Chris Johnson and swing batter batter

Remember in Little League or PAL (like I played) where the players on the field would chant, "Swing Batter Batter," before each pitch? Apparently, Chris Johnson of the Atlanta Braves is still hearing those chants in his head. Of course, Johnson has had multiple occurrences of blowing up with his temper, so who knows what else is going on in his head. But the bottom line is that Johnson does not walk very much.

Johnson has never walked much, even going back to his minor league days. But last year he broke out and batted .321 and his 5.3% walk rate at least pushed him up to a good .358 on-base percentage. And he finished with a 127 wRC+ to cap off a good season that was somewhat of a surprise.

The Braves rewarded his season by giving him a $23.5 million, three-year extension that covers 2015-2017 with an option year after that. The good news is that he followed his good season by batting .281 so far this season. But that is as far as the good news goes. His on-base percentage is .299. That's right, .299.

The problem is that Chris Johnson has tumbled from an already low 5.3 walk percentage last year to a staggeringly low 2.2%. A walk percentage that low is pretty hard to accomplish. How hard? Let me show you.

After 81 games, or exactly half the season, Chris Johnson has seven walks in 325 plate appearances. As is easy to do math-wise, Johnson's pace is to finish with fourteen walks. In the last ten years, only five times has a batter finished with more than 500 plate appearances with less than fifteen walks in a season.

To go one step further, in the last ten seasons, no one with more than 600 plate appearances (a pace Johnson is on) has finished with less than 16 walks. So Johnson's pace would be somewhat historic--at least for the last ten years anyway.

The last time a batter finished with 600 plate appearances and less than fifteen walks was Deivi Cruz in the year 2000. So this is definitely something to keep an eye on for the rest of the season.

Right about now, that extension the Braves gave Chris Johnson isn't looking very good. Fangraphs has his season at 0.1 fWAR and baseball-reference.com has him even worse at -1.0 rWAR. That will hardly justify anything over league minimum money.

So what has led to Johnson's plunge in walk rates? As you might expect, a lot of it is found in his O-Rate or the amount of times he swings at a pitch outside the strike zone. His rate is the highest of his career at 44.1%. His overall swing rate of 57.6% is also the highest of his career. His O-rate is the second highest in baseball and his overall swing rate is third highest.

Add to those numbers the fact that his contact percentage and swing and miss percentage are the second highest of his career, the highest they have been since his second season in 2010. His first pitch strike percentage is also quite high at over 61%.

To add to Johnson's woes, his slugging is way off too. His slugging percentage is 96 points below last year and his overall OPS is 156 points lower! His 84 wRC+ completes the picture of inadequacy he has going on this season.

It is quite possible that Chris Johnson will improve in the second half. The Braves and the team's fans can only hope such will be the case. A .281 batting average that only adds up to a .299 on-base percentage is a bit embarrassing--especially in this day and age where getting on base is a key criteria.

Cannot give Terry Pendleton a pass on dust up with Johnson

I happened to be flipping through some links this morning and came upon this report of a dust up between Braves' coach, Terry Pendleton, and Chris Johnson. I found the replay to be quite disturbing.

The problem for me here is that I have no idea of the history that preceded the incident. I do not know if Chris Johnson is a jerk or not. I do not know if he did throw his helmet that supposedly hit Pendleton. All I know is what I see and what I see is a highly physical and aggressive move on the part of Pendleton that was not answered back by Johnson.

How is this different than what happened with Tino Martinez? Pendleton's actions were in full view of the entire team, a face-losing thing for Johnson. Not only did Pendleton grab Johnson's jersey, but he pushed him aggressively and I can tell you from experience such a push hurts.

Pendleton is Johnson's superior. As a superior, you have to restrain yourself. You should never show up an subordinate in front of his peers--or in front of America for that matter.

No matter what kind of guy Johnson is, no matter what happened, Pendleton has to be better than that and he was not. I do not see how Pendleton's actions go without discipline. As someone who has been in "management" for decades, I found what happened here totally inappropriate and even more than that, wrong.

The Braves' hidden star

A guy named Chris is really tearing the cover off the baseball after being traded from a team in Texas to a contender. If you wrote that sentence and showed it to most fans, they would immediately think of the Chris named Davis. But there is another one that is doing very good things for the Atlanta Braves and this one is named Chris Johnson.

Chris Johnson is currently leading the National League in batting. Surprised? Yes, me too. He is currently batting .344 with an on-base percentage of .385. His wOBA of .371 is eighteenth among all Major League regulars and just behind his teammate, Freddie Freeman, who is also having a very good season and is getting more ink about it than Johnson.

Those two corner infielders have become the cornerstones of the Braves' offense and there is no way anyone would have seen that coming. Both have on-base percentages over .380. While neither is very good on defense and on the base paths, they sure have been good at the plate.

Is this year's success of Chris Johnson a fluke? Is it an outlier? It could be. For a big guy and a corner infielder, you would like to see more power. His .479 slugging percentage is more based on his high hit totals and doubles (24) and not on his power (7 homers).

But what stands out about Johnson's great season is his BABIP. His current BABIP sits at .427. Holy smokes, that is high. But then again, his career BABIP is .365, so it is not like he has never been good at hitting balls where the fielders are not. The key to his high BABIP is his line drive percentage.

