Martin Prado’s Plate Approach
March 4, 2012 at 6:00 pm by Franklin Rabon under Atlanta Braves, Player Analysis, Statistical Analysis
Over the last few years, me and Peter would occasionally make jokes about Prado giving pitchers a free strike one, as he just patiently watched a perfect meat ball get rolled down the middle of the zone. Then Prado would get lauded for his approach by casual fans. Somehow Prado’s counterintuitive approach made announcers gush, as he managed to work the count and be aggressive. So let’s look at Martin’s approach since 2009. (all of the graphs and stats in this post are compiled using all available data from 2009-2011, courtesy of ESPN Stats & Info)
First, let’s get a sense of where Martin likes the ball, or at least should like the ball, by looking at his slugging percentage by area:
As we can see, power wise, Prado is an extreme inside ball hitter. This shouldn’t surprise anybody, as Prado has among the quickest hands in the game and can turn on virtually any fastball. He has an uncanny ability to get the head of the bat on anything inside and hit it hard. On pitches inside, Martin Prado has an astounding 1.044 OPS since 2009. 31 of his 39 homeruns have come on pitches on the inner half of the plate during that time span. By contrast, Prado has just a 0.613 OPS on pitches on the outer half of the plate and only a .642 OPS on pitches over the middle third of the plate. Basically the difference between Martin on the inside of the plate and Martin everywhere else is something like the difference between Barry Bonds and David Eckstein. This tells us that Prado should be picking and choosing his pitches as much as possible and waiting for any inner half pitches he can get and crushing them. Is this what happens? Let’s see:
Wait, what? From this graph it appears that Prado swings at most everything at roughly the same rate as long as it’s in the strike zone. He’s not picking and choosing his pitches by location, like his extreme splits on inside/outside perhaps indicate he should. he’s just swinging at everything in the zone about half the time. It’s not the extreme free swinging graph we saw from Freddie Freeman the other day, it’s just sort of bizarre.
The weirdness of this approach is most evident when looking at how he does on the first pitch. Saying he’s selective on first pitches would indicate he had some sort of plan as to what pitches he was going after on first pitches. He simply doesn’t swing at them, as we can see:
Contrast that with the three graphs of his swing percentages on 1-0, 2-0 and 3-1 counts, where a batter probably should be very selective:
How backwards are these graphs to the left? Why in the world would a hitter swing more in 1-0, 2-0 and 3-1 counts than in 0-0 counts? Prado swung at 16.9% of 0-0 pitches in the strike zone, compared to the league average of ~43%. Even in Martin’s ‘happy zone’, the inner third of the plate in the strike zone, he only swung at 21.6% of pitches thrown in 0-0 counts. On 2-0 counts, Prado swung at 41.1% of pitches overall, including swinging at 34.5% on the outside of the plate in the strike zone. Think about that for a second. Martin Prado is almost twice as likely to swing at a ball on the outside, where he’s a poor hitter, in a 2-0 count than he his over the inside, where he’s extremely dangerous, on a 0-0 count. It’s mind boggling. But the most truly mind boggling stat of all? Prado swings at 16.9% of strikes on 0-0 counts, as we’ve noted. Yet he swings at 21.5% of balls outside the strike zone on 2-0. That may be one of the most bizarre trends that has endured over a three year period I’ve ever seen. In a count where a hitter should chose their spots, he swings more often at balls than he swings at pitches in the strike zone in 0-0 counts. I had to type that again just to deal with the reality of it.
Furthermore, even in 1-0 counts, where Prado is reasonably appropriately selective, he’s selective in a weird and counterproductive way. As we will go into greater detail with below, in a 1-0 count he should be looking for a pitch he can hit hard and drive. Instead it seems like in 1-0 counts he’s looking for pitches he can dink into right field.
