How to get more offense in 2023

[Wham with the Right Hand]

Chang only had 10 at-bats.

Our right-handed hitters didn't hit pitching from either side well, which is why we were last in wRC+ by right-handed hitters. We need Straw and Jose to hit better this year. Jose was well below his career norm from the right side.

Owen Miller had 287 at-bats against right-handed pitching; I assume most of those at-bats will be taken by Bell (hitting left-handed) this year. That should be a big improvement over Miller's .258/.668 against righties.

Miller had 268 at-bats as a first baseman. He hit .250/.689 at first base. This year those at-bats will be taken by Bell and Naylor. Having that many corner infield at-bats taken by a sub-.700 OPS guy (who also sucked defensively at the position) took a bite out of the offense.

We're losing 1,442 at-bats from the departures of Reyes, Miller, Hedges, Maile, Clement, Mercado, Jones, Benson, Bradley, Leon, Call, and Chang. Those at-bats will be replaced by Bell, Zunino, Oscar Gonzalez, Brennan, Freeman, Arias and whoever is the backup catcher. That's 26% of the total at-bats last year that will be upgraded, assuming Freeman, Brennan, and Arias hit better than Jones, Benson, Clement, and Mercado.

 

[Criznit]

if you're talking WRC+ in regards to RH hitting, isn't Myles Straw the elephant in the room? 64WRC+???

 

[Wham with the Right Hand]

if you're talking WRC+ in regards to RH hitting, isn't Myles Straw the elephant in the room? 64WRC+???

Myles, Maile, Hedges, Reyes, Clement, and to a lesser extent Miller and Jose (hitting RH). We had a whole herd of elephants last year, but with Jose getting his busted hand fixed and Straw no longer obsessed with going as deep as possible into at-bats before slapping a two-strike pitch to right field I'm expecting much better performance from the right side of the dish this year.

Much better than 30th at least. The bar could not be any lower.

I thought Kwan's quote about not feeling like he needs to see a lot of pitches this year in order to give the guys behind him a look at the opposing pitcher was interesting. Clearly, that's what Straw was doing when he hit leadoff, and Kwan as well. It wasn't until September that Straw started swinging at good pitches earlier in the at-bats. I felt he was putting himself in a hole all year by taking lots of hittable pitches and then swinging defensively with two strikes.

That changed in September - you could see it. He hit .313 for the month. He had hits in 21 of 27 games. He only failed to reach base 4 times in 27 games.

A great example is the 4-1 win over the Twins on Sep. 11. Straw had three hits. The first two hits came on the second pitch; he took ball one then singled. The third hit came on a 1-1 count.

Against the White Sox he also had three hits. He swung at the first seven strikes he saw. He did not take a called strike until his fourth at-bat of the game. This was a total transformation from the extremely passive hitter we saw most of the season who seemed to think his only job was to run up the pitch count before making an out.

So I'm hopeful that starting out this year hitting 9th Straw will continue to swing aggressively at hittable pitches and get back to being a .260-.270 hitter with great speed on the bases. That would make him one of the better #9 hitters in baseball.