FanPost

The case of Billy Butler's missing plate discipline

Jamie Squire

In the month of July, Billy Butler is hitting 234/286/313 in 70 PA.

Since July 1st, Billy Butler has seen 249 pitches. That is an average of 3.56 pitches per appearance.

Since the all-star break, Billy Butler is hitting 150/261/200 in 23 PA.

Over the 6 game road trip, Billy Butler has seen 62 pitches. That's an average of 2.7 pitches per appearance.

Over the 2014 season, Butler has seen 3.65 pitches per PA. The average AL hitter sees around 3.86 pitches per PA in 2014. Butler has seen about 82 fewer pitches over 402 PA than the average AL hitter. From 2009 to 2013, Butler saw 3.8 pitches per PA. So Butler has seen 63 fewer pitches overall than he would have under 09-13 rates of patience.

The disappearance of Butler's patience is no recent occurrence. According to the Fangraphs/BIS stats, Butler has swung at 32% of pitches outside of the strike zone. The highest such percentage of Butler's career, by over 2%. Butler is also swinging at more pitches in the zone (64.6%), his highest percentage since 2007 and swinging at the most pitches in his career.

The Fangraphs/PFX stats put Butler's O-Swing at 29%, above his career numbers (27.5%) and below the 2012 numbers. They also have him swinging at more pitches in the zone than any year since 2007.

Or if we go to percentages. Butler's walk percentage? lowest since 2008, strikeout percentage? highest ever. Highest strikeout/walk ratio ever. Fewer strikes looking (lowest % since 2007), most strikes swinging since 2011 (a tie for most ever). Swinging at 46% of pitches (highest ever). Swinging at 24% of first pitches (highest since 2007)

Of his 69 strikeouts, 57 were swinging. 16 of those strikeouts came on an 0-2 count (slightly under 25%). 25 came with one ball on the count. 21 with two balls on the count. And Butler has only struck out on a full count 7 times.

Then again, Butler has reached a full count 32 times this year, Alcides Escobar has reached a full-count 34 times through Tuesday (and Butler has batted 20 more times than Escobar total). From 2009 to 2013, Billy Butler got to a full count around 77 times a year, and this year, the pace is closer to 52 full counts in an entire season.

Butler got to 3 balls on a count 144 times a year from 2009 to 2013, and this year, 66 times through 100 games and that's good for a pace of 107 three-ball counts in 2014.

Let's move from the gory details of Butler's patience compared to previous years and look at some charts

So what in the world is Butler swinging at this year?

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Quite a bit of swinging in the zone, and a bit of swinging on low and inside pitches.

The fun thing about the pitches Butler is seeing low-outside the zone? those are a lot of his whiffs (more whiffs in the 5 not-strike boxes than the 9 strike boxes).

Compare the swing rate to Butler, 2009-2013

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Of the 9 strike-zone boxes, Butler is swinging at more pitches in 8 of 9 boxes, all except inside-middle strikes.

Of the 16 not-strike boxes, Butler is swinging at more pitches in 12 of 16 boxes. The 4 exceptions, 3 inside boxes (Butler is swinging at more inside non-strikes in the box next to inside-middle strikes) and one high inside zone.

So the one in-zone area with fewer swings is surrounded by parts of the zone, and outside the zone, where Butler is swinging more often.

The bulk of the pitches through to Butler are low-outside or low-outside strikes, an area where Butler is swinging at more and more.

And what happens with the pitches Butler swings at and puts into play?

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If he gets the ball in play in the strikezone: typically good things. If he gets the ball in play and it's low-outside, outs happen. Butler's BABIP this year is a bit higher than the normal BABIP. Then again, that can happen if you have a somewhat respectable average and 3 home runs total.

And in lieu of a Brooks graphic, I just created a graphic representation (aka Excel-o-pic) of how many of the swings result in balls in play:

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368 swings in the zone, 185 balls in play, 69 hits. Good for a .373 average on balls in play, 50% of zone swings put the ball in play and 19% of the swings led to hits.

