Last week during his Twitter takeover, Astros GM Jeff Luhnow made reference to a Hardball Times article that spoke highly of George Springer, but in only 140 characters Luhnow declined to elaborate. Intrigued, the dedicated researchers at The Crawfish Boxes spent twenty seconds to Google the article to see what was so great that it was worth mention by the GM.

Our labors uncovered this: on October 15, Chris Mitchell of The Hardball Times published an article titled Improvements in Plate Discipline: Rare but Effective. The posting expanded upon previous research by Russell Carlton, Derek Carty, and Neil Paine that uses a batter's in-zone and out-of-zone swing rates as a proxy for plate discipline. What Mitchell found is that a player's plate discipline, as measured using the method described in those gentlemen's work, should not be expected to vary greatly over time. This is good news for players with good discipline. Not so much with those who don't have it.

A small caveat exists, as is the case with all statistical analysis that is relatively simplified. This method very slightly penalizes those players who don't swing at "bad pitches" in the zone, but it also boosts those players slightly who do swing at "bad pitches" in the zone. But the method (which is explained amply in the articles linked to Mitchell's, which you are encouraged to explore, is generally accepted as a useful estimation of a player's ability to make good decisions on which pitches to swing at.

What Luhnow referred to though, was that George Springer scored as the #1 batter in the majors (250+ plate appearances) in making the correct swing decision. Dexter Fowler ranked seventh. And since Mitchell's research shows that this particular metric fluctuates little over a player's career, an Astros fan can reasonably expect Springer and Folwer to continue being top performers in the selectivity department. When fivethirtyeight.com performed the same analysis, Fowler ranked #1 in baseball over the span from 2012 to April 2014 (4,300 pitches seen).

Duplicating this, and using 400 pitches seen as my floor (so that Jake Marisnick would be included in my list), here are the 2014 Houston Astros ranked by their ability to make good decisions. Their rankings are compared to all MLB players.

This table almost defies explanation. Out of over two hundred major leaguers who saw 400 or more pitches during 2014, four of the top 25 are everyday players for the Astros. Three regulars (if one includes Corp as a regular, which is fair) reside in the top 10.

Note that a low plate discipline score doesn't necessarily equate with offensive futility, and vice-versa. Jose Altuve, for example, built an MVP-discussion-worthy season by swinging at everything, and making contact with everything. If a player has elite bat control and contact skills, he can find success. Likewise, a player with exceptionally poor contact abilities (Springer) can succeed if they have elite-level plate discipline. By-and-large though, the best Astros hitters are near the top, and the worst are near the bottom.

Some thoughts: