and embarrasing too. And Jacobs’s career trend is to swing more often at bad pitches…

There is no doubt that Seitzer was bought in specifically to get the OBP of this team upwards. DM has decided (rightly, probably) that he doesn’t have the means to bring in ready formed walk machines, so he has to grow his own. I don’t know what the philosphy is further down in the minors (Stixs?), but Seitzer is clearly meant to achieve that in KC. Can he do it? He has a big task with some seriously swing happy players, but if i think if he can get this roster as it is now up to league average OBP he will have done a superb job. And i don’t think that is unresonable expectation, if maybe a little optimistic.

is about the one thing I’ve spent the most time thinking about. and the common sense of the correlation between swinging at the first pitch and not walking is staggering. however, i think the missing piece to the puzzle is batting average (not obp for obvious reasons) on the balls hit on the first pitch by those teams as well as batting averages in other counts…the outlier teams (seattle, chicago cubs, etc…) can be explained by the power hitters as well as just being better hitters in general in specific counts, especially first pitches. it always kills me when someone is ‘first-ball hitting’ because often he’s first-ball making an out and keeping the pitcher efficient at the same time….surely hillman would have done more if he truly cared, and dayton moore obviously does not scout based on a players plate discipline….we’ll see if seitzer can improve this at all or if new players are necessary (which is the issue at hand i believe)