I decided to take a look at our batted ball profiles compared to the ML average and if our middle-opposite field hitting approach is actually causing some of the power decline we've seen with the team in 2022. Here's what I found.
Name
Pull
Pull wOBA
Pull GB%
Pull GB wOBA
Pull FB%
Pull FB wOBA
Pull LA
Pull EV
Pull Pitch
Center
Center wOBA
Center GB%
Center GB wOBA
Center FB%
Center FB wOBA
Center LA
Center EV
Center Pitch
Oppo
Oppo wOBA
Oppo GB%
Oppo GB wOBA
Oppo FB%
Oppo FB wOBA
Oppo LA
Oppo EV
Oppo Pitch
League Average
37.80%
0.426
54.80%
0.177
18.10%
0.876
6.1
89.9
87.9
37%
0.317
46.50%
0.214
25.45%
0.311
9.5
88.9
89
25.10%
0.324
22%
0.401
37.90%
0.226
26
84.7
90
White Sox
35.30%
0.382
59.60%
0.172
13.68%
0.781
2.4
89.8
87.2
37.25%
0.325
48.10%
0.221
24.40%
0.348
8.5
89.7
88.6
27.43%
0.352
25.30%
0.464
36.50%
0.198
23.2
85.7
89.4
Andrew Vaughn
29.79%
0.491
54.80%
0.231
13.70%
1.158
3.1
91.1
86.6
38.36%
0.363
56.38%
0.257
19.15%
0.672
4.4
93.9
87.9
31.83%
0.329
30.77%
0.332
32.05%
0.187
17.4
89.3
89
Luis Robert
35.50%
0.531
63.22%
0.269
10.35%
1.287
-1.5
90.9
88
36.33%
0.372
50.56%
0.315
20.22%
0.344
6.4
89.6
88.5
28.16%
0.306
20.29%
0.406
37.68%
0.306
28.6
86.1
88.8
Eloy Jimenez
34.62%
0.541
50%
0.197
27.78%
1.239
8.8
97.2
88.7
48.10%
0.298
64%
0.276
16%
0.221
-1.4
91.4
88.2
17.31%
0.098
44.44%
0
44.44%
0
13.3
89.8
92.1
Tim Anderson
30.13%
0.251
77.78%
0.158
4.17%
0
-7.3
86.3
87.2
38.91%
0.355
60.22%
0.205
16.13%
0.359
-0.1
89.5
88.3
30.96%
0.501
27.03%
0.587
32.43%
0.381
17.6
88.7
88.6
A.J. Pollock
44.40%
0.342
56.04%
0.069
10.99%
0.708
1.9
89.4
87.2
32.68%
0.283
44.78%
0.295
26.86%
0.049
13.4
89
88.4
22.93%
0.302
10.64%
0.354
38.30%
0.304
36.6
85.2
89.6
I'm sure if you've read this forum a lot, you've seen a handful of posters constantly complaining that the White Sox don't pull the ball in the air enough. The reason for that is because on average, pulled fly balls get you a .876 wOBA. That's pretty much as good as hitting a line drive. Hitting the ball up the middle and to the opposite field give you far worse results than pulling the ball, as seen by the .317 and .324 wOBA when hitting the ball to center and the opposite field. There is one caveat to pulling the ball though: you'll hit a lot of grounders since you'll probably roll over on pitches more often with that approach, as seen by the near 55% ground ball percentage when pulling the ball. This is far higher than a batted ball in any other direction. Pull-heavy teams might tend to be less consistent offensively, but when they do hit their share of fly balls in the air, they're heavily rewarded. The teams that tend to pull the ball more tend to hit more home runs.
