Adam Eaton - How?

Title Track

There has been quite a bit of discussion regarding Adam Eaton's improvement. If you watch him, it's obvious that he's improved. If you look at his results, it's obvious. When you look at his stats, it makes no sense. My belief and that of others I have spoken to was that he's mentally tougher. It also seemed to me that he approached situations quite differently. Thanks to ESPN's fantastic (I can't stress how amazing it is) Splits, I think there may be something to my second assumption.

Total
BAA	OBP	SLG	OPS	ISO	OBP-BA
.262	.319	.430	.750	.168	.057

None On
BAA	OBP	SLG	OPS	ISO	OBP-BA
.262	.302	.471	.773	.209	.040

Runners On
BAA	OBP	SLG	OPS	ISO	OBP-BA
.254	.331	.336	.667	.082	.077

Scoring Position
BAA	OBP	SLG	OPS	ISO	OBP-BA
.207	.287	.256	.543	.049	.080

Scoring Posn, 2 out
BAA	OBP	SLG	OPS	ISO	OBP-BA
.162	.295	.216	.512	.054	.133

You can see a number of things from these stats. Simply stated, Adam's approach changes rather noticeably from situation to situation.

With none on, Adam is around the strike zone and seems to be trying to get guys to put the ball in play. This is evidenced by the high batting average and low on-base percentage. Adam also seems more inclined to make a mistake pitch. An ISO of .209 is quite large.

With runners on, you can see that Adam begins to throw more pitches out of the zone and seems to be willing to trade walks against extra base hits. With runners in scoring position, this becomes even more pronounced. ISO falls further still and his walks climb.

Once Adam gets to two outs, you can't buy a hit off the guy with men in scoring position. The low average and slugging coupled with the high number of walks show you that he isn't about to give in.