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Daulton Varsho Is Cleaning up His Process

Ron Chenoy-USA TODAY Sports

I’ve wanted to write about Daulton Varsho for a long time. As a catcher turned elite defensive outfielder, he’s had a rare career progression. Because of that, he’s been one of my favorite players to watch. But I’m not here to talk about his defense, or even his elite baserunning for that matter. Instead, the focus is going to be on his one non-elite skill: his bat.

Through 1,603 career plate appearances, Varsho has a 96 wRC+. He was a slightly above-average hitter from 2021-2022, but he took a big step back in his first year with the Blue Jays, posting an 85 wRC+ across 581 plate appearances. His peripherals were about the same as they were the previous year, but his output was significantly worse. It was confusing to see. The expectation was that he would make a leap in his third full season, and the projections supported that. ZiPS’ median projection had him pegged for a 117 OPS+; his actual production ended up being a bottom decile outcome. Despite the regression, ZiPS is still confident Varsho can be a little better than league average with the bat this season, with a projected 107 wRC+.

Any hitter who saw as big of a drop as Varsho did last year would be keen to overhaul his process, though at times it can be difficult to determine what part of the profile needs the most attention. Luckily for Varsho, his was an obvious diagnosis that had little to do with his approach; his swing decisions actually improved in 2023. Instead, the problem can be found in his bat tracking data.

Let’s quickly redefine some terms before starting the analysis. First is Vertical Entry Angle (VEA): Sourcing the definition (and data) from SwingGraphs, VEA is the vertical angle of the bat approximately 83 milliseconds before contact, or in other words, the angle of the bat relative to the ground at the start of the down swing. Then there is Vertical Bat Angle (VBA), something I’ve cited many times in previous work. VBA is the angle of the bat relative to the ground at contact. Lastly, there is Attack Angle (AA), which represents the vertical direction of the bat at contact.

Each of these measurements are important for understanding any hitter. The way they work and interact with one another can tell the story of a swing. For Varsho, the way these measurements work together is especially important because he tends to live on the extreme ends of them. Here is a table summarizing his VBA and AA relative to the league:

Varsho Bat Metrics
Year VBA VBA Pctile AA Pctile
2021 25.8 NA NA
2022 26.5 4th 99th
2023 27.1 9th 60th
SOURCE: SwingGraphs

Varsho’s VBA is consistently one of the lowest in baseball. That means on average, his bat is flatter at the point of contact than most of the league. While it’s important to note that VBA is dependent on pitch height (VBA decreases as you move up in the zone), it’s not as if Varsho is only making contact with high pitches and that alone is the reason for his low mark. In fact, his contact heights are typically average or below average – not exactly the hitter you’d expect to have a VBA this low. Then, when it comes to AA, his mark was among the highest in 2022 and above average in 2023. Both years, he was among the leaders in positive differential between VBA and AA (AA > VBA). That is interesting, and perhaps a big red flag considering his profile as a hitter.

There is no such thing as an absolute in baseball – there is always room for departure from the norm – but it’s typically not optimal for a hitter to change the angle of his bat this much through his swing. If you hit the ball hard, you can probably make it work better than most, but Varsho doesn’t have that kind of room for error. Taking the bat off its natural plane of movement will likely result in lots of mishits. Unsurprisingly, Varsho was among the league leaders in pop-up rate in 2023. This swing profile is far from ideal, especially because he doesn’t have the power to overcome the deficiencies. Now is a good time to pivot to VEA and its role in Varsho’s swing.

I did not include VEA in the table because the number is best represented by a range, since the metric is still a work in progress at SwingGraphs and the capture rate isn’t always consistent. From September 2022 through last season, Varsho’s VEA has fluctuated between 42 and 48 degrees. That means he tends to flatten his bat from the start of the downswing through contact at a range between 16 to 21 degrees. Again, that is among the highest in baseball, if not the very highest.

Here is a quick screenshot of about where VEA is captured:

So, from the point you see above to contact (VEA to VBA), he flattens his bat angle a ton. That helps put the pieces of Varsho’s swing puzzle together. Think about it from a reciprocal movement perspective. How you set yourself up to move will directly impact the next step in the kinetic chain. If your bat is pointing upward as the downswing begins, then its natural response is to have a vertically oriented path through the ball, hence Varsho’s high VEA into high AA. By making his barrel flat at impact (despite moving it on an upward path), he’s forcing it off its natural path, which has a negative effect on his contact quality. Let’s watch a few swings from last year to remember what his swing actually looks like:

There are some swings where it goes right and others where it goes wrong. What’s clear even from this handful is that Varsho tinkered with his hand placement throughout last season, perhaps in an attempt to get comfortable through a bumpy year. When he spoke to David Laurila a few weeks ago, he discussed his mindset at the plate. After Laurila pointed out to Varsho that he pulls the ball more often than any hitter in the league and followed up by asking if Varsho wanted to lift the ball, the Jays outfielder made it clear that his thought process is to hit grounders. This stuck out to me – not because of any criticism of the old school mindset – but because of how he sets his swing up.

As I’ve pointed out, Varsho’s VEA puts him in line for a steep swing, but his intent to hit the ball on the ground plays out through his flat VBA. The flat VBA itself isn’t the issue. Plenty of other hitters have success with it. It’s that he doesn’t optimally set himself up to have a flat swing. If he started his downswing flatter, he would be in a better position to execute on the flat swing he intends to have. Cue 2024 spring training:

Well, I’m intrigued. Yeah, the results are better in the small sample, but that doesn’t really matter here. This is as sound of a process as I could have imagined for Varsho. If his goal is to have a low, line drive oriented swing, then this is how he should set up for it.
He points his bat down in his stance to remind him to keep the bat flat as he starts his swing. The open stance is probably a comfort thing, but it could help create more space for him to get his bat going deeper in the zone. That’s something easier to do with a flat bat path than a steep one. Either way, these adjustments align with his stated plan and the other components of his swing.

As of now, it’s unclear whether these changes will result in the offensive breakout we were expecting last year. We’ll need regular season data to answer that question. But what it does do is prove that Varsho is cleaning up his process and matching his mental plan to his physical mechanics. That’s important. If he can return to his league-average hitting, it’ll be enough to make him a valuable player, given his elite fielding and baserunning. If he can be better than that, he’ll emerge as one of the game’s more talented stars. For now, let’s see how April goes.


Patrick Bailey Is a Unicorn Pitch Framer

Stan Szeto-USA TODAY Sports

There are so many great defenders in the majors right now. In the infield, there are elite shortstops, like Francisco Lindor and Dansby Swanson. In the outfield, there are the dudes who don’t let anything drop, such as Brenton Doyle and Harrison Bader. But none of these players are projected to lead baseball in Def, according to ZiPS. That title belongs to San Francisco Giants catcher Patrick Bailey.

Last year, Bailey led all players in Def with 26.8 runs. On the Statcast side of things, he was second in Fielding Run Value with +18, behind Doyle. He is unquestionably one of the most valuable defenders in the game, and much of that is due to his elite framing. He accumulated +16 framing runs and recorded a 52.9% strike rate – both the highest marks in baseball.

If you look at the Statcast framing leaderboard, you’ll notice one color for Bailey: red. He is above average in all nine parts of the shadow zone. That is simply unheard of. Typically, for catchers to be elite in one area, they tend to sacrifice another part of the zone. Take Adley Rutschman, for example. He is elite at the top of the zone but slightly below average at the bottom. Sean Murphy has the opposite tendency. He steals at the bottom while losing some at the top. Bailey is a departure from the norm. He can steal strikes in any part of the zone without sacrificing elsewhere.

