Is Tex getting himself out? Revisiting his batted ball and plate discipline data

Almost exactly one month ago, I wrote a piece asking what was going on with . In it, I concluded that while Tex was having a pretty unlucky season.

The moral of the story is that Tex’s batted ball profile is all out of whack for whatever reason. Given what he’s done, though, he should be doing a lot better than he is. Even with all these calculations of what SHOULD be happening, Mark Teixeira is still having a pretty damn good season, especially given the “new” offensive climate. Still, wouldn’t it be nice for things to start trending towards where they should be?

Last night, I was reminded of Tex’s relative struggles in 2011 when friend to the blog mused the :

Mark Teixeira’s .340 OBP is rather distressing.

Considering Tex has a career .373 OBP, that is a bit distressing. I replied that Tex’s walk rate coming into last night’s game was 11.0%, which is good and just below Tex’s career average (11.5). Still, it caused me to wonder if there were things Tex was doing to help get himself out.

The first thing I’ll look for when wondering that is where his Out of Zone Swing Percentage is (O-Swing). Right now, it’s at a career high 27.4 and has been rising since 2009. However, it’s worth noting that it’s still below the MLB average (30.3) and for whatever reason, the league O-Swing has been rising recently, too. Tex is also making contact with said out of zone pitches at the highest rate of his career (69.5%, 57.7% career, though he’s been steadily rising, as has the major league average). Still, if you’re making contact with bad pitches, chances are you’re not going to hit those balls very hard. If you don’t hit balls hard, you’re probably not going to get a lot of hits.

Let’s take a look at how hard Tex is hitting the ball by examining his BABIP, LD% and his HR/FB%. While BABIP can’t truly show us how hard a guy is hitting the ball, but if you have a high BABIP, chances are you’re hitting the ball hard. At the time of my last article, Tex’s BABIP was .218. Now, it’s up to .232. So, more balls have been landing for hits off of Tex’s bat, and that’s always encouraging. His LD%, though, is at a career low 18.3% so it seems he’s not hitting the ball as hard as he has in the past (but it’s been declining since he joined the Yankees). His HR/FB is still right around his career average, so when he’s putting the ball in the air, he’s hitting it hard—mostly. His IFFB% is still high, which is discouraging.

Since I wrote the last post, Tex’s wOBA dropped from .369 to .367 and his wRC+ has dropped from 132 to 131. So, production wise, there hasn’t been a lot of movement from Tex in the last month. It looks like we’re pretty much at the point where, unless there’s an insane hot streak, Tex’s numbers now are about how they’ll look for the rest of the year. Based on the plate discipline and batted ball data, it appears that Tex may be helping pitchers out by chasing pitches out of the zone (and hitting them). He’s still turning enough balls into extra-base hits, though, (.260 IsoP) that he’s not hurting the team.