Individuals and Pitches per Plate Appearance This Past Season
Of course, it is silly to ignore individual player success. Indeed, fans often point to a player who had an impressive year when their team failed to make the playoffs. A player who survives at least 10 years at a reasonably high level in MLB can retire at 40 if he wishes to, so individual success related to pitches per plate appearance can’t be forgotten.
The individual at the top of the P/PA heap this past season was Phillies slugger Rhys Hoskins, who saw 4.44 pitches in each of his 661 trips to home plate with a bat in his hand. You don’t even have the do any math here because Baseball-Reference.com has done it for you. Hoskins made NL pitchers throw him 2932 pitches this season (see the second chart linked to the word “six” five paragraphs above).
This player had a very fine first full year in MLB, hitting 34 home runs, driving in 96 runs, becoming the face of the Phillies franchise, and signing with very high profile agent Scott Boras. Barring injury, Hoskins will be a very rich, relatively young man someday. He is 25 now.
What about the rest of the players in the top 25 for pitches per plate appearance, however? All of these players were well above the MLB average, seeing at least 4.18 P/PA.
The discussion could now become very, very complicated, but to simplify at bit, 11 of the 25 leaders in pitches seen played all season with playoff teams. Three more played part of the season with a team making the post-season. One of the three who played a partial season with a post-season team was traded away from that playoff team (Jonathan Villar), but 13 of 25 making it to the playoffs isn’t a bad figure. Arguably, hunting the perfect pitch worked for these players.
But some of these leaders in P/PA may be in the top 25 in part because they’re truly feared hitters who are often pitched around (e.g., Jose Ramirez, no. 2; Mike Trout, no. 3; Giancarlo Stanton, no. 17, 25th on the list).
Also, there are players in the top 25 who are not clearly served as well as Hoskins by a high P/PA such as Kyle Schwarber, who is also 25 years old at this point. Schwarber was in a fifth place tie for most pitches seen this year (4.31) and is now a “lifetime” .228 hitter with an .809 OPS. He hits home runs and walks. For a left fielder he doesn’t drive in that many runs – he picked up 1.97 RBI for each of his 30 home runs in 2017, and 2.35 for each of the 26 he hit this season. He was sent to the minors last season. What may keep him with the Cubs is the fact he is a former no. 4 overall draft pick as much as anything else.
Points like these might be made about Hoskins’ teammate, Cesar Hernandez, who was in ninth place on the P/PA list at 4.27. Hernandez is older than Schwarber, has less power, drove in about as many runs this year, and walked more. His walks jumped up significantly this year, but his batting average fell steeply, and he’s also seen as possibly on his way out the door from his team clubhouse.
So, as hot as the notion of pitches per plate appearance is, and despite a 20-year trend just about straight uphill, seeing more pitches doesn’t clearly predict a team’s success, and only slightly more predicts an individual batter’s success. A “next great trend” in MLB stats may well be figuring out who would do better swinging at good if not perfect, early pitches in the count.