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Detroit Tigers: Free swinging ways could be hurting them

The Detroit Tigers are free swingers. If you’ve been watching this team this year, you already knew that. Eight Tigers hitters have swung at over 50% of the pitches they’ve seen this year, including four players who play consistently. That cut-off just misses Leonys Martin (49.1%) and Victor Martinez (49%) as well.

Unfortunately, as one would expect this limits Detroit’s opportunities to draw walks. They currently have the lowest walk rate in the entire MLB, at 6.9%. This isn’t an issue of seeing more strikes than other teams, as they see roughly the same % of pitches in the strike zone (43.