Andrelton Simmons Has Gone Back to His Roots

There’s dizzying loop hidden within the effort to build better baseball players. Because every player possesses a different body, it makes sense not to be prescriptive with mechanics. There are no one-size-fits-all solutions in baseball.

But there are still some underlying truths. All things being equal, power is good. Velocity is good. And so on. If coaching is tailored too closely to a perceived type, it might prevent the player from developing the sort of power or velocity to transcend that type. It’s possible that this is what happened to Andrelton Simmons for a few years.

We all know and love Simmons for his defense — though the metrics can be volatile in that space, he’s been steady over his entire career. It’s the bat that has jumped up and down.

As the graph above suggests, this season has been a return to form for Simmons. “Some more experience,” Simmons thought was key when I spoke with him, and “a little bit of adding what I had at first, with the first two seasons with the Braves.” He agreed that a big part of what he had and then lost was pull power.

Since a nadir in late 2015, Simmons has generally improved with the stick while pulling the ball more. So why did he zap that pull power? He was a good soldier, working with coaches. “There was some emphasis from some coaches to go the other way,” Simmons admitted. “It helps in ways, but it also hurts in other ways.”

This is not to heap scorn on a particular hitting coach or team. Simmons wasn’t pulling the ball much in Atlanta or in Anaheim. And you also can’t blame his coaches for looking at the player and thinking that an athletic, glove-first shortstop who’d only once hit double-digit homers should focus on putting the ball on the ground, spraying it, and running to first.

The problem with that plan is that Simmons actually has some pop. Take a look at his exit velocity without launch angle. He’s a guy who can put a ride on the ball, particularly on his best swings.

The good news about personal development — for all of us, not just baseball players — is that even getting it wrong can make us better. That time isn’t wasted. “I worked on my weaknesses a lot the past couple of years, trying to get better at going the other way and staying through the baseball, and got away from what I do well,” Simmons said. “This year, I went back to what I do well and also added a little bit of what I’ve learned over the years — using the whole field and recognizing the pitches better. I can now cover more pitches and drive the ball, as well.”

Heat maps do a great job of showing how Simmons is a better hitter now than he was in 2013, even as he returns to some of the things that led to his 17-homer season in 2013.

Here’s Simmons, hitting for power in 2013 with the heaviest pull/fly-ball approach of his career. He had pull power on the inside.

Nobody wants to throw it down the middle, though, and his coaches intervened and told him to go the other way, and he moved his hot zone outward in 2015.

Of course, the inside pitch had become a weakness and he wasn’t hitting for power. Bring back some of that pull mentality, and, voila, the player has two hot zones this year.

There’s still a chance for further improvement, considering his work down the middle. That can provide hope for all of us as we try to improve: all it takes is hard work, because we can learn from the good and bad advice over time. “I work on my swing every day,” laughed Simmons. “I’ve been working on my swing since 1989. I’m still learning: tomorrow might bring something new that’s a little bit different.”

[Note: I changed the last three graphs from wOba heat maps to isolated slugging heat maps to reflect the fact that the analysis centered on swings rather than takes.]