That’s an impressive skill that made Bailey stand out last season. It’s also the exact kind of statistical quirk that warrants a video deep dive to uncover how he does it. Before jumping in, let’s discuss the two things we’ll be paying attention to here: Bailey’s pre-pitch stances and glove turns. To be this efficient around the strike zone, catchers not only have to have multiple stances, but they also have to know when to use them. By understanding their pitching staff and their movement profiles, they know when to deploy what stance and how to best use their hands.

The following clips will display how Bailey switches up his approach depending on the pitcher and/or location. Let’s start with Logan Webb – the sinkerballer and command artist:

Sinker

Where Bailey sets up behind the plate dictates his stance. He favors his inside knee down most of the time, but there is some variance depending on the pitcher and pitch. More so than when he is catching other pitchers, he has no problem setting up closer to the edges of the plate for Webb.

The key difference between the two sinkers is how he uses his glove turn in preparation for the pitch. On the arm side sinker, he uses more of a straight down quarter turn. Whereas with the glove side sinker, you’ll notice a more deliberate rounded turn. As a catcher, matching the plane of the pitch leads to the smoothest reception. If you don’t alter the rotation of your glove as you catch the ball, it appears as natural as possible to the umpire, resulting in a better chance at a strike call. Bailey has a perfect understanding of this, which can also be seen when he receives sliders:

Slider

On the arm side, it’s pretty standard. The glove side is where the quarter turn sticks out. Pushing a breaking ball back toward the middle of the plate can often look forced. But if a catcher is already tracing that movement before he receives the ball, it appears natural and can lead to stolen strike calls. Additionally, Bailey’s ability to switch which leg is down lets him be as loose as possible with his movements after the pitch is released. This allows him to smoothly shift his positioning to ensure that he catches the pitch closer to the center of his body, which makes it look more like a strike to the umpire.

While the one-knee catching stance has swept through the league, it’s still not common for catchers to switch from knee to knee as often as Bailey does. It puts him in a better position to handle pitches coming in from different angles. When a catcher has his inside knee up, that leg can sometimes make it difficult for him to reach across his body. Since Bailey almost always has his inside knee down for horizontal moving pitches, that’s not a concern. But there are some situations in which Bailey will alter this approach, such as when Webb throws his changeup:

Changeup

He switched from his typical stance, with his outside knee up, when catching the changeup with the lefty-hitting Jonah Heim at the plate. Bailey is most likely more comfortable putting his right knee up when Webb throws his changeup because that pitch doesn’t get much horizontal movement, and his glove turn probably feels more natural when he has space on his glove side. However, he is forced to switch his stance when there is a runner on first and second base is vacant because he can’t make throws with his left knee down. But that isn’t an issue for him, because he is comfortable flipping his stance.

Now, let’s see how Bailey handles Camilo Doval, whose arsenal — 100 mph rising cutters, 98 mph sinkers, 90 mph sliders — is completely different than Webb’s repertoire. Bailey knows that, so he takes a slightly different approach:

There are a few things to note here. First, Bailey gets in a lower stance with the slider coming and a runner on third, which puts him in a better position to block anything in the dirt. His low glove turn also prepares him to either flip his mitt over to get into a blocking stance or quickly shift it for a backhand pick. With high velocity sliders, a pick can often be more effective than a traditional chest block because there isn’t much time for a catcher to drop to his knees and get in front of the pitch. Meanwhile, Bailey hardly moves his glove in preparation for the cutter. Doval probably needs the high target for a visual marker, and an exaggerated glove turn isn’t needed for high pitches anyways.

Watching Bailey handle all types of high pitches is one of his best skills as a framer. No matter if it’s a heater or breaker, he knows when to attack pitches and when to be more patient. Doval’s cutter is one example of that, but the way he receives high sinkers and high sweepers perfectly displays that dichotomy:

Sinkers

Sweepers

Since Bailey sets up on the edges, it’s important his glove gets to the spot where the sinkers are going before they arrive, so long as that location is within the width of his shoulders. Anything outside of his frame will clearly look like a ball to an umpire, and the whole point of framing is to be inconspicuous. So when he’s expecting a backdoor sinker from Taylor Rogers (top left), he receives the pitch in the middle of his body while slightly pointing his shoulders toward the batter, Corbin Carroll. The pitch was out of the zone but appeared right on the edge because of how Bailey presented it. On the pitch from Alex Wood (top right), Bailey knows to keep his posture high and eyes over the squared bunt. That lets him beat the pitch from going too far out of the zone while giving the umpire a clear look at it. It was a great mid-pitch adjustment that led to another strike on a borderline pitch.

His approach to sweepers is much more patient. This is a pitch that will keep moving as long as the catcher lets it. If it starts out of the zone, letting it travel as much as possible gives it a better chance to scratch the edge of the plate. Even if the pitch passes the plate out of the zone – like against Randal Grichuk (bottom left) – the catcher can let it get deep enough so that it still looks like a strike when he catches it behind the plate. This is a good time to refocus on Bailey’s stances. It’s more difficult for a catcher to let these pitches travel with his leg or knee in the way. Keeping the inside knee down lets him adjust his upper body as needed while giving his arm the space it needs to move freely. The more space for smooth movement, the better prepared he is to let the pitch get deeper into the zone.

It’s hard to consistently do what Bailey does when it comes to switching stances. Not all players have the mobility on both sides of their body. On top of that, Bailey demonstrates an advanced understanding of pitch movement and matching planes with glove turns no matter who is one the mound. It’s the full pitch framing package. With a full season of work, I’m excited to see how much defensive value Bailey can bring. We could be in store for one of the best defensive seasons in recent memory.


These Three Hitters Can Hit Their Peak Projection in 2024

Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports

Among other things, we at FanGraphs are known for our projections, especially at this time of year. We like to think that’s because our projection systems are good! But it’s worth remembering that projections always include uncertainly. ZiPS, for example, reflects a range of projected outcomes based on a million simulations of the coming season, with the first percentile representing the worst projected performance and the 99th percentile, the best. The numbers you see on our player pages reflect the 50th percentile projection — the median projected outcome — for each player.

For me, the fun begins when the projections are live, because I use them as a starting point to begin my own analysis using data points that are not folded into the player projections, such as video and bat tracking information. I like using these tools because they allow me to see whether a player has a foundation in place that could help him exceed his median projection. For this piece, I want to focus on players’ potential ceilings, which I will define as their 90th percentile projection, so that we can stay within the realm of possibility. (Theoretically, a player could hit 80 home runs this season, which would surely be his peak performance, but that is so extremely unlikely to happen that it is not worth considering here.) From the model’s perspective, all players’ 90th percentile outcomes are equally likely; my analysis is more subjective. I will use additional information to reinforce confidence that a player can indeed reach his ceiling.

