Phillies Desperately Need a Change in their Hitting Approach

There’s no doubt the young Philadelphia Phillies have all the hitting talent they need, but still they find themselves at the bottom of almost every important offensive statistic. That stems from their lack of approach at the plate and they desperately need to improve it if they’re going to succeed.

Hitting is composed of two major attributes: how you approach your at bat, which is more mental, and your swing, which is more physical. Some guys have one of the two and some guys have both, like Joey Votto and Paul Goldscmidt. Guys who don’t have either typically don’t find themselves in the majors for very long unless they are an exceptional fielder at an up the middle position and even in those cases they have to be on the right team, where every other position hits. The Phillies are particularly lacking hitters with advanced approaches at the plate.

Guys who have both approach and ability down use approach to maximize ability, meaning essentially they won’t swing unless it’s their pitch. If their pitch doesn’t come, they simply take four balls and walk to first.

Players who rely more on approach, like Russell Martin and Alex Gordon aren’t bad hitters. What they do at the plate ensures that any shortcomings they may have as a pure hitter are underscored by their ability to do the most important thing you can do in a plate appearance – not make an out. What you end up seeing with these guys in their slash line is typically a lower average, maybe less than .250, but a high on base percentage, over .330.

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There’s no easy or polite way to put this for a lot of these Phillies batters, a lot of the time they just look stupid throughout their at bat. Dumb. Like Lloyd Christmas and Harry Dunn level idiocy. Brick Tamalen liked “lamp,” these guys like “swing.”

If you watch the games then you know this isn’t being harsh, it’s being honest in a brutal way.

It’s like Phillies hitters think the batter’s box has a trap door that opens up and will drop them into a pool of sharks if they stay there too long.

They incessantly swing at the first pitch despite rarely seeing positive results. They are fourth in major league baseball in swinging at the first pitch. Conversely the Red Sox and the Nationals are two of the teams that swing the least and they are both set to win their division. Clearly it’s important to be a bit patient.

It’s like Phillies hitters think the batter’s box has a trap door that opens up and will drop them into a pool of sharks if they stay there too long.

This data isn’t a secret either, pitchers are well aware of it and can use it to exploit the Phillies hitters. The odds of them throwing a Phillies batter a good pitch to hit as their first pitch are slim.

Not only do they swing at a lot of first pitches, they just plain old swing a lot, the second most in baseball. Again, there’s a very clear correlation in the amount of swings you take and how your offense performs. The Red Sox swing the least and consequently have the highest OPS in baseball. It’s not a coincidence. The Phillies are last in baseball in OPS.

They hack at pitches so far out of the zone they couldn’t hit them if they were Dikembe Mutumbo with a rowing oar. It’s almost as if they make up their mind to swing before the pitch is even thrown and the actual location of that pitch is inconsequential. They swing out of the zone the fourth most in baseball and they swing and miss, aka a swinging strike, the fifth most in baseball. That set of stats are two of the main ingredients in “Lack of Production Stew,” a cellar dweller’s favorite for over 50 years. Those two stats are probably why the 2016 Phillies have the sixth most strikeouts swinging in baseball despite having the second least plate appearances.

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The Phillies rank towards the bottom of several offensive categories, including on-base percentage, slugging percentage, runs scored, and batting average. Manager Pete Mackanin certainly isn’t happy with the Phils’ offense. Earlier this month he told reporters, “It’s frustrating. We’ve been going through this for a while. We need to get better.”

This should blow your mind. The Phillies have a total of 5790 plate appearances and they’ve struck out swinging 1032 times.

Meanwhile, the San Francisco Giants have 6048 plate appearances, a full 258 more opportunities at the plate. However, they struck out swinging 238 times less than the Phils at 794 times. They would have to play nine games and have every single batter strike out swinging in order to have as many K’s as the Phillies.

Often it seems that the Phillies batters are completely ignorant of what makes them, or what could make them successful. There are very clear patterns for each hitter related to count, situation, and other factors in which that particular hitter is at an advantage. Every batter does better when they’re ahead in the count and you’re not going to get there if you swing early, swing often and swing out of the zone. It’s the hitting coaches job to make sure that they are not only aware of this but to impress upon them the paramount importance of getting yourself ahead in the count and quite frankly it seems like the Phillies hitters are oblivious.

And approach is slump proof. Inevitably hitters will get cold and lose something in their swing mechanics and their average will take a hit but if they can manage to keep a good approach up they’ll still get on base and help create production for their team.

You can’t control a lot of the things that happen in an at bat. But you can control yourself. You can control swinging at strikes, laying off pitches you can’t handle, working the count to your favor and realizing what you can hit and what you can’t.

The current Phillies hitting coach just isn’t getting to these guys. A change needs to be made if only to send a message to these guys that there’s a serious aspect at play here and that people will lose their livelihood unless things change.

Next: Phillies 2016 Season Report Card: Aaron Nola

Maybe they wouldn’t even have to look very far. Those of us who watch the games on TV might know of a guy who gets it, who has been there before and who should command a ton of respect from these guys. And he also happens to talk about approach constantly during the games. He’s right up Stairs, just go and get him.

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