Tribe Notes: Hafner’s bat looks slow, Lee gets pummeled

Written by: Michael Taylor on 18th March 2009

Tribe Notes: Hafner's bat looks slow, Lee gets pummeled | read this item

The hearts of many a Cleveland fan, and even Tribe management rides on the recovery of the man they call “Pronk”. Travis Hafner, who once was known for hitting prodigious home runs into the right field seats at Progressive Field (which was aptly named Pronkville), is attempting to prove that the past two seasons were flukes and that he is still healthy enough to live up to his four-year, $57 million contract – which starts this season.

Hafner underwent arthroscopic surgery on his right shoulder during the off-season in an attempt to clean it out and fix what was causing the severe weakness that he was experiencing in the shoulder. The problem was severe enough that it limited him to just 57 games played in 2008 with a paltry .197 batting average and five home runs – a far cry from the .300-hitter with the ability to hit for 35-plus HR, and drive in over 110 a season from 2004-2006.

It has been said that he could not even cut a steak at dinner or pick up salt and pepper shakers without the shoulder “burning”.

But all of this is in the past now. It is time to look forward. The Indians remain optimistic that Hafner, after getting some more work in this spring, will be fine.

“If you watch his at-bats, you watch how he’s taking pitches, and it’s completely different than before,” hitting coach Derek Shelton said. “His takes are good. Every once in a while, he’ll still chase a ball out of the zone, because he wants to hit. He swung at a cutter that he shouldn’t have swung at the other day because he wanted to hit. But the most important thing is you’ll see him take pitches, he’s in a good position to hit, and he’s seeing the baseball.”

But major league scouts apparently see things differently, according to the Plain Dealer’s Paul Hoynes. This little tidbit was mixed in one of his notebook reports last night.

Scouts who watched Hafner on Monday against the Mariners said his bat looks slow. He couldn’t get around on an 88 mph fastball and fouled it off.

I’m willing to give Hafner the benefit of the doubt this time, as he is still less than a month into live action, but this has been rumored around before. It is a term that is like death to a hitter. A slowing bat means that you can’t get around with the same power as you once could, and because of it, your strikeouts will go up, and power production down.

If we take a look at Hafner’s production, we actually see this going on – especially on the power end of it.

When Hafner hit 42 bombs in 2006, he had a HR/FB ratio of 30.2%, which means that about three in ten fly balls that he hit went for home runs. Also, he hit just 38.6% of balls in play on the ground.

In 2007, the power numbers plummeted. Hafner hit just 24 home runs, 15.9% HR/FB, and his ground ball ratio increased to over 47%! This was all despite him actually making more contact with pitches. Hafner’s contact rate jumped up from 72.9 to 77.3%.

Last season, in a season that we found out that he was playing with a bum shoulder, Hafner’s power continued the brisk decline to just 10.4% HR/FB while still hitting 42.5% of balls on the ground. He also continued a steady increase in the number of infield fly balls hit, 8.3% from as low as 3.9% in 2006. Plus, his plate discipline took a big hit. Hafner’s BB/K ratio fell from 0.89 in 2007 to 0.49 in 2008! He was taking less walks and striking out more on top of the dying power.

But again, he was injured last year. So how much of that decline is attributed to straight regression is hard to say. An injury to the shoulder does a lot to a hitter. On top of the physicality of the problem, it also created bad swing mechanics according to Shelton.

Hopefully for the Indians, Hafner can get this rectified during the remaining spring at-bats. Because come April 6 the clock runs out to get his work in. No matter if he is swinging slowly, or with bad habits, it will be go time.

Fastballs, fastballs, and more fastballs

Cliff Lee got pummeled in yesterday’s loss 11-5 loss to the Rangers. He allowed 10 runs on 11 hits in 2.2 innings of work. There are no worries however, “I threw more fastballs than I would in a normal game,” said Lee. “That’s what I’m trying to work on right now, so the results aren’t that important.”

There’s also the thought that he was facing the same team he will open the season against, so he did not want to show them anything. “It’s kind of weird pitching to a team I know I’m going to be facing Opening Day,” he said. “I feel like I have a pretty good idea of how to pitch to those guys, but I don’t want to tip my hand to them too early. It’s a weird situation, but it didn’t matter what hitter was up. I was still going to work on working my fastball in and out. I wasn’t trying to set anybody up.”

For what it is worth, Lee’s spring ERA is now 18.90 in 6.2 innings.

Other Notes

There’s a great story on Asdrubal Cabrera at Indians.com. Beat writer Anthony Castrovince goes into detail about Cabrera’s switch-hitting history, swing mechanics, and also some details about Victor Martinez taking time to help Cabrera make adjustments during the season last year.

The Indians bullpen looked pretty good yesterday with only one run allowed on two hits in 5.1 innings. The group also struck out seven Rangers hitters. Kirk Saarloos, Joe Smith, Kerry Wood, and Eddie Mujica all threw scoreless innings while Masa Kobayashi again gave up a run.

The Red Sox have cut former Indians catcher Josh Bard. This is the second time that the Sox have moved Bard. They traded him in 2006 to the Padres to reacquire Doug Mirabelli to catch Tim Wakefield.

Former Indians reliever Fernando Cabrera, who was pitching for Puerto Rico in the WBC, came into last night’s elimination game with the bases loaded in the ninth to save a game against Team USA. He quickly gave up three runs, blowing the save and Puerto Rico’s chance at advancing to the tournaments semi-finals. If you watched, were any of us surprised?

MLB Trade Rumors has up a review of the Indians off-season.

Also, our own contributor Nino Colla took part in an AL Central Preview with Seth Stohs from SethSpeaks.net and the Twins page here at baseballdigest.com. You can listen to Nino here.

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Topics: Asdrubal Cabrera, Cliff Lee, Travis Hafner