Buster Posey examines why Giants have been historically bad at drawing walks

SAN FRANCISCO — The flat screen TVs in the Giants clubhouse at Oracle Park often show clips of that night’s opposing pitcher, giving hitters a chance to do a little last-minute homework as they get dressed at their locker or walk through the room. But when the Giants returned home Monday after a winless trip, some of the TVs showed a small graphic.There was a box with OBP on one side and the number .287 underneath. On the other side of the box, there was the team’s ranking in on-base percentage: 30.The message was not exactly subtle.The Giants returned home ranked dead-last in the big leagues in on-base percentage, and they dipped even lower over three games against the San Diego Padres. It’s not hard to find the reason for their struggles getting on base, either.They are 18th in MLB with a teamwide batting average of .238, but they’re last in the majors in walks and it’s not even close. They’re on pace to be historically bad at collecting free passes, an issue that is threatening to derail an entire season.There are a lot of things — or players — you could point to, but for president of baseball operations Buster Posey, it’s all pretty simple.“When you’re missing pitches in the heart of the plate, I think it’s going to go hand in hand with the walk rate being down,” Posey said during an interview for Thursday’s Giants Talk podcast. “If a staff is not fearing you and is not fearful of missing in the heart of the plate, naturally, the walk rates are going to be lower.”For a dozen seasons, Posey read opposing hitters as well as any catcher in baseball. He would stare up at them as he called pitches, looking for a tell that could help him exploit a weakness. Right now, pitchers facing the Giants don’t need to dig too deep.They have missed far too many pitches over the heart of the plate, and the problem has been especially glaring for their most dangerous hitters. Willy Adames, Rafael Devers, Heliot Ramos and Matt Chapman have combined for 171 strikeouts through 37 games, with the first three all ranking within the top 11 in the NL. There have been a lot of at-bats lately where a pitcher has gotten to two strikes and just fired a fastball over the plate, daring a Giant to catch up.A hitting coach has plenty of tools to deal with a slumping hitter, and as that graphic was flashing across TVs in the clubhouse, Hunter Mense used some of them on the field. Adames, Devers and Patrick Bailey were among those who took early BP during the Padres series, working on mechanical changes or looking for an old feeling with their swing.You can try to pull the ball more or do it less, or hit the ball in the air more or do it less. But how do you train yourself to walk more in the middle of a season?“You can tell guys ‘don’t swing,’ but I promise you that’s not going to have the same effect,” Mense said on Wednesday. “You’re going to get really passive and timid swings from that. The teams that walk are the teams that induce the most damage and the most fear and give (opposing) teams and pitchers the most fear. If you look at (Casey Schmitt’s) at-bats (on Monday), he hits the home run and then he walks (the next time up). There’s just a natural innate feeling that you get from a pitcher when you do damage to them.“They’ll start to become timid and (think) about what’s going to happen if I throw something in the middle, and then they start nibbling and you’ve kind of got them where you want them. But if you’re not able to get your best swing off and do some damage, then you’re in a tough spot. They feel like they have control in filling up the strike zone. “There’s no fear in filling up the strike zone. I think a lot of people would believe that the walks start to come and then the home runs, but I would say that the damage starts to come and then there’s fear and they’re looking through a report and say, ‘We’ve got to be careful here.’ “Mense came over from Toronto, where the Blue Jays led the big leagues in batting average last year en route to a World Series trip. It would be easy to look at that, as well as Posey and general manager Zack Minasian’s push to draft and trade for contact hitters, and determine that the Giants have perhaps swung too far in that direction. Some might wonder if the pursuit of contact has led them to chase early hits instead of drawing plate appearances out, but the numbers don’t back that up.The Giants are actually right around league-average in pitches per plate appearance and they’re not an outlier when it comes to swinging at the first pitch. What does stand out, though, is the way they’re being pitched. Of all the pitches they have seen this year, 52.2 percent have been in the strike zone, well ahead of No. 2 Milwaukee (50.6).Until the Giants prove they can do more damage on those strikes, they’ll continue to struggle drawing walks, and if they don’t turn this around, they might find that they’re setting the wrong kinds of records.The lineup is currently on pace for 316 total walks, which would be the fewest all-time in a 162-game season. No team has even gone under 360 walks in the last three decades, when teams have learned to embrace on-base percentage. With this particular flaw, the Giants are lapping the field.This is all happening at a time when the ABS system has made it a bit easier for hitters to be patient. The walk rate across MLB has surged to 9.5 percent, but the Giants are down at 5.5 percent, light years behind the second-worst team (Arizona at 7.4 percent). If that keeps up, they’ll have the lowest rate in more than 90 years.Walk rates tend to stabilize earlier than most other hitting stats, but the staff is optimistic that better days are ahead — or at least slightly better days. Part of this, the Giants believe, should get back to normal as a few slumping veterans start to get hot.Tony Vitello pointed out recently that the huge scoreboards across the league might be messing with the heads of some hitters who see low batting average and OPS numbers every time they walk up to the plate and try to get it all back with one swing.“This is just human nature,” Mense said. “If you don’t start off the way you want to from a numbers standpoint, I think the way to get those back in a lot of people’s minds is ‘I have to start getting hits.’ A lot of times, they’re chasing the hits because that’s what helps the average and other stats, and sometimes that’s not the right thing to chase. You want to chase swinging at the right pitch, being in the right mindset, being in the right frame of mind.”The Giants have hitters’ meetings every afternoon, and right now, most of the room is looking for that correct mindset. Almost to a man, the Giants have seen noticeable dips in their walk rates, with some jarring numbers from lineup anchors like Devers (15.4 percent to 6 percent) and Adames (11.7 percent to 4 percent).In Wednesday’s loss, the Giants failed to draw a walk for the second consecutive game and sixth time this season. If there was a bright spot, though, or at least something minor that the staff could grasp onto after yet another loss, it was the fact that Devers’ blast to left gave the Giants — who are also last in that category — a homer for the third straight game.“I truly do believe that when the damage starts to come, you’ll start to see a lot of the walks start to tick back up,” Mense said.Download and follow the Giants Talk Podcast

Buster Posey examines why Giants have been historically bad at drawing walks

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