Very concerned. Josh Hamilton is the most swing-happy players in the bigs; I think he swings at 45% of pitches outside the zone or something insane like that. When he hits the ball, he destroys it; when he misses, he looks like a doofus. In April and May he destroyed it; in June and July he looked like a doofus.
He does lead baseball in out of strikezone swing% at 46.3% (league average is 30.4%). The other guys with 40%+ out of strike zone swing% are Vicideo, Soriano, Adam Jones, Delmon Young. Franceour, Pierzynski, and Castro. Espinosa is next up with 39.6% rate.
Even crazier, here is the contact rate on out of strike zone pitches. This is the bottom of baseball:
1. Dunn 47.7%
2. Weeks 49.1%
3. Uggla 52.9%
4. Hamilton 53.3%
5. Pena 53.4%
6. CarGo 53.5%
7. Stubbs 53.8%
8. Espinosa 54.4%
So Hamilton is the worst at swinging at bad pitches one of the worst at contacting them plus he is 3rd worse in baseball in contact rate for pitches in the strikezone. Hamilton swings at the highest percentage of pitches in baseball and has the worst overall contact rate when he does swing. Yet despite all of that he has a respectable 24 K% and 9 BB%. Its because he gets the fewest pitches in the strikezone by far. Only 34.5% of his pitches are in the strikezone and he swings at 60% of pitches he sees. You do the math.