The goal here was to look at players who have a lot of uncertainty in their projections, due to a volatile profile, an unproven track record, or both. From there, I settled on a group of three inherently risky players who have specific traits that I think should lead to an immediate improvement. With that said, let’s get started:

Adolis García 2024 ZiPS Projections
Year 2B HR BA OBP SLG OPS+ WAR
2023 (632 PAs) 29 39 .245 .328 .508 123 4.8
2024 (603 PAs)
Percentile 2B HR BA OBP SLG OPS+ WAR
95% 40 49 .299 .353 .610 157 5.6
90% 37 44 .286 .346 .571 148 4.9
80% 34 38 .272 .332 .531 136 4.1
70% 31 35 .263 .324 .511 127 3.5
60% 29 33 .256 .317 .489 120 3.0
50% 27 31 .247 .310 .474 114 2.5
40% 25 29 .239 .301 .456 109 2.2
30% 23 26 .229 .295 .435 101 1.7
20% 22 24 .217 .282 .405 90 0.9
10% 20 20 .204 .268 .377 77 -0.1
5% 18 18 .190 .258 .348 70 -0.6

I’ve presented Adolis García’s 2023 performance to provide a comparison to his 2024 projections. Going into last season, García’s 50th percentile OPS+ and WAR were 103 and 2.0, respectively, meaning that his actual production greatly exceeded his median projection. In response to this, ZiPS is more confident in García entering this season, even as his profile remains volatile.

Is it possible for him to get even more out of his bat this season? I think so. In terms of plate discipline and swing decisions, García made a significant stride forward in 2023. However, his projections expect his BB/K ratio to regress from his .37 mark last season and be closer to his 2022 level of .22. Using Robert Orr’s SEAGER metric, which calculates a combination of selectivity and strategic aggression, García scored a 19.4% last year. That was in the 88th percentile of hitters, an improvement from being slightly above average in 2022.

García slightly improved his Hittable Pitch Take%, while simultaneously increasing his Selectivity% by nearly five percentage points. Yes, that helped him draw more walks than was expected of him, but it also allowed him to crush 39 homers. García is following an intuitive path to plate discipline improvement. After posting bottom decile whiff and chase rates in 2021 and 2022, he significantly cut down on his chasing last year. Now that he has proven to possess a better understanding of the strike zone, the next step is to stop whiffing as much. His mechanics are efficient, his plate coverage is good, and he has already shown a knack for improvement. That’s a darn good recipe for a player looking to get the most out of his skills.

García’s case is a bit simpler than the two players we’ll discuss next. Let’s move onto another talented outfielder:

Riley Greene 2024 ZiPS Projections
Year 2B HR BA OBP SLG OPS+ WAR
2023 (416 PAs) 19 11 .288 .349 .447 117 1.9
2024 (497 PAs)
Percentile 2B HR BA OBP SLG OPS+ WAR
95% 32 25 .326 .394 .559 160 5.3
90% 29 23 .315 .382 .527 151 4.8
80% 27 20 .298 .368 .497 137 3.9
70% 25 18 .286 .354 .472 129 3.4
60% 23 16 .276 .345 .453 123 3.0
50% 21 15 .268 .336 .438 115 2.6
40% 19 14 .260 .331 .416 108 2.1
30% 18 12 .247 .317 .400 102 1.7
20% 16 11 .236 .305 .381 94 1.2
10% 14 9 .221 .290 .355 81 0.5
5% 13 8 .209 .209 .330 73 0.0

I’m a Riley Greene believer. My expectations for him last year were higher than where his performance fell, but he also had two unlikely injuries that could explain his underwhelming season. In May, he had a stress fracture in his fibula that caused him to miss just over a month. Then, after looking fantastic in his return, he tore his UCL in his non-throwing arm. It was a bizarre bit of luck for a player looking to prove himself as a cornerstone piece in Detroit. His projections for 2024 reflect a wide net of uncertainty in his offensive profile, but also a high ceiling because he boasts great hitting skills and is only entering his age-23 season.

Greene hits the snot out of the ball. His xwOBACON of .477 was in the top 4% of the league. His ability to manipulate his posture to get to different pitch heights allows him to have great plate coverage. His average 40.4-degree Vertical Bat Angle (VBA) – the angle of the barrel relative to the ground at impact – is among the steepest in the majors, and he combines it with a path that always works up and through the baseball. As a result, he has an ideal launch-angle distribution and consistently flush batted-ball spin. Here are a few videos of him covering pitches all over the strike zone:

Velocity up? Check. Slow and away? Check. Back foot breaker? Check. His swing is so versatile because of how he changes his torso tilt while still maintaining upward angles on his swings. He is capable of getting to just about anything, which is why he was so good against breaking balls on the season, with with a .366 xwOBA against them that ranked 18th among 260 hitters who saw at least 400 such pitches in 2023. His proficient barrel and body variabilities are the exact skills I’m looking for when betting on a player to hit his ceiling, especially if the hitter impacts the ball like Greene does. With health and better controlled aggression, Greene will put himself in a great position to hit his 90th percentile outcome. A 151 OPS+ would be a major step up from the 117 he posted last year, but at times, he has already flashed that level of dominance. The final piece of the puzzle is consistency.

Now, let’s evaluate an exciting young catcher looking to prove his 2023 season was no fluke:

Bo Naylor 2024 ZiPS Projections
Year 2B HR BA OBP SLG OPS+ WAR
2023 (230 PAs) 13 11 .237 .339 .470 124 1.5
2024 (488 PAs)
Percentile 2B HR BA OBP SLG OPS+ WAR
95% 30 25 .282 .378 .524 147 5.0
90% 28 24 .269 .366 .492 137 4.4
80% 26 20 .254 .349 .461 125 3.7
70% 24 19 .244 .338 .426 118 3.3
60% 22 17 .234 .330 .417 110 2.9
50% 21 16 .226 .322 .402 104 2.4
40% 19 15 .216 .312 .387 97 2.0
30% 18 14 .208 .301 .367 90 1.6
20% 17 12 .196 .292 .348 82 1.2
10% 14 10 .180 .278 .325 71 0.4
5% 12 9 .169 .264 .296 61 -0.1

Bo Naylor hit his tail off last year to the tune of a 124 wRC+. In a Guardians lineup that didn’t have much beyond José Ramírez and older brother Josh Naylor, Bo emerged as one of the team’s top offensive contributors from the moment he cemented himself as the primary catcher. His great performance, albeit in limited time, is reflected in his ceiling, while his floor is based on his lack of a track record in the majors.

It’s a good sign whenever a young catcher has such a solid 50th percentile projection, though in Naylor’s case, the expectation is that his power will drop off. That is reasonable when you consider his .232 ISO last year would’ve been third among catchers with at least 300 plate appearances, despite the fact that his 30.8% hard-hit rate would’ve ranked 235th among the 258 qualified hitters, according to Baseball Savant. On top of that, Naylor outpaced his expected statistics by quite a wide margin. His .347 wOBA was considerably higher than his .309 xwOBA and his .379 xSLG was far off from his .470 mark. But wait a minute — we know that there is sometimes more to uncover when we see discrepancies like this. Is Naylor one of those cases?

Of the 406 players last year who had at least 100 batted balls, Naylor ranked 18th in Pulled FB% (sourced from Orr’s leaderboards again). If Naylor is one of the better players in the game at pulling fly balls consistently, then he should be able to outperform his expected statistics again in 2024. Does he have the swing mechanics and path to keep up this pace? Naylor, a left-handed batter, is typically hitting with the platoon advantage, making it easier for him to create the Horizontal Bat Angles (HBA) required to pull these pitches consistently. Matchups with righty pitchers are ideal for lefty hitters with pulled fly ball approaches. Here are a few clips that show him executing that swing on different pitches:

Naylor is going to be challenged to hit pitches away from his body to the pull side, but if he can keep that front side locked like he did in these swings, he may be able to keep up his pull side success despite the lack of raw power. In these swings, he showed that he can turn on 99 mph heat, but also that he can stay disciplined enough to wait on an 88 mph changeup. Given what we know about his patience and plate discipline, Naylor is the type of player who should be able to match his swing decisions with his swing strengths. That’s an important skill that could help him build upon his impressive debut.


