Orange County Register: Angels' Mike Trout strikes out less by swinging more

[AngelsWin.com]

ANAHEIM – In approaching the most compelling part of the baseball season, with enough data to see some new trends but not enough to trust everything we see, we can start to ascertain what’s real and what’s not from the statistics the Angels...

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[CaliAngel]

"Albert Pujols’ performance looks worse than it should because of old-fashioned bad luck, but he’s also posting by far the worst hard-hit rate of his career. Just 25.5 percent of the balls he’s hit into play have been classified as hard hit by Baseball Info Solutions. His career rate is 36 percent, and it was above 40 percent from 2007-10."

 

Very apparent, and really a big bummer.

 

As far as I see, it's something as simple as watching strikes, trying to pull, and swinging at balls. If all he did was sit up there intent with letting the junk go, looking for fastballs or off speed in the zone, and putting it where it's thrown, he'd be fine. Probably a .300+ hitter. But he seems to want to pull the ball way too often, and the fact of the matter is, we don't need him pulling homers, we need him getting clutch hits and getting on base. I think we can all agree Albert is a much better hitter when he plays all sides of the field.

 

Time for mashing will come in certain at bats, but c'mon Albert, you just aren't doing us any favors by trying to do it every time.