In Saturday’s loss against the Brewers, Ryan Zimmerman hit a sacrifice fly with the bases loaded, which means he didn’t get a hit in yet another high leverage situation this season. Despite flashes here and there, Zimmerman has struggled offensively this season. Those struggles have been exposed in high leverage situations thanks to the new found strategy of intentionally walking whoever hits in front of Zimmerman. Joe Maddon may have some creative get-away outfit ideas, but as a Nats fan I’ll take a hard pass on his trend setting idea of walking Bryce Harper to get to Zimmerman. That means he has had his fair share of bases loaded chances and has failed to really deliver on those opportunities. How bad has it been? Let’s take a look.
Before we get into the theories, let’s first settle on the facts. Although you might see how Zimmerman is 0-9 with the bases loaded on twitter, he has actually been up 11 times with the bases loaded. He has two sacrifice flies, so he is either 2-11 or 0-11 depending on how you want to grade that. He has three RBI. He has four strikeouts. He’s once reached on an error. You can quibble with some of the details, but he clearly hasn’t been good, there is no arguing with those facts. The question, then, is why?
Theory #1: Zimmerman can’t handle the situation
Perhaps you subscribe to the old school thinking that clutch and grit are recognizable traits. If so, you may have decided that Zimmerman isn’t clutch or doesn’t have the grit to come through with the bases loaded and pressure on. Feel free to do so, but know that the facts don’t back it up. Momentarily ignore that even baseball-reference.com has anointed Ryan as “Mr. Walk-Off” for his ability to come through in the clutch over the years. In 138 plate appearances with the bases loaded in his career, Zimmerman has hit .283 with 105 RBI and five home runs. Clearly, Zimmerman has not had a problem in these types of situations in the past, and there is no reason to think something suddenly changed in the 2016 season. Let’s stamp this theory busted.
Theory #2: Zimmerman has been unlucky
Perhaps Zimmerman has actually put up some good at bats in these situations but didn’t make the right offerings to the BABIP gods and has seen hard hit balls end up in the gloves of defenders. I went back and watched all 10 of Zimmerman’s plate appearances with the bases loaded before Saturday, and it’s quickly apparent that he hasn’t been unlucky. He had his one sacrifice fly, which was well hit enough to score a runner at least. He also hit a moderately hard liner in one of his at bats against the Cubs. So I’ll give him two somewhat hard hit balls. But neither of them would fall into an unlucky bucket. The rest of the at bats consisted of strike outs or groundballs described in the game logs as “softly hit.” Busted.
Theory #3: Zimmerman is not good
I don’t think Zimmerman is cooked as a major leaguer — he’s only 31 for goodness sake. But he clearly has not been very good with the bat so far this year. After Saturday’s ball game, Zimmerman was hitting .227. Go beyond simple batting average, and Zimmerman’s been 17% worse than league average by wRC+. We won’t get into #GoryMath for this, just some simple multiplication. Take Zimmerman’s 11 plate appearances times his current batting average and after some rounding, you wind up with a rough estimate of how many hits Zimmerman “should” have come up with: two. Zimmerman has only the sac flies to show for his efforts in these situations, but it’s actually not far off expectations given Ryan’s performance this year. Pains me to say, but this is plausible.
Theory #4: Zimmerman has been the victim of circumstance
Take a second to assess the situations that have resulted in Zimmerman at bat with the bases loaded and this theory makes some sense. In a handful of the situations, Zimmerman was notoriously up thanks to intentional walks to the batter before him (either Daniel Murphy or Harper). In those situations, the intentional walk was only called for when the opposing manager saw a decided advantage by putting Zimmerman in that situation. In that Cubs series alone, Zimmerman had to face uber-ace Jake Arrieta and a pair of relievers whose are regularly called on to get big outs against right handed hitters: Adam Warren and Justin Grimm. Zimmerman also found himself up against starters too, like he did against Scott Kazmir in the recent Dodgers series. In those instance, Zimmerman was getting the pitchers best stuff, as they knew they had to be spot on to get out of a bases loaded situation. The following graphic (courtesy of baseballsavant.com) shows all pitches that Zimmerman has seen in his 10 bases loaded plate appearances before Saturday:
Keep in mind that Zimmerman’s power zones are down and in. There have been only a handful of pitches in those power zones in these situations. Sure, Zimmerman has swung at pitches out of the zone. But all good hitters do that. Check out how many pitches are right on the black, either the inside or outside corner. Of course, good hitters need to execute on those pitches at some point, but pitchers have done a good job of executing versus Zimmerman and he hasn’t been able to do damage on those well thrown pitches. Chalking this theory up as plausible.
Tags: Nationals, Nats, Ryan Zimmerman, Washington Nationals
I’m sorry but I’m not buying it (the plausible ones) Zimm was clutch while facing the best pitching in the past and he was one of our only weapons so he always go the best. I see two problems: 1. Dusty has too much trust that players will come out of their slumps…I’m not advocating Zimm on the bench but why wait so late to lower him in the order until he shows signs (see Ben Revere he should be lower too until he shows consistent life). Zimm needs to be at 7 until he is back. 2. It absolutely drives me crazy Zimm’s penchant for taking meat pitches, with his “clutch” history he is only going to see 1 good pitch but every time he takes those pitches and is immediately behind the curve…he needs to ambush more often.