Kendrick just isn’t that good a hitter.

Is there really anything more that needs to be said here?

I’d really like to see the minor league trend line with Kendrick. I was following him for a while, and his low BB rate and high BABIP rates were yellow flags early, but he had good LD% and maintained the high BABIP for several years, so I thought he could’ve been an Ichiro-type hitter, just a high BABIP career hitter. I expected a 300 hitter who could hit 50-60 XBH a year, and if he was at the top of a solid lineup, he could be a solid fantasy player.

He came in 2007 and did what I’d expected, he hit over 30 XBH in 353 PAs, his LD% was a little elevated, as was his BABIP vs what I thought he’d do. But overall his performance was what I expected. But his XBH% was not good at all, which should’ve been a yellow flag, in the minors it had been around 39%, and was 28%.

The same in 2008, his LD% came down a little, as did his BABIP and overall stats, but still kinda what I expected, 30+ XBH in 361 PAs. His XBH still was not good at 30. I was chalking some of this under performing to health.
 
This year his LD% tanked, as did his BABIP, and his value tanked, and they dropped him. Not sure if this was him pressing or what because he had a really good spring. Still, just hitting 30% of his hits for XBH. This after a solid spring.

So you’re looking at a 360 lifetime minor league hitter, who hit over 39% of his hits in full season ball for XBH, so its not like a Jeremy Reed situation, he was hitting things solidly in the minors, at every stop. But in the majors, he didn’t seem to be making as solid contact as he had before, as almost 10% fewer of his hits were going for extra bases.

I’m not ready to write him off yet. He was universally considered a batting champ type player. His performances in the minors were pretty consistent, good LD%, good XBH%, high BABIP. So what went wrong? Did one of those injuries cause him to change his approach? Is he hurt?

10 walks is 10 more times on base and 10 more times not making an out. Over the course of 600 plate appearances, it may not seem like much, but it’s worth a full 0.013 points of wOBA.

Anyway, in years past he’s seen 3.28 pitches per PA (2007) and 3.45 pitches per PA (2008). It’s up to 3.66 now. Seeing more pitches per plate appearances is not a bad thing. It’s an indication of patience and being selective. It also means he’ll take more walks, which is a good thing. There is a strong correlation between taking pitches and productivity.

His ISO power is right in line with his career line. So if he’s making weaker contact, it’s not being reflected there. Actually, his HR / FB is up to 9.5%, which is considerably higher than he’s had it ever before and is getting closer to league average. HIs previous years have been horrible.

His contact rate overall is 78%, right in line with his career norms and he’s hitting pitches over the plate right about where he should be, a 91% rate. So he’s having no problems putting wood on the ball. He’s swinging at garbage less, 34.9% out of zone (37.1% career average). High contact rates are good for the hacktastic. If they’re swinging and missing more, then they’re in trouble.

StatCorner (www.statcorner.com) has some other stats that they track. Of the 741 pitches he’s seen, he’s swung at 50.7% of them, missing 21% of the time, and thus making contact 79% of the time. Here’s the trick, his ball in play percentage of the times he makes contact is at 50.8’%, lowest he’s ever been (57.9% in 2008, 61.7% in 2007). (Statcorner also reports he’s taking more balls and fewer strikes.)

So what does this mean? Fouling off more pitches? Is this an indicator of a lack of hitting talent? I said it before, and I"ll say it again, none of the other stats seem to be indicating that he should be putting up worse numbers than before.

Except one. The line drive rate. It is clear that he’s not squaring up pitches like he has in the past, and that’s killing him. The question, then, is whether it’s a question of talent or a question of injury or something else. I don’t think it’s talent. If he was a true talent 13% line drive guy, he’d have done that the whole time. Seems to me that there’s something else bugging Kendrick. He may not be healthy. He may be completely frustrated and pressing. I don’t know, but I don’t think he’s just not “that good a hitter”.

There are certainly good arguments to be made for his overhype in the minors, but I don’t think his skill sets are that flawed that they can’t reach some level of major league success. Not all star, but still useful.

By the by, he’s on pace to be a 1.5 win player with his glove at second. So his defense isn’t in question.

Pretty simple, really.

We can use certain stats that are heavily reflected in the skill sets (LD%, for example) to predict future performance or to discover anomalies and aberrations. We don’t take someone’s results as a genuine reflection of talent unless it correlates to the skill sets.

In this case, I think he’s making more contact, which should equal more balls in play, which should even out over time to mean more base hits as well as more outs. Kendrick’s line drive rate is the only thing that bothers me.