Just teach him first. I bet he'd be great (in time) if he was willing to learn it. This outfield is too crowded. White is a big hole in the lineup, and the upcoming Yankee series will be tough. They're already making moves, we should too.
Remember, everyone, if you win just 2 out of every 3 games in MLB baseball, there's a name for that: "one of the top ten winning teams of all time."
As much complaining about White, Yuli is getting a free pass. White actually has a better OBP .325 to .288. More walks 22-13.
I'm not going to defend White's continued presence, but I'll call out something that is very clear and I think worthy of praise about him: he has a pretty good eye. It seems like he sucks up a lot of pitches in each at-bat. Now, a lot of times he'll still completely blow it in the end, but he does also draw a fair amount of walks. As I've said before, I don't think Yuli really knows what to do with each at-bat this year. He seems lost, and someone needs to work with him. Historically, he's more of a let-him-swing type, and his unique swing has let him hit a lot of balls nobody else could hit or wouldn't choose to hit. This year, though, there's something off, and now he's getting punished for being fast and loose with his pitch selection. Meanwhile, you've got the Killer B(r)s with their excellent eyes staying relevant with generally consistent high average and maintaining their spots in the lineup. I think as pitching gets ever deadlier, being able to select your pitches is going to be an even more important skill. Especially if you're building on this reputation of being an RBI guy, especially with RISP.
Tyler White sees more pitches than anyone else on the team, I believe. That being said, have you seen how many times he strikes out looking on pitches fully within the strike zone "box"? White has struck out 54 times and walked 23. Of the players with 100+ at bats, Yuli and Jake have a significantly worse ratio and Correa a slightly worse ratio. Someone with a "pretty good eye" ought to have a much closer K to BB ratio. Also, in about 25% of his at bats, he has started out 0-2.
K/BB ratio is not the best tool to judge eye for someone with such an extreme strategy at the plate. White has a very patient approach in which he doesn't swing early at the count unless he thinks it is a pitch he is prepared to hit well. This strategy leads to walks and hard contact when it works. Strikeouts are a bi-product of this strategy. When he's not making contact, his strategy just falls apart as he is less willing to swing (i.e., his eye says you can't hit that on a lot of strikes. Not sure his eye is wrong). White had huge contact problems early in the season, and isn't an elite contact hitter to begin. Not sure if it is random luck or a fix, but he's been making contact (though not great contact) again for about 3-4 weeks. White made the majors based on his eye/plate discipline as it had to make up for his lack to bat to ball skills.
The problem I have with his eye is how many obvious called third strikes he seems to take as well as starting out in an 0-2 hole so often. Once when Jose Cruz was asked about his approach to hitting he said something like “see a good pitch, hit a good pitch”.
Is that the fault of his eye or the bi-product of his patient strategy which has been worsen by his lack of contact this season? White likely could start swinging more to remove a lot of the 0-2 counts and called third strikes. It would likely be replaced by a lot of grounders, GIDPs, swinging strikeouts, and would remove the walks. Walks are all he has at the moment. Considering he has poor contact skills, I would not expect much good in the form of batted balls at swinging at pitches he doesn't like/guessed wrong. He does not adjust well mid-swing to poorly guessed pitches like Yuli.
I’d just like to see him do something different. While getting walks is his skill set right now, his OBP is .329 which puts him around 64 among players with 150+ at bats. And...he is 119th in slugging - next to last, only ahead of Rio Ruiz. Shake it up.
Good point. I guess "pretty good eye" was not the right term. What I was trying to get across was that he does seem to soak up a lot of pitches in his at-bats. The fact that he doesn't turn that into his advantage is really the reason why I can't defend keeping him around. I mean, at least he's sort of wearing out pitchers, but yeah, the advantage is supposed to shift to the batter as the at-bat goes on, and that doesn't seem to consistently or even frequently happen with him.
He can't change what has happened. He's still swinging at the same number of balls and strikes (Eye, approach seem unchanged), but he might already be fixed as he's rocking an above 0.400 OBP and above 0.500 slugging since June 6th. Small sample. Could be he fixed whatever was causing the lack of contact, could be just luck, or somewhere in between. He's had 4 called third strike threes over this time period. BABIP is unsustainable, but his exit velocity shows his power numbers should be better lately. I don't care how a guy gets out. I care about production. The getting to two strikes is more a problem for me than the called third strikes as it indicates he's not getting production from hitter counts.
Just thought this was interesting. Since this thread was on the first page still, decided to drop it here.
