What’s up with Ryan Zimmerman at the Plate

There has been a lot of discussion lately about what’s wrong with Ryan Zimmerman. Is he aging too quickly; is he hurt; and so on.

The other day there was a debate about how he always takes the first pitch. In general, I think always is a dangerous word. The counter-argument was that he was changing up what he was doing on the first pitch.

Using the Game Day data for 2015 and 2016 (only have Nats games in 2016 and only thru early July), decided to look at if Ryan is doing something different on the first pitch. The following two tables are the results broken down by what PitchFx thought the ball was and what happened with the pitch.

• Ball – the umpire called it a ball
• Called Strike – took the pitch and it was called a strike by the umpire
• Swung – Ryan took a hack

There is a column for All of his PAs as well as a breakdown by which PA (e.g., does he react differently to a first pitch based on whether it is his first PA).

PitchFx thought it was a Ball

PitchFx thought it was a Strike

The data seems to imply that Ryan has not changed his first pitch approach between 2015 and 2016.

But at the same time, it also seems clear that the claim that he always takes the first pitch even if it is a strike, is simply not supported by this data. Maybe he takes more than the fans would like. But that is clearly not the same as always. Feel free to download a csv file of the above data.

So next, lets take a took at Ryan’s splits (by count) from Baseball Reference. The tables below are the data for each count for: 2015, 2016; and his career.

First Pitch

0-1 Count

0-2 Count

1-0 Count

1-1 Count

1-2 Count

2-0 Count

2-1 Count

2-2 Count

3-0 Count

3-1 Count

Full Count

What jumps out to me is the dramatic difference in his 2 strike results. Most batters do much worse in 2 strike counts. But these numbers show that Ryan is having much more trouble with 2 strike counts in 2016 than he did either in just 2015, or for his career.

And it is worth adding that his 3-1 results are also a bit surprising.

My take-away from this analysis is that it is probably more likely that there is something different with his 2 strike approach vs. the speculation that he is either injured on aging quickly.

So perhaps that is worthy of further investigation. But here’s hoping that when Ryan is activated, that he makes this discussion moot. MiLB rehab numbers are typically not worth much. But the fact that he is 5/12 (BA of .417) is better than, say, 1/12.

I’ve been staring at this waaaaay too long and perhaps there is some other obvious trend here that I missed. So it’s time to share these results with our readers. What do you see here?