Tim Anderson Has Found a New Home

Reggie Hildred-USA TODAY Sports

With spring training games in full swing, the pressure is mounting for baseball’s remaining free agents to find homes. After all, nobody wants to miss out on the weather in Florida or Arizona this time of year, and Opening Day is just a few weeks away. Now Tim Anderson won’t have to fret. Anderson is heading to the Miami Marlins on a one-year, $5 million deal. With a clear path to the starting shortstop role, the 30-year-old will no doubt hope to re-enter free agency this winter having bounced back from his disappointing final season in Chicago.

Anderson’s fit in Miami is an interesting one. If he can stay healthy and return to his prior form, he could help to stabilize the shortstop position in Miami. But he also constitutes a risky addition to an already uncertain Marlins lineup. It’s not hard to imagine a scenario where neither Anderson nor Jazz Chisholm Jr. has an offensive bounce-back, Luis Arraez regresses, and Jake Burger’s contact overhaul proves to be just a flash in the pan; it could all go sideways pretty quickly. But if it goes right, this could be an exciting lineup. If nothing else, the top three of Arraez, Anderson, and Chisholm make for a very fun group. Still, in order for things to go right for Anderson, he needs to recover some of the BABIP skills that were a key reason for his success. Let’s focus on how exactly that might happen.

From 2019-2022, Anderson led the majors in batting average with a .318 mark. On a hit per plate appearance basis, nobody was more productive. Then in 2023, he cratered. Knee, shoulder, forearm, and neck injuries all contributed to the contact hitter dropping to a 60 wRC+ and -0.5 WAR in 123 games. Add to that concerns about his ability to stick at shortstop, and you have yourself a player who fell $3 million short of his median crowdsourced contract prediction. The shape of Anderson’s production through his successful four-year run was inherently volatile. He definitely possessed skills that propelled him to run above-average BABIPs, but the margin for error for that hitting style is razor thin; a handful of injuries and some loss of strength can make an otherwise productive profile almost unplayable. Read the rest of this entry »


Not All Steep Swings Are Created Equal

Matt Blewett-USA TODAY Sports

There is no baseball topic that gets me more excited than swing diversity. A player’s swing is like a fingerprint: No two are the same. But even similar swings can yield extremely different results. There are many ways to compare swings, but because Vertical Bat Angle (VBA), the angle of the bat at contact relative to the ground, is the most accessible (thanks, SwingGraphs), it’s been my go-to proxy for the last year or so. Of course, you can always use your eyes to visually analyze swings, but having the data to confirm it helps inform the evaluation.

Lately, my video evaluations have focused on hitters with steep VBAs, and even among this group there is a ton of swing diversity. Some take golf-like swings to get to their steep planes and others employ one of my favorite styles: the chicken-wing swing.

Intuitively, it makes sense that hitters with steeps paths are more prone to whiffs than those who have flatter swings. Even so, some of the game’s best contact hitters have swings as steep as some of those who are the most whiff prone. Luis Arraez, for example, has a swing that is just as steep as J.D. Martinez’s, at least according to VBA. Without the data to confirm, it’s hard to know if the same holds true for Attack Angle (AA), the angle of the bat’s path at impact.

To show you exactly what I mean, I’ll compare pairs of hitters with nearly identical average VBAs, but different offensive profiles. A few weeks ago, Davy Andrews wrote about Edouard Julien and the bizarre nature of his platoon splits (and a tune to go along with it). His entire offensive profile drastically changes depending on if he’s facing a lefty or righty. It’s fascinating. After I read the piece, I was immediately curious as to how those trends might relate to Julien’s swing path. At 40 degrees, Julien has one of the steepest VBAs in the majors. It’s almost a perfect diagonal. Here are a few slow motion swings that showcase that:

No matter how high or low the pitch is, Julien manages to get his bat on a diagonal, which last year helped him run an xwOBACON of .443, well above average. His diagonal angle also allows him to crush fastballs. He had a .408 wOBA against heaters but struggled mightily (.287 wOBA) vs. breaking balls. Production against different pitch types is where you tend to see some deviation between hitters with similar VBAs. Like Julien, Freddie Freeman is also a lefty batter with a steep VBA (41.7 degrees), yet despite their similar angles, Julien ran a 44.3% whiff rate against breaking pitches, while Freeman’s whiff rate vs. breaking balls was 27.7%. There are swing components other than VBA that contribute to how such divergence can happen. But before getting to that, let’s check out some of Freeman’s swings from 2023:

Man, Freeman is smooth. Because both he and Julien set up with high hands, they can create a steep path at different pitch heights. This setup allows them to drop their barrel easily and rely on changing posture to adjust to locations. How they do it, though, is where their swings differ. Julien uses more aggressive movements to get to different pitch heights, while Freeman shifts his shoulder plane and avoids more drastic body adjustments. His chicken-wing style is a bit more handsy and less reliant on changing his eye level, and as a result, he has excellent plate coverage. His contact rates on pitches at the top, bottom, and outer thirds of the zone outpace Julien by about eight percentage points in each location.

Two other factors, which are not publicly available, also likely contribute to Freeman’s superior plate coverage: Horizontal Bat Angle (HBA), the horizontal angle of the bat at impact, and bat speed. Freeman, who we’ve already established has a steep VBA on average, appears to be better at altering his swing speeds when necessary, which lets him manipulate his bat angle to cover pitches throughout the zone. You can see this in the third video above, on the changeup breaking down and away from him.

Freeman’s approach also helps him produce against lefties (career 120 wRC+), which is something he has improved upon as he has gotten older (139 wRC+ over the last three seasons). Meanwhile, Julien’s daddy-hack approach sometimes limits his ability to alter his swing speeds and angles, which can often lead to poorly timed swings or mishits and explains why he is prone to hitting groundballs (50.2% last year) despite his steep swing. These issues are more apparent when he faces lefties (22 wRC+, 80% groundball rate), though as Davy pointed out in his Julien piece, he has made only 48 plate appearances against lefties in the big leagues — an incredibly small sample size.

That brings us to the next hitter, Tim Anderson. Even with his steep 39.5-degree VBA, Anderson had a groundball rate above 60% last year. A batter’s contact point has to be extremely deep to pull that off. Here are some swings from him to illustrate that:

Most hitters would struggle to put the ball in play after letting it travel this deep, but TA’s steep barrel and feel for contact in the zone allowed him to pound the ball into the ground over and over and over again last season. The sweeping breaking ball from Rich Hill is the exact type of pitch Anderson would have elevated in years past. Typically, having a steep bat path against an opposite-handed breaking ball is a perfect recipe for an ideal launch angle distribution, but if you’re making deep contact, this is all you can get out of the swing.

