J.J. Hardy created a minor stir the other day in an AP interview when he claimed that the Orioles told him to change his approach during his first batting practice session with the team last year. During his time with the Minnesota Twins in 2010, the hitting coaches told him to focus on hitting line drives the other way instead of using his natural ability to pull the ball. Jim Presley, the Orioles hitting coach apparently told him to re-focus on pulling the ball, hitting for power, and hitting homeruns. Since it's pretty rare to hear about a player saying that the Orioles changed him for the better, I figured I'd check into the validity of Hardy's statement.
We know that Hardy hit much better in 2011 than in 2010. His triple slash in 2010 was .268/.320/.394 with a .313 wOBA. In 2011, he slashed .269/.310/.491 with a .343 wOBA. So he slugged .100 points higher, gained .030 points of wOBA and also hit 30 homeruns compared to 6. But did he get better because the Presley told him to pull the ball? Or was it just a good year and him finally being healthy?
Here is a picture of his spray chart from 2010 to get a better idea of where he was hitting the ball.
The spray charts in this post come courtesy of the great site Texas Leaguers. J.J.'s 2010 chart looks pretty evenly balanced with a lot of fly balls to center and right field, but not that many to left. It looks like Hardy followed the directive he received from the Twins pretty closely except for the few homeruns that he did actually hit out to left. Now, here's his spray chart from last summer with the Orioles.
The 2011 chart has many more hits to left field than either center or right. Look at all of those homeruns that Hardy hit either to straight left field or right down the line in left. Hardy actually hit 26 homeruns to left field last season, while only hitting 4 to center and none to right. Homeruns are good, right? I wonder why the Twins didn't want him to hit them.
While following the Twins suggestion during 2010, Hardy basically turned into a light hitting shortstop whose only value came from playing good defense. On balls that he hit to left field in 2010, his ISO (isolated power) was .168. He showed similar power to all fields as his ISO to center was .125 and .159 to right. But look at what he did in 2011. His ISO to left field was an absurd .443! The easiest way to calculate ISO is to subtract a player's batting average from his slugging percentage. Anything over .200 is great. His marks to center and right were similar to 2010, .111 to center and .099 to right. ISO is a good way to measure a hitter's raw power, and looking at Hardy's numbers it's clear that he had a lot of success pulling the ball in 2011.
It's not often that we hear about the Orioles changing players for the better. But this is a clear case of the Orioles hitting coach looking at a player's approach and making a change to help him. Hardy turned from an all defense shortstop in 2010 to one of the Orioles best hitter's in 2011 because of Presley telling him to pull the ball. Hardy definitely got his career back on track in 2011 by following Presley's advice and even earned himself a 3 year extension from the Orioles for $22.25 million. Let's just hope that he can carry over his success from last year into the upcoming 2012 season.
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