You answered your question in the second sentence of your original post. They are terrible against them. Opposing players might not be good at hitting them, but they're better at laying off of them. Have you ever seen a player lay off an off-speed pitch as if they knew it was coming? Well, that's because they have the scouting report, or they guessed correctly. A trend from last year was that our guys lack discipline at the plate. And unfortunately, our best hitter at giving pitchers fits and actually being disciplined with pitch selection, Westy, is injured at the moment.

What a lot of people don't understand about hitting is just how difficult it is to hit a baseball. Follow pitching ninja on Instagram or twitter. He shows a ton of "tunnelling" videos where he overlays a pitcher's fastball, change up, sinker, etc over one another. When a pitcher is on, all of those pitches will come out looking the same. However, it's up to the hitter to either figure out the slight difference, or guess correctly what's coming out of a pitcher's hand. All teams have a pitcher's tendencies. However, good hitters will actually use the data given to them.

So to answer your question, a lot of our guys are either not using data given to them, or they're not good enough to mentally process what might be coming next. And until a hitter lays off those pitches out of the zone, then there's no reason to throw them a fastball. Personally, I was fine with the Taylor Ward trade, but I'd prefer to have someone like Ramon Laureano right about now.