Springer’s hitting approach evolving with every at-bat
SEATTLE — From the start of his career, there were two plausible reasons Astros outfielder George Springer would not become an all-around star: his health and his inability to make contact and subsequently get on base.
Everything else has been there, in eye-catching, wall-crashing form. The speed, the arm, the backflips for fun, the tremendous power and bat speed for home runs.
But a .231 hitter with a .336 on-base percentage — which is how Springer finished his injury-shortened 2014 rookie season — isn’t a star.
This year, for the first time in his young major league career, we are seeing George Springer as a complete hitter. This is the realization of the player everyone wanted to see.
In his past 29 games entering Saturday, Springer was hitting .374 with a .433 OBP, .574 slugging percentage and five home runs. His average is third-best in the majors in that time, his OBP seventh-best.
Springer, 25, never questioned whether that player would break through.
“I never have any doubts in myself. I know what I can do,” Springer said. “It’s not about doing what people say I should or shouldn’t do, you know, it’s about doing the things that I know how to do and that I can do. But the most important thing, it’s doing them to help us win.
“I don’t need to go out and hit the big eight-run homer anymore. I don’t need to try to do that. You just slow yourself down.”
‘Hitting stuff I can hit’
The most encouraging numbers for Springer are beyond the average and OBP and the hitting streak he extended to 13 games in Saturday’s loss to Seattle.
Those things come and go, but strikeout rate and walk rate and other related plate-discipline evaluations show a hitter with a much better execution and approach at the plate.
The Astros talk a lot about getting a good pitch to hit, and that’s where Springer has taken a huge leap forward.
“Strikeouts, I don’t really think — I don’t really care about them,” Springer said. “I think that’s kind of a stat that other people use. For me it’s just, I’ve been working a lot with Z (assistant hitting coach Alan Zinter) and Hudgy (hitting coach Dave Hudgens) on hitting stuff I can hit.
“The goal is obviously get something to hit and then not chase. It’s hard to do. I have an idea of what I want to do, and if it’s not there, I got to be disciplined enough to take it.” He has been. Springer’s 2014 strikeout rate was 33 percent. This year, he’s down to 26.5. His 2014 walk rate? 11.3. This year, 13.1 percent.
Per FanGraphs.com, he’s swinging at fewer pitches out of the strike zone but making much better contact with pitches out of the zone when he does swing at them — 51.9 percent of the time compared to 34.7 percent last season.
Overall, his contact rate is up, too. Springer has noticed the improvement.
“I’m definitely slower this year,” he said. “I’m trying to slow things down more. Not just necessarily getting in the box and you know, not having a clue, and you know, that comes with experience. I’ve seen these (pitchers) before, they’ve seen me. So now it’s kind of a cat-and-mouse.
“But I understand the type of hitter I am, so it’s just kind of one of those things. Like I said, you just got to slow yourself down. If you don’t get the pitch that you want to hit, then you got to be disciplined to take it.”
Making adjustments
Springer said he would see more pitches on the fringe last year because he was a young guy who was excited to hit and the pitchers would exploit that.
There’s a trove of scouting reports available to all players, but it doesn’t seem Springer’s using those materials dramatically more than last year.
“I use kind of my past experiences with teams and guys to kind of formulate a plan,” he said. “I get attacked differently every day, every game, so there’s really not one, you know, particular way. I have to adjust from my first at-bat on.”
It’s self-evident how hitters work on hitting pitches in different locations or make corrections to their swings.
But explaining how a hitter trains himself to better his approach, to have better pitch selection, isn’t so simple.
Work in progress
“They’ve got to be kind of schooled in what pitch can you do the most damage on, where’s your hot spot, where do you like the ball, and then you hunt those pitches,” Hudgens said. “And you work on it by doing it during BP, doing flips.
“Any time you’re doing anything, you hunt pitches you want to hit.”
But Springer said he wasn’t sure there was one drill in particular that could help him with his approach specifically.
“If there’s a certain spot that I think I may be struggling with, I can go in the cage and put a ball on a tee there and take flips or stuff like that,” he said. “Until you get in the game, and it just becomes all instinct, it becomes all reactionary.
“It’s just, for me, it’s hit to my strength and trying to stay away from stuff I know I can’t hit very well.”
There is a mechanical element to Springer’s improved at-bats. He’s keeping the bat in the zone longer. Even if that costs a bit of bat speed, the tradeoff is worth it.
And mechanics, too, can play into pitch recognition.
“We talk a lot about being on time,” Hudgens said. “Not getting your foot down so much, but just being on time so you can see the ball so your head doesn’t move too much. Because most guys know the strike zone when they get to the big leagues. They know the strike zone.”