As Prado has gained in reputation, pitchers have really honed in on Martin’s habit of taking the first pitch no matter what and are increasingly using this habit to get a free strike. More often than not Prado only really makes use of 2 of his 3 strikes, basically giving one away. After getting Prado in a 0-1 hole, an intelligent pitcher can use Prado’s aggressiveness in later counts against him and then get him to chase poor pitches off the plate on the outside.
Something you will hear quite often is that “Martin’s game is going the opposite way, tagging those pitches on the outer half to right field, he gets himself in trouble when he gets pull happy and yanks too much to left field.” That was a direct quote from Braves announcer Jim Powell during today’s thrashing against the Tigers. While this may be the conventional wisdom, it simply couldn’t be more wrong. When Martin Prado pulls pitches on the inner half of the plate, his batting average is .498 with a .996 slugging percentage. This leads to a stupefying .616 wOBA when he pulls pitches on the inner half of the plate. Contrast that with his line of .324 BA, with a .429 slugging percentage and a .324 wOBA when he hits pitches on the outer half to the opposite field. Obviously both of those lines are pretty good, because a player is going to do well when they pull inside pitches or hit outside pitches the opposite way, but one is stupefyingly good and one is average. Martin’s game should be looking for pitches to pull in favorable counts, and then when he’s behind in the count going the opposite way with pitches on the outer half.
The graph to the left is a graph of expected wOBA Delta by location on swings. Which sounds complicated, but really isn’t. The graph takes wOBA, perhaps one of the better single composite measures of a player’s offensive ability, then graphs it out by location. The expected delta part means that this particular graph then measures it against what should be expected given the current count. So, for instance, if a player’s wOBA on 3-1 counts is .367, and a player gets a double it compares the weighted value of this double and subtracts .367, which is what would be expected for any pitch given that count. Furthermore, for this graph I only used times when Martin swung, to get an idea of where he hits best.
So, to make all that a little more easily understandable, that graph simply shows the locations that a hitter does relatively best when he swings, ie his personal hot zones. And as we can see, Martin is very clear as to what his hot zone is when he swings. The red parts indicate areas where him swinging produces better results than would be expected for an average pitch, while the blue areas indicate locations where him swinging produces worse results than would be expected. So, no Jim Powell, Martin’s game should not be hitting outside pitches the opposite way. In an ideal world, in hitters counts, a players swing rate graph should closely match his expected wOBA delta on swings graph.
Now, I don’t want to get too down on Prado’s plate approach, as it may simply be the case that he has a hard time differentiating strikes from balls, inside from out, and there’s not much he can do about it. I doubt that is the case, but it’s at least a plausible explanation. However, if it’s possible for him to do so, Prado could definitely see a large spike in his productivity if he was more intelligently selective. He gets himself into far too may 0-1 counts by taking pitches he could rake and then he swings at far too many poor pitches in hitters counts where he should be selective and wait for a pitch. Even putting aside the holes he gets himself in, Prado should be looking for inside pitches to drive in favorable and early counts much more. When he’s ahead in the count he should lay off outside pitches, and then only leverage his ability to slap the ball into right field when he gets behind in the count, not when he’s ahead in the count.
Prado has obviously been a great player during his tenure for the Braves. I’m simply saying that given his talent level, he could actually be an even better hitter.
edit: Here is a great video showing why Martin is so deadly on inside pitches. Look at how fast he clears the head of the bat. He doesn’t even really start his swing until the ball is around 15 feet away, but still gets the head of the bat all the way around on a fastball and pulls it.
edit2: There has been some wondering if Martin just doesn’t get a whole lot of inside pitches to hit, and thus that shapes his outlook, ie because pitchers throw him pitch after pitch outside, he starts looking that way, and is thus surprised when he does get one in his wheelhouse inside and is frozen. Reasonable quandary, but numbers just don’t bear it out. Here is a graph of where he gets pitched:
As we can see, pitchers shy away from the inside part of the plate a tiny bit, but that’s a pretty normal amount for any hitter, and it indicates that Prado is being thrown a pretty fair amount of pitches inside.
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Interesting read.