Chas McCormick was the anti-Anderson last season, when he mostly refused to hit the ball on the ground against opposite-handed pitching. He can do this because of how he marries his steep, 38.2-degree VBA with ideal contact points. In 2023, he had a 25.6 GB% against left-handed pitchers. That was the third lowest in baseball behind Jorge Soler and Mookie Betts. Unsurprisingly, by wRC+, they were three of the six most productive right-handed hitters against lefties last year. Here are a few swings from McCormick vs. lefties that show his ability to elevate no matter the zone or pitch:

Even on the well-executed curveball from MacKenzie Gore, McCormick’s barrel was on an upward slope at contact because he connected with the pitch out in front of the zone. This is the type of pitch that Anderson would have pounded into the ground despite the similar steepness at contact, because he would’ve let the pitch get deeper before swinging.

McCormick’s closed stride puts him in a great position to elevate any pitch in the middle of the plate, even if it makes it more difficult for him to square up inside pitches in the top half of the zone. That said, as you can see in the video of his swing against Cole Ragans, he can still get to up-and-in pitches when he holds his posture. The main takeaway is that no matter the zone, his barrel is working on an upward slope through contact, which allows him to do more damage.

Although their swings are similarly steep, these four hitters have different swing types that generate different results. VBA is a great tool to use, but it only tells one part of the story.


Fernando Tatis Jr. Needs to Get His Legs Back in Check

Ray Acevedo-USA TODAY Sports

It is not easy to skip a whole year of something and come back with the same level of performance or skill. Baseball is no different, even for the best of ballplayers. Fernando Tatis Jr. missed the entire 2022 season because of wrist injuries and a suspension for using performance enhancing drugs. While he was serving his suspension, he underwent labrum surgery to repair a recurring issue that hampered his ability to consistently stay on the field. He was fully healthy upon his return in 2023, and he remained that way for the entire season.

Yet, despite avoiding injury for the first full season of his career, in 2023 Tatis had his least productive year at the plate. His 113 wRC+ was 41 points below the mark he had recorded over his first three big league seasons. He also set career lows in average (.257), on-base percentage (.322), slugging (.449), ISO (.191) and wOBA (.332). From a data perspective, his quality of contact took a significant hit, though that isn’t all that surprising. Even after athletes return to the field, it takes time for them to regain their explosiveness following serious injuries and surgeries. Ronald Acuña Jr. is a perfect example of that. He tore his ACL in July 2021, underwent season-ending surgery, and missed Atlanta’s first 19 games of 2022. Like Tatis last year, Acuña was mostly healthy for the rest of the season but did not perform up to his standards. Then, of course, last year he won the NL MVP and became the first player ever to hit 40 home runs and steal 70 bases in a season.

Tatis will look to take a similar path, but in order to do so, he’ll have to figure out and address the root causes (mechanics, swing decisions, etc.) of this big drop off. Back in September, Ben Clemens investigated how spray angle on fly balls impacts some of the hardest hitters in the game, Tatis being one of them. One of the key conclusions of Ben’s research is that hitters who pull their fly balls at an extreme rate, such as Isaac Paredes, don’t do more with those batted balls; they just hit them much more frequently, which allows them to outproduce others on fly balls, despite not having the eye-popping power that we’d assume would be the main causal variable.

This is notable for Tatis because, over his first three seasons, he hit the ball with enough power to do damage on fly balls no matter the spray angle. That was not the case last year.

Tatis Fly Ball Performance
Years Fly Ball% Fly Balls wOBA xwOBA wOBA-xwOBA
2019-2021 27.4 197 .847 .834 .013
2023 25.1 110 .456 .626 -.170
SOURCE: Baseball Savant

From 2019 through 2021, Tatis’ wOBA on fly balls slightly outpaced his xwOBA, while last year, he greatly underperformed his expected numbers. Much of that can be explained by his pull rate dropping from 30.5% over his first three seasons to 21.8% in 2023. However, that’s not the only variable at play here, because even when he hit straightaway fly balls in those first three years, he had a .764 wOBA. That’s well below his .894 xwOBA, but it was still the third-highest mark among all batters from 2019–21 (min. 150 fly balls). Last season, though, Tatis finished with a .291 wOBA on straightaway fly balls, significantly lower than his .653 xwOBA. Crushing balls to the deepest parts of the park was once a Tatis superpower; in 2023, it was his kryptonite.

To better understand how this happened, let’s look at how Tatis fared in different areas of the strike zone. By breaking down his performance in different zones, we’ll get a better idea of any holes that may have developed in his swing. For all his woes last year, Tatis continued to rake against left-handed pitching (152 wRC+), so I’m going to focus on his splits vs. righties, against whom he had a career low 101 wRC+. The table below shows how Tatis performed against pitches from righties in each third of the zone, first in 2021 and then in 2023.

Zone wOBA/xwOBA vs. RHP
Year Inner Third Middle Third Outer Third
2021 .423/.450 .464/.533 .500/.473
2023 .307/.332 .427/.466 .252/.352

There are drops across the board here, but my goodness, what the heck happened on the outer third? In 2021, Tatis ranked second in right-on-right wOBA on outer third pitches. This year, if you were a righty who could locate on the outer third, Tatis would do the work for you.

What’s the deal? Making contact wasn’t the problem, because he actually whiffed less often against the outer third last year than he did in 2021. The real issue was his quality of contact. On his 67 batted balls against pitches from righties on the outer third in 2021, his xwOBACON was .634. In 2023, it was .305. Ooof.

A change in swing path is typically to blame when a player goes from destroying the outer third to hardly covering it at all. Let’s look at the video to figure out what mechanical flaws altered his swing path. Here are some swings from 2021 against outer third pitches from righties.

Here is a standard heater away with a pretty neutral body angle (sorry Keegan Thompson):

This one is a low and away breaking ball with a pretty aggressive body adjustment to get the barrel under the ball:

And lastly, here is a high heater that needed an upright body adjustment:

Each of these three swings shows how Tatis adjusted his body in different ways to get to his barrel to outer third pitches. The swings are reciprocal, athletic, and vicious. His stability with the ground is consistent no matter the posture of his upper body. Now let’s look at three swings on similar pitches from 2023, starting with another standard middle-away heater:

Here is a swing on a low breaking ball with a body adjustment where Tatis couldn’t quite create the same angle as he did in 2021:

Then here is a can of corn fly ball to center on an up and away heater where Tatis caught it off the end of the barrel:

OK, now for some comparison. Off the rip, it’s clear that Tatis’ stride is working in a different direction. It’s more neutral now than it used to be. Instead of working from a neutral stance into a closed stride, he’s working from an open stance into a neutral stride. The starkest comparison is looking at how he handled Thompson’s heater in 2021 versus the 2023 one we saw from Cristian Javier. Against Javier, it was the exact kind of pitch you’d expect Tatis to drill into the opposite field gap, but his legs didn’t create enough space for him to get his barrel moving in the optimal direction. Instead of a laser opposite field homer, it was a measly liner to left for an easy out.

In 2021, Tatis had a more stable base, which allowed him to create a more drastic angle with his upper body against the low breaking ball. That made the difference between his line drive in the gap from 2021 and last year’s line drive to the shortstop. On both of the high pitches, he had the tall posture he needed to get on plane, but in 2023, he couldn’t get his bat on the proper horizontal angle to make flush contact, causing him to hit the ball off the end of the bat instead of the barrel.

As I always say, we’re looking for reciprocal movements. If he’s still kicking back aggressively but doesn’t have the movement beforehand to make the kick back smooth, then he’s creating asymmetrical movements. The closed stride and smooth kick back was his recipe for success in 2021. The logic here is that when he strides closed, he has a more stable connection to the ground, leading to better positions to get his barrel on plane.