The White Sox, in all their infinite wisdom, have gone away from the league trend and are 24th in the league in home runs and 27th in ISO despite having multiple guys in the lineup with massive raw power. They do however, lead the league in singles. When you look at the way the Sox hit, a couple of things really stand out. They don't pull the ball as much and when they do, the results kind of aren't there with the team as a whole. They pull the ball on the ground more than the league and hit way less fly balls than the league. so even though the league is having success pulling the ball, the Sox are not. They are better than league average when hitting to the opposite field and to center. So you might be able to say that the middle-out approach the organization teaches is working. Especially when the Sox get a gaudy .464 wOBA on ground balls to the opposite field. The only problem with it is that ground balls to the opposite field usually only get you singles. And the Sox as a whole don't have enough consistent hitters to link singles together to score runs. Which is why you often see the team have 6-8 hits and have like 1 or 2 runs. It sure seems like the Sox and Menechino thought they had found some kind of market inefficiency by hitting the ball to the opposite field, but in reality, they've just managed to get a bunch of hits while not scoring enough runs. You'd also think this middle-out approach would help in situations where the bases are loaded, but that obviously hasn't been the case this year. In general, the team is doing what the Sox and Menechino are preaching in terms of hitting philosophy, but the results simply are not there because the approach only works if you have a lineup full of consistent hitters. That's something that the Sox simply do not have at this point.
That being said, it doesn't have to be that way. The Sox don't have the same type of hitter all across the lineup. This middle-out hitting approach benefits some guys while it's seriously hurting others who could be helping this team score a lot more runs. One guy who benefits from the middle-out approach is Tim Anderson. As you might have guessed, he is a monster when he hits the ball the other way. And he hits the ball the other way a lot more than just about everyone on the team. However, his hitting approach basically makes him useless when he pulls the ball. He puts it on the ground a staggering 78% of the time when he pulls and he doesn't have a hit yet on a pulled fly ball this year because he's only pulled the ball in the air 4 times all year. You read that right, 4 times. Sometimes you have to wonder why teams even bother playing a LFer when he's up. The funniest part is that a decent amount of those pulled grounders are probably when the Sox had the bases loaded. TA's numbers this year aren't bad, but something still makes me think that his swing/approach are kind of broken at the moment. On the opposite end, we have AJ Pollock, who pulls the ball a lot. But his timing is so bad that he just ends up rolling over quite a bit. That's why he has a .069 wOBA on pulled grounders. Nobody really hits well on them, but .069 is something else.
Then we get to the 3 guys who I think this middle-out approach is really hurting. When Luis Robert, Andrew Vaughn, and Eloy Jimenez pull the ball, they get results. When your wOBA is over 1.000 when you pull the ball in the air, you should really think about doing it more. What's worse is that for guys like Vaughn, hitting to the opposite field isn't really working. He hits opposite field more than Tim Anderson, but only has a .332 wOBA to show for it. Luis Robert's numbers look ok when he does go opposite field, but he's also popped the ball up a ton when going that way (14 times) and it looks like he's making contact for the sake of making contact. Even in advantaged counts. So he ends up looking like a slap hitter when he looks like Mike Trout when he pulls the ball. Eloy has always had good opposite field power, but that was before MLB decided to deaden the balls even more. In a small sample this year, he has yet to get a hit on an opposite field fly ball. The majority of his power has come when he has pulled the ball. One thing to look at is the pitch velocity that these opposite field hits occur on. Outside of Eloy (small sample), all these guys are hitting pitches slower than the ML average to the opposite field. That tells me that this isn't a timing issue or that they can't pull high velocity. It just tells me that they're doing this on purpose. And if you really think about it, it doesn't make a ton of sense. Why would you sell out the power on the team for some extra singles when the league is doing the opposite and having success? It almost feels like the Sox want to be different for the sake of being different. The problem is that the approach is clearly not working. They're getting out-homered at home and even when they had a mostly healthy team in the playoffs last year, they ended up putting weak balls in play just to make contact. They probably aren't going to make a change at hitting coach this year, but I hope they do something about this in the off-season. As is, they're probably ruining some of these young hitters' careers by having them do something that isn't actually productive.
TLDR: Fire Menechino
