The Grass is Greener on the Other Side?

I wasn't the biggest advocate of the Khalil Greene pickup in the offseason. There is definitely an upside compared to the carousel of weak-hitting shortstops the Cardinals have employed over the past few years.

However, Greene's productive spring training led to the speculation that he may be back to his power hitting ways (.759 OPS/ 27HR in 2007). The downside is last year's stats (.559 OPS/ 10 HR, albeit in about 2/3 of the plate appearances as 2008).

So, what was the difference for Greene between 2007 and 2008?

His OBP dropped from .290 to .261 (ouch), and his isolated power dropped from .214 to .126. His batting average for balls in play was .281 in 2007 and .262 in 2008 (.284 career average, bolstered by a very "lucky" 2004).

There is obviously a decrease in just about every hitting metric. However, I am not as concerned with the OBP, as he will never be that great at getting on base (although he did have massive increases on his walk rate in 2004 and 2006). My biggest concern is the loss of power, which could be explained by GB/FB/line drive percentage.


Year GB% FB% LD%
2006 34.6 46.2 19.3
2007 35.0 47.2 17.8
2008 31.8 47.6 20.6
2009 33.3 45.5 21.2

What stands out to me the most is that 2007, a good power year for him, had less line drives than 2008. In fact, between 2007 and 2008, he replaced most of his ground balls with line drives. Perhaps the biggest difference was that 11.6 percent of his fly balls were home runs in 2007, whereas only 7.1% were in 2008.

Overall, his career average is 9.4 percent. Seeing as about 71 percent of his plate appearances end up with balls in play (in 2008), and almost half of those balls in play are fly balls, you get around 34 percent of his plate appearances ending up with a fly ball. With that in mind, a decrease of around 33 percent in the HR/FB category could make a big difference in HR rate (and thus power numbers). Essentially, in 2007 he would hit a home run in 3.9% of his plate appearances, and in 2008 he would hit a home run in 2.4 percent of his plate appearances.

Give him 600 plate appearances in a season, and this is a 6 HR difference (20 versus 14). Keep in mind that these are all percentage statistics adjusted to balls in play in 2008, so they may not jive exactly with the actual stats, as I am just trying to attribute these power drop offs to more telling "intrinsic" statistics.

I haven't watched Greene much before this year, so I don't know exactly what the answer is. Without hitting any home runs so far this year, his HR/FB% is at zero, but I think this may be the most telling statistic in terms of him getting his power back. Does anyone have any ideas? Is he just popping up more balls, giving him more "fly balls" with less home runs?

The Cardinals and Cubs square off at Wrigley today, with Wainwright versus Marshall. The Cardinals are at an important point in this early season with a four game set against the Cubs after just losing Carpenter. I am hoping for a split, but if the Cardinals could win the series, they would put the Cubs three or five games back in the standings, which would provide great momentum.