Hoping to see Prado at 6 or 7 in the order come April but not holding my breath.
@1
yeah, in an ideal world of no hit and runs and other types of overmanaging the #2 spot in the order, I’d bat Heyward or chipper 2 and then put Prado 6/7th, as long as Prado could change his approach like outlined above.
“Prado’s a prototypical No. 2 hitter, and he does everything that you want in a No. 2-hole hitter” -Brian McCann
I can almost guarantee Prado is hitting 2nd on opening day (provided he’s healthy). Fredi loves this type of baseball logic, if McCann is saying it there’s no way Fredi isn’t thinking the exact same thing.
Excellent article. It was obvious that Prado could crush anything coming in on his hands, but I never realized just how bad he was at hitting pitches on the outside and even near the center of the plate. I wonder if this is the kind of stuff opposing pitchers/catchers see, and if it is, why the hell would they bother throwing anywhere close to Prado?
@3
I don’t hate Prado hitting second. He’s a decent enough hitter that it’s not a terrible misallocation of resources. It’s not ideal, but its not awful either.
Prado isn’t so much bad at hitting pitches away from him as much as he just doesn’t hit them for any sort of power. middle out he’s just a singles hitter.
Pitchers do have something of a tendency to feed Martin pitches outside, however, they may not be seeing the really advanced statistics by location, perhaps they’re only seeing batting average by location, where due to the empty singles Martin is less extreme just using batting average.
Also, I think it’s something of the same effect that caused Jim Powell (who I have a lot of respect for) to say Martin’s game is hitting the ball away from him the opposite way. For some reason that’s the perception with Martin, even though it couldn’t be further from the truth. This is perhaps especially the case because Martin isn’t the kind of hitter that opposing pitchers really spend a lot of time thinking about a game plan to pitch to him. Opposing pitchers probably just approach Martin using their normal game plan for a middle infielder.
Why doesn’t Prado step closer to home? Instead of crushing balls and strikes inside, he could crush middle of the plate strikes and inner half strikes.
@5
Yeah, I would like to see him move a little closer to the plate. Force pitcher to either hit him (with his armor) or throw him a pitch he can handle.
I think some may be forgetting/undervaluing one key ingredient, prior to the arrival of Bourn, Prado was being used as a leadoff hitter. One of the key things asked of a leadoff hitter is to work the opposing pitcher to induce as many pitches thrown as possible, but to also give your teams pitcher a little bit of a break. If Tim Hudson just grounded out, you wouldn’t want Prado going to the plate and making an out on the first pitch.
This mindset wouldn’t be easy to shake since it would always be a possibility to be plugged back into the leadoff slot. Now, since Bourn has arrived, I don’t think anyone will see anything different. Prado will be asked to be picky in order to see if Bourn attempts to steal OR to move Bourn up to second or third (looking for outside pitches to shoot to the gap into right field, bunt, etc..) and setup Chipper, McCann, or Heyward with a RISP.
@7
So your justification for Prado sacrificing 700 points of slugging percentage is making productive outs?
Your justification for him taking pitches that he DESTROYS is to give Tim Hudson one more pitch’s worth of rest? I’m sure Hudson would rather have an extra run that Prado might provide by crushing a 0-0 inside fastball than the 13 seconds of rest that taking that pitch provides.
Is it just me or did Prado seem more crouched than ever at the plate last season (especially earlier in the season). I haven’t really heard anybody talk about it, but I think it is pretty noticeable. His swing seemed a bit out of cotrol at the point of contact due to coming up out of the crouch and swinging the bat forward. Kind of difficult to describe, does anyone else notice this?
I’ve always been amazed that Prado could do such a great job of keeping his strikeouts in check considering his lack of selective at the plate.
This analysis is freaking awesome, Franklin.
@10
selectiveness and strikeouts have an odd relationship. Part of Prado’s issue is that he’s very good at making weak contact. Perhaps the best the game has right now. He can foul off just about any pitch within a foot of the strike zone. Similar to what Kevin pointed out a while back with Dan Uggla, Prado may in fact do better to strike a little more, because he’s waiting for better pitches to hit and swinging harder at them.