He did not do that last year, and as a result, he created less space for his upper body to cover the outer third effectively, which sapped his production on fly balls. Because he was coming back from surgery, it’s possible that he wasn’t comfortable making the same movements he had in the past, though it’s hard to believe that would be the only reason for losing his mechanics. After all, his surgery was on his shoulder, and this is a lower body problem. That said, even if he knew what was wrong, his shoulder could have limited the amount of extra swings he could take to fix it during the season.

Now that he is healthy, he should be able to do the drills and cage work necessary to correct his mechanics and return to his previous rotational patterns.


MLB Hitters Get Stuck On Their Backside Too

Jayne Kamin-Oncea-USA TODAY Sports

A lot of my thoughts on hitting are rooted in my own experiences playing, for better or for worse. When I was in school playing ball, I was constantly working through a particular mechanical issue. Traditionally, it is called “getting stuck on the back side,” but I always said I got stuck on a pedestal. When I got to the highest point of my leg kick (which was moderately high), I sometimes transferred too much of my weight over my back foot – it was a swing path killer. Because of my extensive experience with it, I’ve always been keen on identifying hitters who have a similar issue.

Rotational movements like hitting and pitching have linear components, but hitters need to do more than just move on the coronal plane (from left to right or right to left) in order to have a deep entry into the hitting zone. A hitter has to rotate with his hips and/or spine while moving along that linear plane to create rotational power and an ideal bat path. In the case of pedestal hitters, they reach their peak leg lift while sometimes neglecting those other aspects of movement.

Take Will Smith, for example. He uses a high leg kick to create space in his swing and fell into the pedestal hitting habit during the second half of last season:

October 9th

September 22nd

September 7th

A few hittable pitches in the heart of the zone with no barrels to show for it. On the middle-middle heaters, his path was cut off and he only skimmed the bottom of the ball, rather than hitting it flush. That led to can-of-corn fly balls to right field instead of barreled line drives. This was a persistent issue for Smith throughout 2023 – the worst offensive season of his five-year career and the first with an ISO below .200.

When you transfer too much weight over your back foot, you either get stuck and create a path which leads to lazy fly balls to the opposite field or you fall too heavy on your front side and hit grounders like Smith did against Manaea. You lose depth in your bat path and can’t cover as much of the zone with your barrel. For Smith, that negatively impacted his wOBA on outer third pitches. For the bulk of his career, he has been able to cover those pitches, so this should be something he can fix. To do that, he’ll have to get back to his early 2023 swings where he was balanced and creating space for his bat to work through the zone.

April 30th

Smith is a good enough hitter that he still posted a 119 wRC+ last year despite his mechanical flaw. Not everyone has that much room for error, though. Enrique Hernández has had a wRC+ below 75 in consecutive seasons after running a 109 mark in 2021. Like Smith, he typically relies on a big leg kick to create space, rhythm, and timing in his swing. And while the size of his leg kick fluctuates more than Smith’s, it’s still a key driver in his process. Here are a few swings from 2023 before he was traded to the Dodgers:

April 11th

June 25th

July 2nd

Even if you want to cut Hernández some slack on the high quality changeup from Shane McClanahan, that swing is still a good example of how his lack of balance causes him to land heavily on his lead leg. The heavy landing is even more obvious in his swing against Jesse Scholtens in the second clip. With that swing in particular, his leg kick works straight up and down, which causes him to force a lead hip external rotation.

What do I mean by that? If you’re trying to explode your lead leg open, you would create the counter movement (internal hip rotation) first. That way, you’re creating a reciprocal pattern that leads to smooth external rotation. Staying neutral at the beginning of the swing creates an imbalance, causing the hitter to stand on the pedestal instead of rotating into and then out of it as he swings. Hernández has hyper mobile external rotation, which is seen by his tendency to stride open. To control it, he needs to create sufficient counter rotation with his hips. Unsurprisingly, when he went to Los Angeles, he made a clear change in his leg lift that allowed him to stack his center of mass over his midpoint instead of his back leg. Pay attention to the direction he works his leg kick:

August 19th

September 9th

His leg lift started working on an angle towards his back leg, which allowed him to have a controlled explosion and balanced swing. With the Dodgers, he had a 96 wRC+ – much more in line with his career 94 mark. Yes, it was over a sample of 185 plate appearances, but the movement quality improvement is undeniable.

The last example I’ll use to portray pedestal hitters is Guardians outfielder Steven Kwan. His case is a bit more complicated. In his rookie season, he splashed onto the scene with a 126 wRC+. However, his peripherals suggested there would likely be a regression – his .341 wOBA was considerably higher than his .312 xwOBA. In 2023, those numbers almost completely converged. He had a .313 wOBA and .318 xwOBA. From a mechanical point of view, this wasn’t completely surprising.

His big leg kick is a crucial component of his swing. It keeps him stable, which plays a key role in his great plate discipline. However, the movement also makes him heavily reliant on his hands to do most of the work to get on plane. Given his elite bat-to-ball skills, he can successfully do that more than other players, but he doesn’t have much room for error. If he gets stuck on his back side, his hands can only do so much. If he identifies a pitch too late, even just slightly, then he puts himself in a tough position to make flush contact. Here are a few swings showing that:

July 9th

August 30th

September 22nd

Each of these fastballs were thrown between 96 and 97 mph, but were right down the middle. Kwan couldn’t get his hands on plane despite the hittable locations. This was a trend for him all year. In 2023, he saw 190 four-seamers with a velocity of at least 96 mph and had a .155 wOBA against them. This is another example of why rotational hitters like Kwan, Hernández and Smith need to be on top of their mechanics at all times. Pedestal hitting gives batters even less margin for error than other hitters against high velocity.

Every hitter has his weakness, and for this trio of players, theirs is directly related to how they load with their leg kick. As I watch each of them in 2024, I’ll be looking for any potential adjustments they might have made over the offseason, or might make as the season progresses.


Blake Snell Has Better Command Than You Think

Orlando Ramirez-USA TODAY Sports

Two-time Cy Young Award winner Blake Snell is still a free agent toward the end of the third week of January, and there reportedly remains a large gap between his asking price and what his potential suitors are willing to pay him. Snell’s upside is undeniable, but there are some concerns about his long-term value. He has not been a model of durability or consistency throughout his eight-year career, and perhaps most concerning is that even at his best, he allows a lot walks.

Last year, despite his overall excellence, Snell led the majors with 99 walks, 16 more than the next two guys, Charlie Morton and Johan Oviedo. In terms of BB%, his 13.3% rate beats out Morton’s by 1.7 percentage points. Spending north of $200 million on a pitcher who gives up so many free passes, even one of Snell’s caliber, is a tough sell. However, Snell isn’t your typical wild thing who doesn’t know where the ball is going after he releases it. Rather, there appears to an intentionality to where he misses. His misses are frequently in locations where the worst outcome is a wasted pitch out of the zone, rather than over the middle of the plate where batters can do more damage. Such an approach can be incredibly unpleasing to watch, but it has proven to be effective for him, nonetheless.

