FanPost

Long Plate Appearances

A couple of times on the Royals broadcast this year I have heard something to the effect that Jeff Francoeur does better on long plate appearances because he gets to see the ball. I'm not sure that this logically makes sense. Long plate appearances mean hitting with 2 strikes, and that is generally not good for the batter, and so I went to baseballreference.com.

# pitches 2012 MLB OPS Jeff Francoeur Career OPS

1 .853 .913

2 .838 .869

3 .682 .689

4 .632 .656

5 .650 .665

6 .677 .569

7 .733 .699

8 .793 .738

9 .781 .602

10+ .843 .543

A similar pattern for both exists. High performance in the appearances with 1 or 2 pitches thrown. Significant decrease to 3 pitches, and then it starts increasing, but Francoeur's doesn't increase toward the end as quickly and starts going back down after 8 pitches. Part of that could be the very few times he has been up and seen more than 7 pitches. Francoeur is not patient, which is why the original assertion bothered me. If he did better from seeing more pitches, then he would probably work hard to see more pitches. Instead, Francoeur may maximize through impatience. He has significantly more appearances with 1 or 2 pitches than average, which is where he performs best.

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