebiewski at Fangraphs back in August

by APV on Dec 15, 2010 11:25 AM EST reply actions

oh the joys of having no line-up protection

by The Grimace on Dec 15, 2010 9:18 PM EST up reply actions

Isn’t he supposed to be protecting someone else?

by afh4 on Dec 15, 2010 11:10 PM EST up reply actions

It’s apparently a rather cyclical thing. 9 protects 8, 8 protects 7, so on. You pull eight or nine real hitters out of a lineup like that, you can see where nobody has any protection.

Come on, four billion!

by Joel D on Dec 18, 2010 8:00 PM EST up reply actions

What I like most about this is it gives us a number of things to look at when evaluating LaPorta next year.

Positive indicators:

Higher average ball speed on HRs (>105)
Fewer balls hit to the right side of the field (<25%)
Greater performance on balls hit the opposite way (>.400 OPS)
Fewer swinging strikes (<11%)
Less swinging at pitches outside of the zone (<30%)
Greater contact on pitches overall (>75%)
Fewer swings at balls outside of the zone (<30%)

by APV on Dec 15, 2010 2:12 PM EST reply actions

Largely unrelated, but remember when we were evaluating Brantley’s inclusion in the Sabathia trade and pointing to his 5% K-rate as indicative of well above average contact skills?…Well, last season Brantley made contact on 96.2% of the pitches in the zone and only swung and missed at 2.7% of the pitches he saw.

by APV on Dec 15, 2010 2:18 PM EST reply actions

So you’re saying someone other than Chuck was right about something?

by Jay on Dec 15, 2010 5:23 PM EST up reply actions

That 96.2% number would tie him for 5th in the league among qualified players. And the swinging strike percentage would put him 4th. I’m hoping that eventually translates into above average offensive performance (although this skill set seems most manifest in Juan Pierre and Marco Scutaro).

by APV on Dec 15, 2010 5:34 PM EST up reply actions

What a fantastic analysis of LaPorta and Brantley. Makes me much more optimistic about their near term performance, especially Brantley. I like the risk on a young fast guy with great bat-to-ball ability, and noticeable progress. He is just the kind of hitter who suddenly breaks out into something special when he puts the pieces together. Or not. But I like the profile.

by Bogalusa Bomber on Dec 20, 2010 9:10 PM EST up reply actions