That he has a propensity for giving up walks and preventing runs forces us to consider that walks alone might not be the best encapsulation of his command. His ability to live around the edges and leave his misses in low risk locations is a skill. To defend that notion, I’ll present some data outlining where Snell throws his pitches, and how that compares to his peers. Let’s start with fastball command. Below is a table of last year’s top 20 pitchers in fastball shadow zone percentage, out of the 119 pitchers who threw at least 1,000 heaters:

Fastball Shadow Zone%
Name Total Fastballs Shadow Zone%
Bailey Ober 1062 51.2
Ranger Suárez 1254 49.9
Joe Ryan 1526 49.0
Wade Miley 1280 48.5
Patrick Corbin 1711 48.4
Matt Strahm 1018 48.3
Kyle Freeland 1127 48.0
Luke Weaver 1230 47.7
Kyle Hendricks 1167 47.6
Sean Manaea 1186 47.6
Alex Cobb 1001 47.6
Aaron Nola 1720 47.5
George Kirby 1723 47.4
Reid Detmers 1123 47.3
Hunter Greene 1135 47.3
Blake Snell 1541 47.2
Pablo López 1363 47.2
Sonny Gray 1578 47.0
Trevor Williams 1516 47.0
Merrill Kelly 1692 47.0

Snell’s positioning between command artists like George Kirby and Aaron Nola above him, and Pablo López and Sonny Gray below him is unexpected. (Hunter Greene and Reid Detmers are less regarded for their command, but even their walk rates were, respectively, 3.7 and 4 percentage points lower than Snell’s 13.3%.) When looking a little further, Snell had the third lowest frequency of heart percentage on his heater last year. It’s one of the reasons why he was able to avoid the long ball so well. His 0.75 HR/9 ranked fourth among qualified pitchers. This is not a new trend for him, either. His fastball Shadow Zone% was even better in 2022. His 26.6% Heart% was 2.6 percentage points higher than it was last year, but it still ranked 17th among the 117 pitchers who threw at least 1,000 fastballs, and consequently, he allowed just 0.77 HR/9.

There is more to Snell than just his fastball, though. After all, he threw heaters less than half the time last year. To get a true sense of his command, we also need to evaluate his three other pitches: curveball, slider, changeup. Snell ranked second among all pitchers in breaking ball run value last year, so presumably he has a good handle on his curve and slider. For this table, I’ll use chase zone percentage:

Breaking Ball Chase Zone%
Player Total Breakers Chase Zone%
Corbin Burnes 791 31.2
Trevor Williams 659 30.3
Alex Lange 670 29.9
Patrick Corbin 1024 29.5
Framber Valdez 718 29.2
Brady Singer 1112 28.9
Kyle Gibson 816 28.6
Spencer Strider 1048 28.5
Zack Wheeler 748 28.5
Dane Dunning 757 28.4
Zac Gallen 849 28.2
Marcus Stroman 620 28.2
Braxton Garrett 849 28.0
Tylor Megill 652 27.8
Blake Snell 1043 27.7
Roansy Contreras 638 27.6
José Berríos 870 27.4
Julian Merryweather 634 27.4
Michael Grove 627 27.4
Bobby Miller 704 27.3

The data presented here combines all the breaking balls a pitcher throws. In my best effort to keep the denominators similar (this one has 106 pitchers), the minimum number of breaking balls is set at 600. Once again, Snell has good positioning. Most of this top 20 list features pitchers who throw a high volume of curveballs and place them well, like Corbin Burnes, Framber Valdez, and Zac Gallen. With his nasty slider, Spencer Strider is a bit of an outlier in this group, but other guys with high velocity sliders begin to pop up in the 20s. Point being, Snell is one of the best pitchers in baseball when it comes to landing breaking balls in competitive spots to get whiffs, even if they are out of the zone. This part was expected, given his elite whiff rates on both his slider and curveball.

This doesn’t tell the entire story about how Snell uses his breaking balls, though. Yes, we know he gets plenty of chases and whiffs, but he does it differently than any other pitcher in baseball. He doesn’t give hitters many opportunities to hit mistakes because, more often than not, he refuses to throw his breaking pitches anywhere in or around the strike zone. Of the 149 pitchers in baseball who threw at least 500 breaking balls in 2023, Snell had the lowest combined rate of pitches in the heart and shadow zones by nine percentage points. Nine! He is the only pitcher on that list who throws his breaking balls in these two zones less than half the time.

It becomes even more clear that his avoiding the zone is by design rather than an indication that he has poor command when looking at what happens when he doesn’t locate his breaking balls as well as he would like. Last year, he threw 29.5% of his breaking pitches in the waste zone, the highest rate in the majors. That’s 9.4 percentage points higher than the next guy, Shane Bieber.

His unwillingness to give in leads to a lot of noncompetitive pitches, but that’s the point. Batters can’t crush pitches if they don’t swing, and even when they do, the pitches are breaking far enough outside the zone that hitters can’t do much with them, anyway. Considering that last year he also mostly ditched his slider against right-handed hitters in favor of his changeup, there is good reason to believe he has a much better understanding of how to execute and optimize his arsenal.

Speaking of the changeup, the plus command trend holds up there as well. Last year, he landed the pitch in the shadow zone 50% of the time, the fifth highest rate among the 107 pitchers who threw at least 300 offspeed pitches.

Specifically looking at the shadow zone is important for this pitch, because it’s not the kind of changeup or forkball that has wicked drop and falls out of the zone. Instead, it’s a pitch that tunnels with his heater and is roughly 9 mph slower without big time movement. Its success hinges on landing it in the shadow zone with consistency. Snell had never done that until last year. After fading the pitch for most of his San Diego tenure, he bumped the usage back up over 20%.

Usually this is the point in an analysis where I’d lay out some video highlighting how this data looks in practice, but that doesn’t feel necessary here. For one, I’ve already told you how visually unpleasing watching Snell walk the house can be. If you’ve watched him navigate a game, you know the feeling. If you haven’t, then here are some games where he walks guys for nitpicking around the edges.

Conventional wisdom would suggest that because of all the walks, Snell has poor command, and therefore is a risky investment for teams looking to sign him. Yes, it is true that he allows an uncomfortable amount of walks, and for a lesser pitcher, this would not be ideal. Except, Snell is not a lesser pitcher, and his approach is not conventional. Despite the walks, maybe even because of them, Snell is adept at run prevention. He has a good feel for keeping his pitches in places where he won’t get burned too badly. After all, bases on balls are better than long balls, right?


After 15 Years, Michael Brantley Is Hanging Up His Spikes

Thomas Shea-USA TODAY Sports

He may not have upper-echelon career totals, but boy was Michael Brantley an absolute baller. A five-time All-Star, Brantley also won a Silver Slugger and finished third in American League MVP voting in 2014, a year that saw him finish second in the AL in WAR behind only Mike Trout, the MVP winner. After a very successful 15-year career, the sweet swinging lefty outfielder has decided to hang up his cleats. It’s an unsurprising move for Brantley, who had battled shoulder injuries for much of the last three seasons and would have been entering his age-37 season.

Brantley was a unique player. Over the course of his career (2009-2023), the league-wide strikeout rate increased from 18.0% to 22.7%. But while the league was whiffing more and more, Brantley bucked the trend. During his 10-year tenure in Cleveland, he struck out 10.7% of the time; in the five years he spent in Houston, that mark was exactly the same. Indeed, his strikeout rate with the Astros was over 40% better than the league average rate (22.8%) during that period. Of the hitters with at least 1,000 plate appearances from 2019 to 2023, 21 had a strikeout rate below 14%. Only two had a higher wRC+ than Brantley: Alex Bregman (137) and José Ramírez (132).

