This data suggests that Wright does not actually directly struggle with the slider on the lower/outside corner as previously speculated. It seems more likely this pitch is priming Wright to not swing at the four-seam fastball on the outer corner of the plate. On the plus side, he is not flailing wildly at fastballs outside the strike zone. Furthermore, Wright almost never swings at curveballs on the inner half of the plate, except for curves which are well below the strike zone which he seems to swing at frequently whether they are inside or outside. Finally Wright almost always swings at changeups in the middle of the zone, but also frequently swings at changes in the dirt. He also tends to swing and miss on the changeup more often than any other pitch….
To Wright’s credit, he has adapted to his difficulty recognizing these pitch types by taking a lot more pitches. He waits for a pitch to drive and if he doesn’t see what he’s looking for he’ll accumulate balls and strikes until he is forced to protect the plate. He can still hit a ball in the zone a ton when he swings at it, but he is swinging less than he has in any other season to date (42.1%) and swinging at fewer pitches in the zone (64.0%, lowest of career) while swinging at more outside of the zone (25.4% highest of career).
– KeithsMoustache, FanPost to Amazin’ Avenue.
KeithsMoustache does a tremendous job here interpreting a whole slew of pitchFX data. It’s a lot to read and sort through, but I heartily recommend it.
It just so happens I was discussing Wright’s 2010 approach with Matt Cerrone this morning and poring over Wright’s FanGraphs page. To KeithsMoustache’s last point — about Wright swinging less than he ever has before but swinging at more pitches outside the zone — I’ll add this: Wright is seeing well fewer pitches inside the strike zone than he ever has before (43.5 percent as compared to 48.8 percent last season and 50.9 percent for his career).
So it stands to reason that he’d be swinging at a higher percent of pitches outside of the zone while swinging at fewer pitches in general. He’s not seeing as many strikes. I’m not certain the data reflects an adaptation on Wright’s part so much as on the part of opposing pitchers, although I guess there’s a chicken-and-egg aspect to that.
Regardless, all of this is across only a fraction of the season, and the important thing to remember is that Wright — lots of strikeouts or not — has still been awesome.
Check it out: In 2007, Wright’s best full season, he slashed .325/.416/.546. This year, he’s got a .291/.417/.552 line. Nearly identical, except for the slight decrease in hits and increase in walks, which can probably be explained by him getting fewer pitches to hit.
As for Wright’s perceived struggles in the clutch? He hasn’t had a reasonable sample of at-bats in any particular situation, but his numbers with runners in scoring position are very similar to his season line: .281/.390/.563.
Will any of it continue? I have no idea. It seems unlikely that Wright can maintain a .397 batting average on balls in play, but he posted a .394 mark last season.
And it seems crazy to expect him to keep whiffing at this pace, but as frustrating as they can be to fans, the strikeouts are not enough to make him anything besides one of the best players in baseball. Still.
Plus he’s got a pretty sweet beard going, which is cool.
Tedquarters 
Can’t some of the increase in BABIP (both last season and this one) be attributed to the decline in swing rate? He’s striking out more and swinging less. As you astutely point out he’s waiting for pitches to drive later in the counts. I surmise that its pretty reasonable that the inverse of Wright’s increased K-rate is a higher BABIP than we’re used to seeing. I’m not suggesting that Wright is going to BABIP .400 every year, but it could be that Wright is a player that will just have a higher BABIP than average on a regular basis because he is selective at the plate, which will also come with a high # of strikeouts, especially looking.
Yes, that’s definitely a reasonable explanation. Problem is it’s hard to quantify, and Wright’s line-drive rate — usually a good indicator of how hard a player is hitting the ball — was basically the same in 2008 and 2009 and is down in 2010. Of course, he could be hitting more well-struck ground balls that find their way through the infield, but there’s no way I know of to measure that and obviously that’s a tough thing to judge by the eye over the course of a season.
His HR/FB rate is way, way up this season, which could be luck or could indicate he’s driving the ball more, or could be some combination of both.
Yeah, I pulled his LD% and it is down, which wouldn’t support a high BABIP and would suggest that he’s getting lucky.
I really don’t have any data to back it up, it just seems like the next reasonable step to me is that as Wright’s become more selective early in counts and has been taking more boderline stuff late (this is just an observation from watching lots of David Wright ABs) when he is hitting the baseball, its the pitch he was looking/waiting for and he’s thus been able to manufacture more hits from fewer swings. Its definitely just as likely to be luck, although a season+ is the start of a pretty good sample size.
If his BABIP is the same this year as it was last year how much luck does he have? Are you going to tell me Ted Williams wasn’t a good hitter, he was just really lucky over a very long period? Bah!
When does luck run out and skill begin? And what is the equation that proves it?
I love living in a world where “To KeithsMoustache’s last point” is a reasonable introductory clause