It looks like Jim Leyland wants the Tigers to improve on two things in 2007.  He wants better production from his hitters with two strikes and better baserunning.  One thing I took out of the article by Jason Beck was that Carlos Guillen and Placido Polanco were amongst the top seven in the American League in hitting with two strikes.

Whenever I think of two strike hitters, I think of Lou Whitaker.  He always had a reputation of being a solid hitter with two strikes so I decided to check it out.  According to this page, Whitaker was a .218/.321/.355 hitter with two strikes on him (although the data appears to be incomplete). Hardly spectacular.  He was pretty good on the first pitch though (.313/.307/.553) so maybe he should have swung away more often.  

This doesn’t measure the effect that Whitaker might have had on a pitcher.  If he went to 0-2 then worked the count and fouled off a couple of balls, maybe taking the at bat to five or six pitches, then he’s making the pitcher work regardless of whether he got on base.  I couldn’t find any numbers on what Whitaker’s career pitches per plate appearance were so it’s hard to tell. 

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