Plate Discipline

Two nights ago Robinson Cano added even more gaudy numbers to his already impressive season. Cano hit his fourth career grand slam (from the cleanup spot – and Seattle intentionally walked Mark Teixeira to pitch to Cano, a play so baffling you have to wonder why Daren Brown wasn’t fired on the spot) and two other RBI’s for a career high 6 RBI night. The slam was Cano’s 25th of the season.

Calling this season a breakout season for Cano is an understatement. Cano’s offensive numbers this year have exploded in a way not too many people believed they would. With the loss of Matsui, Cano was penciled in to the fifth spot during spring training. Given Cano’s track record at that point, many fans, coaches, sports writers and officials were understandably dubious.

Cano had (and still has) a sweet, beautiful swing. He showed serious power potential for a second baseman. But he had a horrible sense of the strike zone. For years, the scouting report on Cano was that he would chase. He’d chase early, he’d chase late. He chased more high fastballs than Kit Kellar. He chased low, and he would chase inside. He had the Vladimir Guerrero strike zone, except Cano did not make contact the way Vlad did.

Cano has made a concerted effort to be more disciplined at the plate. Before this year, he would often strike himself out by swinging at pitches wildly out of the zone. By tightening his understanding of the strike zone, Cano has seen improvements in many offensive categories.

Cano’s career average prior to this year was .307. He is currently hitting .323. In the early season Cano looked to vindicate all of the scouts and executives who said they expected him to win a batting title someday – he was in the top three for the first two months of the season.

Cano’s power numbers have improved as well. He has 25 home runs so far this year, which was his full season total last year. Cano’s slugging percentage, at .563, is more than 40 points higher than the next highest year in his career. Cano also has 87 RBIs. In the five hole, it is safe to assume he will surpass his previous high of 97.

The most impressive of all, though, is Cano’s increased plate discipline. Cano is not seeing many more pitches for plate appearance yet (4.3 this year to 4.5 last year), but he is being more intelligent about the pitches he swings at. Cano’s OBP is currently .388. That is 25 points above his previous best in 2006. Cano is up to 47 walks this year, far surpassing his previous high. Cano’s OPS is a stellar .958, nearly 60 points higher than his previous season best.

Since the start of spring training, both Kevin Long, the Yankees’ hitting coach, and Cano have been stressing an increased awareness of the strike zone, and laying off pitches out of it. The result of Cano’s newfound awareness of the strike zone is irrefutable. (It also helps that he has been squaring up the ball so well that several catchers have mentioned how much louder his contact is than any other hitters’.) In fact the results have been so positive it makes one wonder why this focus isn’t stressed more.

[As a brief side note, the Yankees are among the teams that are notorious for taking pitches, along with the Red Sox and Athletics, to name several. Games between the Yankees and Red Sox are so long (average 3:45) that it lead an umpire, Tim McClellan, to complain about the length of the games.]

To be fair to several front offices, this idea has been stressed before. The late ‘90’s Yankees were put together with a large focus on OBP, the idea being that if more players got on base, the team would score more runs. Moneyball documented the Oakland Athletics’ focus on OBP well – often times Oakland would scout players solely by tracking their OBP online, never seeing the player in person.

When the new ownership group of John Henry, Warner, and Lucchino took over in 2002, the front office determined that the focus of the farm system would be on taking walks and OBP. They made Ted William’s The Science of Hitting required reading for every player in the farm system. When I first read about this, it struck me as brilliant (as it still does). The minor league development programs are so essential to the growth of a player that instilling that type of focus and approach early on should be essential.

Players enter the minor league system (presumably) between the ages of 17 and 22. They are young, impressionable, and trying to catch up with a game that moves much faster to the players who are just leaving high school or college ball. (Baseball America ranks a top tier college program and competition as equivalent to a Double-A level of professional ball, so admittedly, there are different speeds right out of the gate.) These players, no matter the level from which they enter, still have a great deal to learn about the game. They should be taught as soon as possible to play the right way. Otherwise, they will just develop bad habits that will be harder to break to longer they are practiced – they will be so engrained the habits will be difficult to change.

The best minor league programs have a uniform approach to the game from top to bottom. It teaches the players how to play the major league game young, and it makes for an easier transition from level to level. Players will not have to adjust to a new approach, only a new level. It will help them stay within themselves and focus on a uniform approach.

Organizations with impressive farm systems take this approach. The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim preach fundamental defense and taking the extra base when base running from Low-A on up. The Athletics preach taking walks from the very beginning, and even scout talent that naturally have adopted that approach for the draft. The Boston Red Sox may single-handedly keep the company that prints Williams’ book in business – they purchase a copy for each player who enters Boston’s minor league system each year. From Day One, hitters are taught Ted Williams’ basic rule for hitting: wait for a good pitch to hit.

The focus on developing an eye for the strike zone and selective hitting keeps the game simple. It also allows a solid foundation from which to build other skills. It also means that the players enter the big leagues with that skill (presumably, of course) rather than have to learn the strike zone while they adjust to better location from pitchers, sharper breaking stuff, and change ups. The change of speed is often one of the more difficult adjustments for a player to make from Triple-A to the majors.