Travis Snider, Oh How I Weep

All right. Sorry I took so long to get back into this. Have had some stuff going on that consumed a rather large chunk of my time, and with so much (unequivocally better) analysis out there, four seam fastball wasn’t really a priority. My schedules cleared up for the time being though, so i'm going to aim for at least one post a week.

Any who, onto the actual post.

The other day while surfing the interweb, I stumbled across Travis Snider’s fangraphs page. I decided, being the egregious baseball nerd that I am, to look to see if I could find any factors that helped turn his season around before his injury. When I looked down to his month-by-month splits, this is what greeted my eyes.

May/April BB%            14.5%

May                           4.3%

August                       5.6%

Sept/Oct                     2.0%

Is it just me, or does that scare the shit out of anyone? His k% remained in the mid to high 20s, but his BB% took a huge dip. Could this be another GODDAMN IT CITO!!!!! Moment, or was Snider just pressing? In his first month, he had some awful fucking luck. We’re talking about Henry Ziegland unlucky here. His LD rates were above average, his GB% was just fine, and he didn’t hit an exorbitant amount of fly balls. Yet his BABIP for April was .157.  Then, he decided to start swinging at everything, and his BABIP skyrocketed to .467, the lone reason he had any success at all in May. His BB% fell into the abyss, and his K% rose (and would continue too till the end of the year). I can’t get month-by-month splits for it, but almost all of Snider’s Swing% rates increased compared to his 2009 season. So far his career BB% and K% look like this:

8.1% BB

29.4% K

Mystery Players Third year in MLB

6.0% BB

20.1% K

Can you guess who the player is?

Jeff. Fucking. Francoeur.

Awesome.

Have a look at this nifty BB/K graph

Or maybe their OBP comparison will be more to your liking.

…. Goddamnit.

If you’re like me, you thought Travis Snider was a god. That he would single handedly deliver the Jays mountains and mountains of championships. Well…uh yeah. Not feeling so sure about that anymore. Don’t get me wrong, he could rub off the Cito-stain and return to his minor league levels, but after looking at this stuff, right now I see him as a .260/.320/.450 guy until he figures out how to balance taking a walk and swinging with reckless abandon.