And from Johnson's career, the line drive percentage has always been high. His career 25.1% line drive percentage is up there with guys like Votto and Mauer. The difference between those guys and Johnson was that they did not strike out often so more balls in play led to more consistent production.

But Johnson has cut down on his strikeouts. His current rate of 20.9% is three percentage points lower than his career average. Combine that with his amazing 29.1% line drive percentage this season and you have more balls in play that are hit on a line and the batting average and the BABIP reflect the change. That line drive percentage is second in baseball to only Loney of the Rays. A higher line drive percentage than Votto and Mauer? Wow.

Chris Johnson is not without some negative offensive statistics. His walk rate is not good at 6.1% and is only one percentage point above his lifetime walk rate. He has a little better plate discipline than his earlier years with the Astros, but not by much. He still swings at 37 to 38 percent of pitches out of the zone (depending on the source you use). That is a free swinger by definition.

His swing and miss rate is in the double-digits, never a great thing. But we are quibbling here. The fact is that Chris Johnson is having a very, very good season. He has more than replaced Chipper over there at third and his defense there--not great--is about par to what Chipper was in his later years.

Chris Johnson has been quietly effective at the plate all season. He has not had a negative month at the plate. He is ringing line drives. Would you like to see more homers, less strikeouts and more plate discipline? Yes. But the bottom line is  that Chris Johnson, along with Freeman, has become a key component of the Braves offense and one that will ride straight into the playoffs.

Six fielders who should be DHs

Last night on Twitter, Dave Cameron responded to a statement made by Michael Morse that he was vehemently against being used in the designated hitter role: "My suggestion to all these guys that don't want to DH - Don't suck at fielding, then." That quote leads to today's post which is: Six fielders who should be DHs. Why six? Who knows. All posts in the last week have started with six. Just humor me.

The problem identifying the top six worst defensive players is that Fangraphs and Baseball-reference.com do not always agree on defensive statistics. So the criteria becomes, then, who do both sites agree on as woeful fielders? Three years of data was used in the criteria and then players who are playing out of position are taken out. For example, nobody has lost more runs to average for his fielding than Shawn Kemp. Well, that is because he should not be playing center field. Should we punish Kemp for playing out of position? Perhaps so. But it did not seem fair here because he might actually be good in left or right fields.

So, without further ado, here are six fielders that should be DH's

1. Mark Reynolds - Reynolds has been just about the worst third baseman that baseball has seen in the last twenty years. The Orioles finally got a hint and moved him to first base halfway through last season. And from what was seen of Reynolds there on television, the move seemed to work pretty well. Except the numbers do not agree. According to the fielding metrics, Reynolds was just as bad at first base for his time there (-8). Reynolds has now lost 38 runs for his teams over the last three seasons which is about three and a half wins. In five seasons, he has lost 61 runs for his teams. Ugh. Hey, at least he did not strike out so much.

2. Chris Johnson - Johnson might be one of those guys who is out of position at third base. The Astros did have him play first base for six games last season. And there is a reason why people lump these players into the 1B/DH category like they are the same thing. I do not agree and think first base is a highly underrated important position on the infield. But either way, Johnson should not wear a glove. He has cost his team 32 runs in the field in the last three seasons.

3. Ryan Doumit - This catcher turned outfielder is heading quickly into a DH for the Twins and that is a very good thing. Doumit can hit but he was just about the worst fielding catcher in baseball and him plodding around the outfield is downright scary. His affectionate name here is "DumbMitt." As a catcher, he allowed nine passed balls in two out of three seasons. One of those seasons led the league. He can't throw anyone out either. The Twins used him 48 times as the DH last season. Keep him there, Twinkies.

4. Wilson Betemit - It has always confused me that teams have constantly desired Betemit as a player. Oh, he is versatile and can play all four infield positions...poorly. In fact, his last name is an oxymoron. He is certainly not a bettemitt. He is a worse mitt. Betemit has cost his teams 29 runs in just about the fewest games played on our list for the three years (281). He is a DH and a DH only. He is not versatile but simply can play awful defense in more positions than most people.

5. Mike Morse - Morse is built like a Greek god or something. The guy is a stud. Perhaps he should have been a tight end in football. Or perhaps the women think he has a tight end. But he is more the Johnny Five kind of muscular guy than anything else. There is a reason Morse is fighting the DH role...because he is one. He is not a good first baseman. He is not a good right fielder. He is not a good left fielder. He is a handsome devil of a DH if there ever was one.

6. Carlos Quentin / Ty Wigginton - Quentin has had some injury problems to his wheels over the years, so perhaps this is unfair. But the facts are the facts. Quentin has played parts of six seasons, all in the outfield, and yet has 24 errors. That is a lot for an outfielder. He improved to terrible from really really bad with the Padres last season. He only cost them 8 runs this past season after having double digit types of bad seasons before that. But B-R somewhat disagrees with Fangraphs how bad he has been Wigginton has played for a bunch of teams at a bunch of positions and is really not that good at any of them. According to B-R, he has cost his teams 118 runs in his career. Yeesh. He has played five different positions and all were played poorly.

So there you have it. Those are six players (seven really) who have been so bad on defense that they should be DHs. What other thing do they all have in common? They are all bad base runners too. Slow and fielding do not usually go together well. But speed, or lack of it, does sort of define the DH position.