299 swings outside of the zone, 101 balls in play, 24 hits. An average of .238 on balls in play, 34% of non-zone swings put the ball in play and 8% of swings led to hits.

The left-10 boxes (3 in-zone and 7 out): 191 swings, 85 in play, 35 hits. Swinging on 45% of pitches in that area. .412 average if put in play, a hit on 18% of swings.

The right-10 boxes (3-in zone, 7 out): 286 swings, 107 in play, 32 hits. Swinging on 41% of pitches in that area. .299 average if put in play, a hit on 12% of swings.

The left/right split for pitches thrown is about 1.65 pitches to the right-10 boxes for every pitch to the left-10.

Or to split the boxes again.. top-left-6, middle 5, top-right 6, bottom-left 4, bottom-right 4. (Top-Left/Top-Right get to include the top of the zone, where pitchers rarely pitch Butler and where Butler rarely swings. A lot of top left/right results will be for two strikezone boxes and two non-zone just-inside/outside boxes)

  • Top-left 6: 217 pitches, 91 swings (42% swing), 41 in play (45% in play/19% of pitches), and 16 hits (.390 BABIP/18% of swings/7% of pitches)
  • Top-right 6: 272 pitches, 137 swings (50%), 47 in play (34%/17%), and 19 hits (.404/14%/7%)
  • Bottom-left 4: 207 pitches, 100 swings (48%), 44 in play (44%/21%), and 19 hits (.432/19%/9%)
  • Bottom-right 4: 428 pitches, 149 swings (35%), 60 in play (40%/14%) and 13 hits (.217/9%/3%)
  • Middle 5: 319 pitches, 190 swings (60%), 94 in play (49%/29%) and 26 hits (.277/14%/8%)

In other words.. lots of low-away pitches, that Butler can do nothing with if he makes contact. Lots of swings at pitches that are on the outer half

I may have gotten slightly carried away on the zone breakdowns here.

But there's a lot of mechanical theories that are floated for Butler (bat speed, turning on pitches). Bat speed isn't really recorded for public consumption. Turning on pitches presumably could entail pulling the ball into the LF corner or at least not clunking the ball directly to the third baseman. Butler has always been a guy who winds up putting the ball in all fields overall, with most of his infield outs going to the left side.

There may be things we can only speculate upon for reasons why Butler is swinging more often. Advice from coaches? advice from himself? a sense of urgency from himself leading him to essentially press and try to go for the first "good" pitch he thinks he can put into play to boost some of his numbers quickly? along with all the other possibilities for speculation.

In the scheme of things, there are things hitters can control and things they cannot control. They can't really control much about the ball after it leaves the bat. But hitters usually don't involuntarily swing at baseballs (it's possible, but). Their patience is in their hands and Butler's drop in some measurements of patience is one of the more glaring problems for his overall numbers. If the only big drop in Butler's numbers this year was power, that'd be one thing, but this is a drop in power and a drop in plate discipline.

Back in June, Butler was a good hitter for that month, saw the most pitches of any month this year, and then around the end of the month, he went back on a run of swinging at bad pitches and has had a pretty bad month so far. So perhaps he's mostly randomly having terrible runs, or accepting bad advice, or it's just a mix of things.

At this point, it's a little late to expect any kind of turn around to really boost the numbers much. Nothings really gonna change this path. It seems safe to say that Butler's downturn on his way out of KC will be comparable to John Mayberry turning from a 30 HR player to a below average hitter in 1976-1977. Mayberry went to Toronto and managed to post numbers that were in-between his last sets of numbers in KC and his prime numbers. Perhaps Butler winds up in the frozen Canadian north next spring, reunited with a friend or two of note?

Until then, the angst and bad at-bats may just continue on for the near future.

This FanPost was written by a member of the Royals Review community. It does not necessarily reflect the views of the editors and writers of this site.