Great point! Hope it gets back to him!
Great article, I would tell anyone who was watching a game with me that when Prado stepped up to bat, you better believe he aint swinging at the first pitch. Apparently, 83% of the time I was right.
I would love to see a breakdown of when those swings came during the season, because there was a stretch towards the beginning of the season maybe 30 or so games that he never swung at the first pitch.
@14
It was actually more extreme than that. The 16.9% number I quoted was for balls IN THE STRIKE ZONE. He actually only swung at 11% overall. So, 89% of the time you were right.
Also those numbers are from 2009-2011, not just 2011.
also, @14
During the first 28 games of the 2011 season, Prado swung at the first pitch 7% of the time over 129 pitches. Including only ONE time on a ball on the inner third of the plate.
Great article. One of the most interesting reads I’ve gotten off of this site in years, and I am a daily visitor. From what time did you pull this data from? was it career numbers or was it 2011 numbers? I also think it would be worth a look to compare his 2010 and 2011 graphs.
Sorry frank, just saw your comment where you mentioned that all of the numbers were from 2009-2011. Do you know if the graphs from 09 or ’10, are similar to that of 2012?
Franklin,
I agree that Prado’s approach could use some work, but I’d be interested to know how often Martin is thrown a first-pitch fastball on the inside third of the plate. Pitchers go by the scouting reports and if a guy is a first ball fastball hitter and a great inside-pitch hitter, he’s not likely to be thrown that pitch, especially on the first pitch of the at-bat. So, I guess what I’m saying is, it’s one thing to say he only swings at 21% of pitches thrown in his ‘happy zone’ (inner-third of the plate) on 0-0 counts, but it’s another thing to consider what kind of pitches those were. Hitters typically go up there looking for a fastball to hit on the first pitch. So if a guy is sitting on a fastball and an off-speed pitch is thrown, he’s not going to swing unless he wants to look like he’s swinging at a 2-strike pitch and fighting it off. I would doubt that pitchers are eager to throw a first pitch fastball to a guy that has a 1.044 OPS on inside pitches over a three year span.
@19
from 2009-2011 Prado saw 323 first pitch fastballs over the inner 1/3 of the plate (out of 1748 pitches). That’s almost exactly in line with league average rates for first pitch inner third fastballs, actually it’s a little bit higher than the league average. He swung at these inner 1/3 fastballs at 16.1%, which pretty much exactly identical to the percentage he swung at any type of strike on the first pitch. And is well below the 52% league average for fastballs over the inner 1/3 on 0-0 counts.
Pitchers still give him fastballs there on 0-0 counts because they know Prado just takes pretty much every first pitch, unless he’s called on to hit and run or bunt.
@18
For the most part the approach stuff is similar across all the years. The results graphs are obviously a little different, partly through just random variation, partly because his results across all measures weren’t as good last year.
From the looks of it, Prado should benefit from standing VERY CLOSE to the plate. lol
So I assume that it’s not a good thing that Prado said earlier this spring that he was too pull happy last year and needs to focus on going the other way…
@23
Overall, not a good thing, but not totally bad either. Prado did get himself in trouble at times last year by trying to pull pitches that were outside. A weird thing that I somewhat picked up on with Prado is that he has trouble with pitches right down the middle, because it’s like he can’t seem to decide if he should pull the ball or inside out it. He’s actually a little better at hitting outside pitches than he hits pitches down the middle (but nowhere near as good as he is at hitting inside pitches).
If I were talking to Prado, I’d tell him when the count to his advantage, look for pitches inside he can drive. When it’s not, look to take the ball the opposite way.
But no, it would really be a disservice to Prado’s game if he looked to become a right field slap hitter in all counts and totally threw his doubles and home runs game out the window, which come mostly when he pulls the ball.