Ian Kinsler's Power Outage

Ian Kinsler has yet to hit a home run this year.  He is one of 10 regular players to have 0 home runs so far this year.  Last year he hit 17 home runs in 726 plate appearances, or about once every 42.7 plate appearances.  This means that he should already have about 5 home runs this year at that same pace.  The last time Kinsler hit a home run was on the last day of the season in 2014 off of Kyle Gibson in the 3rd inning.  He had 2 more plate appearances after that, therefore he has gone 215 plate appearances without homering.  By my count, this is the longest home run drought by Kinsler; last year Kinsler went 196 plate appearances between homering.  However, the difference is that this time it's not hurting his overall offensive production.

Longest HR drought in Kinsler's career:

Year	Dates between homering	PA	AVG	OBP	SLG	OPS
2015	4/6 - 5/28	213	0.278	0.357	0.364	0.720
2014	7/4 - 8/21	192	0.232	0.258	0.287	0.545
2010	5/19 - 6/25	143	0.264	0.338	0.304	0.642
2008	6/6 - 8/9	140	0.270	0.331	0.357	0.688
2011	4/23 - 5/25	134	0.243	0.333	0.330	0.664
2012	4/25 - 5/26	134	0.287	0.343	0.361	0.704

*May not reflect actual number of plate appearances between homering due to extra plate appearances in homering game.

Kinsler's current home run drought has produced the highest OPS than any of his other home run droughts and is only the 2nd time that it is above .700.  His slugging percentage is also the highest, but the biggest difference is the on-base percentage.  After having a pathetic 4% walk rate last year, it's back up to a very good 11.3% this year.  

This change in approach has not effected his overall offensive contribution; he's still on pace for about the same league adjusted numbers that he put up over the last few seasons:

	wOBA	wRC+
2012	0.327	100
2013	0.334	105
2014	0.319	102
2015	0.322	104

In fact, Kinsler's .720 OPS is only 7 points lower than what he put up all of last year.  

Other than walking more, there are other signs of a change in approach in his stats.  His fly ball percentage is the lowest of his career while his line drive rate is up 3.7 percent from last year.  This could be a conscious effort to strip away the "Captain Pop-Up" nickname as his infield fly ball rate is down from 11.9% last year to 8.5% this year.  Of course less fly balls mean less chances for home runs.  

 Ian Kinsler has always been somewhat of a streaky hitter.  In the 2nd half of last year he only hit .239/.270/.357.  If this current stretch is the down side of his streaky-ness this year, then we can look forward to his numbers when he does start hitting home runs again.    

Where Have All the Strikeouts Gone?

Over the past two games, the Tigers' starters have only 3 strikeouts in 12 1/3 innings.  Anibal Sanchez had 2 in yesterday's game and David Price only had 1 two days ago.  This is a microcosm of the whole year as the Tigers' starters are only averaging a little over 6 K/9.  Remember when the Tigers starting rotation was regularly striking out batters on a daily basis?  Here's how the ranked in recent years:

Year	K/9	MLB Rank
2012	8.19	2nd
2013	8.63	1st
2014	7.68	9th
2015	6.02	27th

In 2013, the Tigers pitching staff as a whole set a MLB record with 1,428 strikeouts helped by 3 starting pitchers who had 200+ K's each, Max Scherzer, Justin Verlander and Anibal Sanchez.   Of course Scherzer is now gone along with Doug Fister and Rick Porcello.  Verlander has been on the DL all year.  The only one remaining from the 2013 rotation is Sanchez, who is now in a rotation consisting of David Price, Shane Greene, Alfredo Simon and Kyle Lobstein.  

Anibal Sanchez is the only member of the starting rotation who currently has a K/9 of over 7 at 7.74, which isn't much different than his career mark of 7.92.  Sanchez has had two big strikeout years, a 9.26 K/9 in 2011 and a 9.99 K/9 in 2013.  Sanchez has been struggling this year, mainly due to giving up the long ball.  He has given up 6 home runs already this year, which is 2 more than he gave up all of last year.  

David Price, who usually is a strikeout machine, only has a 6.41 K/9 so far this year, which is by far the lowest of his career and almost 2 K/9 below his career 8.38 K/9 mark.  Last year, Price led MLB with 271 strikeouts. So far the lack of strikeouts hasn't effected him much as his 3.30 ERA is exactly the same as his 3.30 FIP and isn't much different than his 3.26 ERA that he posted last year.  

Shane Greene surprised everyone by striking out over a batter per inning last year at 9.27 K/9 in his shortened rookie year last year.  He had an 8.15 K/9 in 562 minor league innings, so it was expected that he'd have an above average strikeout rate in the majors.  Along with a decent FIP and SIERA, it was expected that Greene would be decent going forward.  However, he's only at 5.56 K/9 so far this year and his ERA has suffered at 5.56.  

Alfredo Simon was already a questionable acquisition among Tiger fans before he even threw one pitch in a Tiger uniform.  However, his strikeout rate isn't much different than it was last year (5.82 in 2014 and 5.65 in 2015) and his ERA is exactly the same at 3.44.  

Out of the 6 regular pitchers who started games for the Tigers last year, only one had a K/9 below 6, Rick Porcello.  This year the Tigers have 3: Green, Simon and Kyle Lobstein.  Lobstein has held his own filling in for the injured Justin Verlander with an ERA of only 3.00.  However, his strikeout rate of only 4.09 K/9 leaves a lot to be desired.  His K/9 ranks 6th lowest in all of MLB, (right ahead of former Tiger Doug Fister who is currently at 4.06 for the Nationals).  This is way below his minor league mark of 7.79 K/9.  

This is cause for concern for the Tigers as there's usually an inverse correlation between strikeouts and ERA.  The Tigers' rotation currently stand with a 4.15 ERA, which ranks 17th in MLB.  However, their SIERA ranks 25th at 4.24.  Whether this is a change in philosophy on the pitching coach's part to have these pitchers pitch to contact more or just random variation, this isn't a good sign going forward.  The best thing to happen would be if some of these pitchers would put up strikeout rates that they are capable of.