2024-04-16 17:05:11
“That’s not baseball. “The players are very dissatisfied.”
Coach Kim Tae-hyung, who leads professional baseball team Lotte, said this ahead of the visit to Gocheok Sky Dome in Seoul on the 14th.
Here, ‘that’ is the Automatic Ball and Strike System (ABS).
Contrary to the prediction that the introduction of ABS would be advantageous for pitchers, there is a high-throw, low-low atmosphere at the beginning of the season.
As of the 14th, the league average OPS (on-base percentage + slugging power) was 0.761, up 0.049 from last year (0.712).
On the other hand, Lotte is living in an era where they are the only players with a team OPS of 0.638.
So, it is difficult to see it as strange that Director Kim is dissatisfied with ABS.
![ABS What is that?… How bad is Lotte at batting?[데이터 비키니]](https://dimg.donga.com/wps/NEWS/IMAGE/2024/04/15/124487834.1.jpg "ABS What is that?… How bad is Lotte at batting?[데이터 비키니]")
It cannot be said that the reason Lotte is unable to hit is necessarily due to ABS.
This is because Lotte’s batting lineup is basically in the ‘let’s swing it and see’ mode.
When the batter swings the bat, the ABS does not judge balls or strikes.
First of all, a total of 2853 balls were thrown by the opposing team’s pitcher to Lotte batters until this day.
Lotte hitters swung the bat 48.6% of the time = they sent the pitch to fair or foul territory or missed it.
Of course, 48.6% is the highest among the 10 professional baseball teams.
Swinging the bat basically means that you had the intention to hit the ball.
However, 11.1% of all pitches thrown by pitchers against Lotte batters ended in missed swings.
Of course, this ratio is also the highest among the 10 teams in the league.
Fortunately for Lotte, the percentage of missed swings among swing attempts (22.9%) is not the highest.
KT (23.1%) ranks first in this ratio, ahead of Lotte.
However, it is inevitable that the expression ‘margin of error’, which you may have heard here and there during the general election, comes to mind.
The reason why Lotte’s batting lineup has a lot of missed swings is because they often try to swing at balls that are outside the strike zone, that is, balls that could be balls.
Lotte batters swung their bats at 34.2% of the balls that could have been balls.
Of course, this time too, it is the highest record among the 10 teams in the league.
For reference, the league average was 28.9%.
As a result, Lotte became the team with the highest swing strikeout rate in the league (78.7%).
It’s even weirder if you can’t distinguish between when to swing and when to endure, and the results are good.
With the development of pitch and batted ball tracking systems, a record that is receiving attention is the average batted ball speed.
The approach is that if you hit a strong (fast) ball, the probability of it becoming a hit increases in the long run, even if it goes directly in front of the fielder.
The batted balls hit by Lotte batters so far have flown at an average speed of 129.2 km/h.
As you would expect, Lotte is the only team whose speed does not reach 130 km/h.
Still, Lotte did well in the spring, so she was nicknamed ‘Bomde.’
However, this year, perhaps because the hottest March and April in the history of meteorological observations continued, even spring disappeared.
Lotte’s batters are working hard to keep the fans going, but fans’ hearts are still boiling.
Wouldn’t Lotte fans be more dissatisfied with their cheering team players than Lotte players are dissatisfied with ABS?
Lotte, whose winning percentage has dropped to 0.222 (4 wins, 14 losses) after losing 6 games in a row, will play a 3-game series with LG during the week at Jamsil Stadium in Seoul and then travel to Sajik on the weekend to face KT.
At the end of this week, will the team’s winning percentage still be higher than the team’s batting average (0.243)?
Reporter Hwang Gyu-in [email protected]
2024-04-16 17:05:11