We aren’t drawing walks because pitchers aren’t afraid to attack the lineup

Everyone knows we have a problem striking out and not walking but why? I’ve mentioned before that this lineup is full of high K guys, but usually these players also have good walk rates. So what’s happening so far? Why aren’t they drawing walks?

From what I can tell it’s because pitchers have nothing to fear simply throwing in the zone. I’ve been noticing our players just completely whiffing on meatballs down the middle. I was curious if the numbers backed up my eyes, and it seems they do.

For one thing we lead the league in pitches seen in the zone at 54.1%. So indeed, pitchers aren’t afraid to attack the lineup. And why should they? Our zone contact % is 22nd worst in the league. Contact % in general is 27th worst.

Looking at individual players, I went and looked statcast’s run value based on zone. Indeed, many of our guys have negative run value at pitches in the “heart” of the plate.
Some examples:

Trout -8
Ward: -3
Nolan: -2
Rengifo: -2
Adell: -2

For whatever reason some of our players are struggling with pitches down the middle. Trout especially, it’s painful watching him whiff on meatball after meatball….

So it’s no surprise we aren’t drawing walks. Pitchers aren’t throwing balls because they don’t have too. Okay, they might occasionally give up a homerun. So what? Solo homeruns don’t kill you and our OBP is dead last at .270. No one is ever on base for our homeruns, but you didn’t need numbers to know that if you’ve been watching the games. And even when they do throw balls we aren’t laying off them particularly well (15th in O swing %) or making contact at all (29th O swing contact %).

Until they actually start punishing pitches in the zone this is gonna continue. As for why they struggle so much with this I don’t know. Is it a bit of unluckiness with the lowest BABIP in the league at .252? Selling out for homeruns at the lack of contact? I looked at batted ball data but couldn’t see anything that particularly stood out. So what are your thoughts on why the team is unable to take advantage of what should be hittable pitches?

(Note that this is just my amateur analysis and opinion after looking at some data)