Have the Giants become more patient?

Jeff Sullivan wrote an article this past Thursday about Pablo Sandoval’s seemingly newfound plate patience. Specifically, he points out that Pablo Sandoval has gone from swinging at the first pitch of an at bat 44% to a little under 3%.

When you’re looking for players who’ve changed their approaches, you almost never find changes this dramatic. For one pitch every time he’s come up, Pablo Sandoval has had a brand new identity.

This is one way of measuring hitter patience, and, according to this, compared to Sandoval, no hitter has been more patient.

It was notable in three ways: 1) it’s an article about Pablo Sandoval written in 2018 without sarcasm and without mentioning his Boston…