Friday, June 17, 2011

Adam Lind is Moderately Unstoppable


If I asked who had the second highest June wOBA in baseball, would you answer Adam Lind? You just might and, strangely, you would be right on the money!

Lind's June slash goes a little like .429/.500/.976, good for a .604 wOBA. Which is insane, even though two weeks means not so much and his .423 BABIP and 43% HR/FB means more than not so much.

BUT STILL.

It is fun to watch. Adam Lind is Adam Lind again. Right? Maybe.

Long-time readers know me to be bullish on Lind because of his power to all fields. Then it went away. Then he was awful. Now he's back! Did he bring his all fields power with him?

Below is a strike zone plot (from the catcher's perspective. Left-handed Lind stands on the right side of the image) of all Lind's home runs in 2011. Two pitches on the inside part of the plate; the big tot he smashed off Kevin Gregg just this week and his Opening Day blast off Carl Pavano.

Other stuff: the bigger the dot, the harder the pitch. Ye olde legend lays out the colour scheme. Let's take a look.



Nice mix of offspeed and fastballs, though the bulk of them are right over the middle of the plate. But hey, what is wrong with that? A wise(?) man once said "pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered." Which means...I'm not sure. I think it means take what you're given and do your worst with it. Right? Sure, whatever.

Anyway, I'm busting out an old trick - using the horizontal pitch postion from pitch f/x and the home run direction from Hit Tracker Online. Fun times!



Welcome back, Adam Lind. I almost forgot about that crazy home run off the left field foul pole in New York. Let's relieve it through the magic of embedded video!



No doubt all Jays fans are glad to have The Real Adam Lind back in the fold. To say the results this season are "encouraging" would be "redundant." He's great and it's great. Not in-play averages off-the-charts like he is right now, but it's fun to watch while it happens.

Reuters image courtesy of Daylife, pitch f/x stuffs from Joe Lefkowitz.

7 comments:

  1. If Lind is back, do he and Bautista make it a two-man gang?

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  2. And yet, Bautista continues to be pitched around to get to.... this guy. It's the perfect storm, the guy with the .500 obp right in front of the dude with the 1.400 ops. Like all storms, it will blow through, but what a show from the living room window.

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  3. Greg W, that was a beautiful analogy.

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  4. At some point in time, people are going to look at his numbers and realize that he's having a season on par with what I call the 'Big 3' of AL 1B (Gonzalez, Teixeira, Cabrera).

    He might be leading the team (and league) in homers if he hadn't missed that month.

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  5. Daniel, thanks.

    And Adam Lind say to Drew "More of same? Sure!"

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  6. Stats geekery: Lind is only behind JBau for AB/HR.

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