Kosuke Fukudome should quit playing baseball and become an umpire

The 'Bright' One and myself were talking about how frustrating a player Kosuke Fukudome is. He is simultaneously a guy with great pitch recognition and limited hitting ability. The 'Bright' One went so far as to suggestion that Fukudome should just quit playing baseball and start umping behind the plate. Is he right?

A look into the numbers does confirm Fukudome's great pitch recognition. His 17.6% walk rate is sixth in all of baseball, only .01% behind Albert Pujols, who has 21 more intentional walks than Fukudome, and his 16% O-Swing percentage is almost 9 points lower than the league average (24.8%). These numbers seemingly indicate the building blocks of a quality ballplayer -- the guys who have similar recognition peripherals this season are Albert Pujols, Adam Dunn, Nick Swisher and Nick Johnson. Offensively speaking, you'd love to have any of them (Swisher has the worst wOBA of the bunch on the season, at .384).

So what gives? Why has Fukudome, a semi-veteran player who recognizes pitch location as well as the league's most elite hitters, struggled so much in the majors? The answers lie in the contact rates.

While Fukudome may know what's coming and know when to swing or lay off a pitch, it hardly has translated into contact for him. His 79.9% contact rate is a smidge below the major league average (89.2%). Outside Adam Dunn and Nick Swisher, most elite walking hitters in the majors have better than average contact rates -- largely because they have good pitch recognition. The two skills (pitch recognition and contact) are highly correlated, but hardly mutual. A hitter may know what's coming and how it's going to break, but that hardly means he has the bat speed and proper hand-eye coordination to make contact with said pitch.

Fukudoke's contact rate on pitches within the zone (89.2%) is slightly higher than league average (84.7%), but pitches in the zone are not his problem. Fukudome's contact issues almost entirely come from bad pitches. Fukudome's elite walk rate and O-Swing% indicate that he is very good at laying off pitching outside the zone, but his 52.4% contact rate with those pitches (62.4% league average) highlights that when he takes a hack at bad tosses, they usually result in a signature strikeout spin that can generate hurricane force winds. Fukudome's struggles at making contact with bad pitching is skewed by the fact that pitchers throw him 4% less pitches in the zone than the rest of the league. He also see's 2% less of his first pitches for strikes.

Such struggles with bad pitching has led to a large K rate for Kosuke Fukudome. His 22.9% strikeout rate this season is the second worst amongst the Cubs starting roster, second to only Alfonso Soriano. This heavy strikeout rate negates a lot of Fukudome's hitting ability because, despite the walks and the fact that when Fukudome drives the ball with authority when he does make contact (his 22.4% LD rate this season is top 25 in all of baseball), he ultimately puts the ball in play too little and with too little offensive impact (.156 ISO) to affect the Cubs' offensive game. His 4.1 speed score (5.1 league average) on the basepaths doesn't help much either.

All in all, what does this mean? It sort of confirms The 'Bright' One's assertion that Fukudome should be a plate umpire. He's got good pitch recognition but too poor contact ability (for whatever reason, perhaps age and declining batspeed?) and too little power to be anything more than a walking machine with above average defense. Think an Asian Reggie Willits with a little more power; that's Kosuke Fukudome.