The other day in Lakeland, A.J. Hinch sat down at lunch with Nick Maton and Matt Vierling and started buzzing them on "their strengths and weaknesses," he said. Plate discipline surely came up. It's no coincidence that two of the Tigers' offseason acquisitions share a history, as Scott Harris likes to say, of 'controlling the strike zone.'
"That's the fastest way to get to a better offense, is control the strike zone," Hinch said this week on 97.1 The Ticket. "If you look at the teams that walk, the teams that don't strike out and the teams that slug, those are the teams that you usually see playing important games in September and October. We have not ranked very high in those categories in recent years and certainly you want players that demonstrate those characteristics."
Hinch is right, self-evident as it may be. Four of the five best teams in walk rate last season made the playoffs, and all of them finished with a winning record. The five best teams in strikeout rate all made the playoffs, three of whom won their division. And the five best teams in slugging percentage all made the playoffs, four of whom won their divison.
The Tigers, who finished 30 games below .500, were second worst in walk rate, fourth worst in strikeout rate and worst in slugging percentage -- and dead last in runs scored. Their top two hitters in plate appearances, Javier Baez and Jonathan Schoop, were two of the least disciplined and least productive hitters in the majors.
So here's a statistic that Hinch and the Tigers will be watching closely in 2023: three-ball chase, he said. That is, how often a hitter foregoes a walk -- a literal free base -- by swinging at ball four. The idea isn't so much to hunt walks, but to hunt good pitches to hit.
"We don't talk a ton about walks, we don't want passive guys that don't want to hit," said Hinch. "But if you go look at three-ball chase, we have multiple returning hitters on our team that left 30, 35 up to 40 walks on the table (last season) just by chasing outside the strike zone with three balls."
Baez had the highest chase rate in the bigs last season, the fifth lowest walk rate and the lowest full-season slugging percentage of his career. Schoop had the sixth highest chase rate, the second lowest walk rate and the lowest slugging percentage of his career. Both hitters will always be free swingers, and the Tigers know that. Indeed, it's part of what makes Baez so dangerous at his best. But when pitchers are willing to help them, they have to be able to accept it.
"A more disciplined approach is going to inherently lead to more walks and that's going to inherently lead to the pitchers throwing more pitches that we can hit, or we may not get to three balls because we get better pitches to hit earlier in the count," said Hinch. "The more you control the strike zone, the more the pitcher has to pitch to the bigger part of the plate. And then we can do some damage."
It's not novel, but this is the Tigers' new offensive philosophy. In addition to Vierling and Maton, both of whom could crack the roster in platoon roles, this is why Harris targeted and acquired Justyn-Henry Malloy in the Joe Jimenez trade. Down the road, Malloy could be a middle-of-the-order bat for the Tigers. He already has the approach they covet, with the ability to do damage to all fields. The 22-year-old could be in Detroit as soon as this summer.
By the standard of controlling the strike zone, the Tigers' two best hitters are already 23-year-old Spencer Torkelson and 22-year-old Riley Greene. They had the lowest chase rates on the team last season -- and the highest walk rates -- and showed a knack for working counts. Even when the results didn't reflect it, they were hunting pitches to hit. That should yield better outcomes this season, especially for Torkelson. (The Tigers have a problem if it doesn't.)
Last season, the Tigers didn't walk. They didn't slug. They didn't do anything, at times, but strike out. They did score fewer than 3.5 runs per game for the first time in over 100 years. They won't reshape their offense in one winter, and Harris has acknowledged as much. A makeover takes time. "It has to take time," he said. But the Tigers can ground this season by following the lead of their youngest hitters, who know the importance of staying in the zone.
"It will be preached from the very beginning," said Hinch, "and I know the players are buying in."
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