His skill set was timeless, headlined by his elite contact ability. His wRC+ was actually higher in his 30s (124) than it was in his 20s (112). And his future looked bright – ZiPS projected him for a .290/.354/.416 line and a 114 OPS+ in the upcoming season had he played. As Timothy Jackson of Baseball Prospectus put it, Brantley was “unique among players with outlier skills.” And so, with his time in the majors coming to a close, I wanted to look back at Brantley’s career progression. More specifically, I wanted to examine how his consistently elite contact skills allowed him to maintain his performance despite myriad injuries. Read the rest of this entry »


The Red Sox Raise Their Floor, Bring in Lucas Giolito on a Two-Year Deal

Jay Biggerstaff-USA TODAY Sports

After running his highest FIP since his breakout season in 2019, Lucas Giolito has secured a modified prove-it deal. Over the holidays, the right-hander signed a two-year contract with the Boston Red Sox worth $38.5 million. He will make $18 million in the first season and $19 million in the second; he can opt out after 2024. If he elects not to opt out, a conditional option kicks in for the 2026 season that is dependent on whether he throws at least 140 innings in 2025. If he does, it becomes a mutual option worth $19 million; if he doesn’t, it becomes a $14 million club option.

Despite Giolito’s 4.88 ERA, 5.27 FIP, and 41 home runs allowed (second to only Lance Lynn) in 2023, he was still perceived as a mid-rotation option entering free agency. Much of that was due to his above-average performance from 2019-21, but he has also proven he can stay healthy and make his starts. Since 2021, he is 16th in the league in innings pitched. His 184.1 IP with the White Sox, Angels, and Guardians in 2023 only further cemented his reputation. With Boston ranking second-to-last in the American League in starter innings pitched behind only Oakland, this was a practical match that came at a reasonable cost.

Giolito’s $19.25 million AAV is fifth among starting pitchers who have signed free agent contracts this offseason (excluding Shohei Ohtani), placing him in between the top and middle tier. Given that he hasn’t reached his 30th birthday, it seems plausible that he can keep up his volume while potentially improving his results and returning to the starter he was for a three-year stretch in Chicago.

After his first start with the Guardians in September (he was famously scooped up off waivers from the Angels, who had acquired him from the White Sox just five weeks prior), Giolito spoke with David Laurila about his season and impending free agency. In that conversation, Giolito was candid about his lack of execution in 2023, and how he hadn’t been able to command the anchor of his arsenal, his fastball-changeup combination. Giolito expressed that he wants to consistently command his heater up in the zone; for the changeup, the goal is more competitive pitches in the zone. Like any fastball-changeup combo, helping one will inherently help the other. As a high-release, big-extension pitcher, this is a natural path for Giolito, especially considering that the blueprint has already worked. To better understand how his fastball has fluctuated in recent seasons, let’s look at some qualities of the pitch:

Giolito Four-Seamer Characteristics
Year Run Value Vert. Rel Hor. Rel Vert. Location Hor. Location
2019 15.3 6.56 -1.26 2.74 0.14
2020 5.8 6.49 -1.26 2.91 0.22
2021 -0.4 6.40 -1.5 2.81 0.02
2022 0.3 6.36 -1.39 2.85 0.10
2023 -7.7 6.33 -1.19 2.93 -0.07

His fastball plays best when it’s at the top of the zone. Interestingly, his fastball was located higher on average in 2023 than in any other season since 2019 but was by far the worst in terms of value, though I’m not sure that was the primary reason for his struggles. Instead, I’d look to his horizontal location, and the trend of him throwing his heater closer to righties and further away from lefties. Since his breakout in 2019, Giolito had always neutralized left-handed batters, with his fastball-changeup combo the reason. Lefties had never posted a wOBA above .283 against him; that mark jumped to .334 in 2023. By moving the pitch further to the edge (likely due to his release point change), his two-pitch combo lost some of its in-zone consistency, especially the changeup. The trend started in 2022, and even with a slight bounce back this year, the changeup still struggled:

Giolito Changeup Characteristics
Year Run Value Vert. Rel Hor. Rel Vert. Location Hor. Location
2019 10.9 6.52 -1.31 2.14 -0.10
2020 1.7 6.48 -1.33 1.88 -0.12
2021 10.8 6.36 -1.59 2.04 -0.19
2022 -7.0 6.35 -1.44 1.88 -0.16
2023 0.6 6.29 -1.31 1.88 -0.27

Similar to the heater, the pitch moved progressively further toward righties as its performance dipped. In the two seasons where Giolito threw the pitch at its highest height on average, it’s been the most effective. Given Giolito’s tendency to keep the fastball up, a higher tunnel with the changeup is logical. But going back to its in-zone utility, 2022 and 2023 saw him have in-zone rates below 50% (45.0% and 49.2%, respectively) after he ran the pitch in the zone between 51.3% and 59.1% from 2019 to 2023. The nature of the tunnel is most deceptive when he can keep the pitch in the strike zone. All of this to say, the story that Giolito told Laurila a few months ago tracks very well. The question now is what he and the Red Sox can do to flip things back to what they were during his very good three-year run in Chicago.

Without any making any mechanical changes, my first thought would be to shift Giolito to the first base side of the rubber to ensure his pitches are moving on the side of the plate where he had success. Seems foolproof, right? The thing is, he has been on this side of the rubber for years. He can’t go any further! Here is a screenshot from a late September start:

Next, we might look to something mechanical that has had a direct impact on where he is releasing the ball or the angle his arm is at when he releases it. That makes me think of what we know about Giolito in general and what he did to become the pitcher he was from 2019-21. The most obvious thing is his abbreviated arm action. A big piece of unlocking his performance was getting his arm swing timing in line with the rest of his body by shortening it. If he got out whack in the last two seasons, perhaps it’s related to this, even if it’s not as drastic as his early career form. To analyze that, let’s do a video comparison of Giolito in 2021 versus 2023. The first two clips are from 2021 and the next two are 2023:

His arm was late during his run in Cleveland. Visually, when his lead foot stabilized on the ground, his forearm was still below 45 degrees. Ben Brewster from Tread Athletics has stated that an “on time” arm is between 45 to 90 degrees at contact/stabilization, while slightly late is from 25-45, and late is less than 25. In both Cleveland clips, Gio’s arm is hardly getting to 25 degrees when his lead leg block contacts the ground. In Chicago, he is hovering somewhere around 60 degrees, give or take.

Basically, we know what Giolito’s arm looks like when it’s on time. When looking at where he was in Cleveland, it’s clear he was later than is ideal for him. In terms of release point and command, it makes sense that he has lost some feel. His arm is in a different position than when he was succeeding. Trying to execute the same game plan with this difference, even if it is slight, can be difficult. The good news is that this change hasn’t affected his health or ability to maintain volume. The bad news is that if his body isn’t as mobile in some areas as it was in his mid-20s, these positions might not be as attainable.

Even if Giolito doesn’t make a return to his peak form from a few years ago, he is still a positive addition for the Red Sox. As their rotation is currently constructed, it’s highly plausible that he will lead the team in innings, as no other pitcher on the roster has ever thrown more than 180 in their respective careers. Giolito is a good start to raising their floor, but they need a sure-thing, high-quality pitcher. And while Chris Sale isn’t that pitcher anymore, trading him to Atlanta only further increases their need. What they do from here on will depend on their willingness to open their pocket book or deal from their core of position player prospects.