A third of the way into the season, and Hank Blalock is personifying the essence of the “SMASH-KILL.” Blalock’s currently batting a mediocre .258, which doesn’t turn too many heads; neither does Blalock’s less than sterling 3.6% walk rate. Of the top-70 MLB leaders in On Base Plus Slugging, Hank Blalock’s .293 OBP is the only OBP under .300. The Next Closest? Mike Lowell’s .324 OBP. Which means, Blalock must really be smash-killing the baseball and indeed he is, posting a .558 slugging percentage and a 10th best .301 Isolated Power.
This isn’t anything new to Blalock who’s been plagued by just about every imaginable injury: Injuries that threatened to derail a once promising career. Blalock’s healthy now, and he’s returned to the LD and FB% that made him successful in 2003, 2004, and injury shortened 2007 and 2008 seasons. Blalock slugged over .500 in each of those seasons, and coincidentally posted fly-ball rates above 42 percent as well. Blalock’s currently hitting fly-balls at a 47.8% clip, which is the highest since his peak season of 2004 where he had a 47.7% FB-Rate. While Blalock’s current 18.8% HR/FB rate will undoubtedly regress to at least his peak-average of about 14%, a 30 HR season isn’t that far out of reach.
During his peak-years, Blalock hit for both average and power, posting a batting average low of .276. Blalock’s current batting average of .258 is artificially dragged down by a lack-luster .250 batting average on balls in play. As the past is generally the best indicator of the future when it comes to BABIP, you should expect Blalock to regress to the .300 BABIP range.
This is where it gets interesting however, interesting in that Josh Hamilton plays a rather large roll in Hank Blalock’s overall success. Blalock’s currently swinging at 30 percent of pitches outside of the zone, which is well up from his peak years of the early 2000′s, but on-par with his previous two years. Unfortunately, pitchers have been adapting to Blalock’s free swinging ways, throwing him 53% of pitches outside of the zone.
With Hamilton’s recent injury induced ineffectiveness, Blalock’s been shifted in the Rangers’ line-up either batting in his standard clean-up spot, the five-hole, or even third. Pitchers started the season pounding Blalock with their fastball, as Blalock saw 52.5% of pitches for fastballs in March/April. May was a different story as Blalock saw only 47% of pitches that were fastballs, and only 45% in the last couple of weeks. Strangely enough, while Blalock’s plate discipline has suffered and pitchers continue to pitch him outside of the zone, he’s still pounding the ball.
Over the past 14 Days, Blalock has seen a mere 38% of pitches inside of the zone, and is still swinging at 42% of those pitches, yet he’s managing to make incredibly solid contact en route to a .344 batting average and .656 slugging percentage. Blalock’s still only taking a minuscule amount of walks, yet somehow it appears that Blalock’s ready to hit just about anything.
Someone forgot to inform Hank Blalock that he isn’t quite the Alfonso Soriano, Jay Bruce, Vladimir Guerrero -type hitter that he’s made himself out to be. By the way, Soriano and Bruce are right with Blalock when it comes to low-OBP / high-SLG percentage (a high smash-kill number.)
Looking at Blalock’s season as a whole is like putting a jig-saw puzzle together; there are just as many negative indicators as there are positive ones. While Hank Blalock’s exhibited awful plate discipline and a refusal to take a free pass, he’s making extremely solid contact on the pitches he’s chasing outside of the zone. Blalock’s 0.61 GB/FB rate and 21.6% line-drive rate show that even though he’s chasing pitches, he’s hitting them hard. Unlike Jay Bruce, who’s hitting a mere 13.5% of pitches for line drives; Hank Blalock is hitting line-drives more to the tune of Alfonso Soriano’s 19.2%.
Unfortunately, there aren’t any advanced metrics that quantify whether or not Hank Blalock has regained the quick wrists and speed through the zone that once made him a prized-prospect. There’s also no way to tell whether or not Blalock’s refusing to take a walk because he’s just smashing everything. Blalock’s five walks in May are definitely better than his single walk in the month of April, but he’s still not quite at the 8-10% BB Rate that’d force pitchers to throw him strikes.
Until that point, Blalock will continue pounding balls outside of the zone…I guess. There’s still lots of injury risk with Hank Blalock, but at this point, his statistics indicate that he’s as healthy as he’s been since his peak-years of 2004-2005. Blalocks long-term value still depends quite a bit on the return of Josh Hamilton to full health, but at this point Blalock’s enjoying the ride with or without Hamilton.
