https://tigersminorleaguereport.com/2020/02/07/a-few-words-on-walk-rate-and-the-detroit-tigers/
A Few Words on Walk Rate and the Detroit Tigers.
TMLR
Several of us have been talking about this for years. The Tigers do not grind out at bats, and swing at anything in and more so out of the strike zone.
The f'n coaching and player development and who they draft and trade for blows dead goats.
This is part 1 of a two part series on walk rate and the Detroit Tigers
To bury the lede, later this week we?re going to take a quick look at walk rate and how it relates to winning. Today, in a related note, we?re going to take a quick look at walk rate and how it relates to the Detroit Tigers.
The Tigers were competitive for the first half of the 2010s, and while nothing is ever perfect, fans were pretty pleased with how the team was run. Bullpen construction was perhaps the biggest annual worry, and handing out large contracts to older players was another. As the decade wore on, those concerns often came to fruition, and now the Tigers are picking up the pieces from spending big on veterans (and prospect capital) for several years.
As the years passed last decade, and the competitive window was nailed shut, another concern arose among some Tigers fans: the organization?s apparent disregard for hitters who can take a walk. After a brisk stroll through the numbers, that concern appears to have some legs.
Here?s a chart of the Tigers? MLB walk rate ranking over the last ten years, keeping in mind that higher is not better:
It?s not just a big league issue either. Here?s another chart, of Detroit?s ranking in minor league walks (Low-A to Triple-A) from 2010-2019:
Not once did the Tigers rank in the top half of the league in minor league walks last decade, and their average minor league walk ranking was 21.7. To drive the point home, here?s another discouraging chart, of the two previous charts combined:
Per FanGraphs, a 5.5 BB% is the cut-off point for a ?Poor? walk rate, and a 7.0 BB% is the cut-off for ?Below Average?. The Tigers team BB% in 2019 was 6.5%, and the three players Detroit brought in to boost the offense in 2020 have career walk rates of 5.5%, 5.3% and 3.8%, in 6,754 combined career plate appearances.
It?s fairly clear Detroit just does not place much emphasis on walk rate, which is part of the problem. One final note on walk rate, for now: of the 50 playoff teams from 2016-2019, the average team BB% was 8.9%, and the average team ranking in BB% was 9.6. Only the 2015 Kansas City Royals, with a walk rate of 6.3%, finished with a lower team walk rate than the 2019 Tigers.
Those 2015 Royals may have won the World Series, but they don?t disprove the point: there?s a long list of areas that need improvement for the Tigers to get back to competing, and drafting, acquiring, and developing hitters who can walk is high up on that list.
