The field of hitters in the World Series is loaded. Both sides feature old and new stars who can tear the cover off the baseball. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Bryce Harper has been the most productive of all of them, with a .514 wOBA to this point. You have to go all the way down to the low .400s to find the next players on that list, but if you do, you see Jeremy Peña (.427 wOBA) and Alex Bregman (.407 wOBA). Peña has had the best stretch of his short career in these playoffs, delivering two-strike hit after two-strike hit. But the Astros third baseman, who has been penciled in right behind Peña and Yordan Alvarez, has also been fantastic.

There’s a reason Bregman is sitting fourth in the lineup behind three stars. His knack for not chasing breaking balls and getting to high velocity makes him an ideal hitter to follow Peña and Alvarez. Peña’s weakness is chasing sliders off the plate, while teams have consistently challenged Alvarez with high heat. But that approach has to change when facing Bregman, making it tough for any reliever to get through this stretch of the lineup unscathed. Interestingly, while Bregman’s chase rate hadn’t faltered at all, his ability to get to high velocity has only come around in the last month after a rough regular season, when Bregman posted a .242 wOBA against pitches thrown 96 mph or higher. To be honest, that surprised me. I know he doesn’t have crazy bat speed or hit the ball harder than most, but to the naked eye, he has one of the quickest triggers in the game.

When I say trigger, I’m referring to the time it takes Bregman to start his downswing and get to impact. If we were able to get our hands on his bat sensor data, I’d be very willing to bet this is where Bregman stands out amongst his peers. That skill makes him a great candidate to routinely beat high velocity. That’s a subjective thing to say without concrete data, but perhaps I can provide some video evidence. Let’s look to Game 3 of the ALCS:

Before this fastball, Bregman saw five upper-90s four-seamers from Gerrit Cole. If a very good hitter sees the same pitch six times in a row, I don’t doubt they’ll be able to make an adjustment like Bregman did here, even against Cole’s plus fastball. He had fouled off two heaters in this at-bat, and looked slightly late. Those swings, likely combined with the knowledge that Bregman had struggled with high velocity this year, was enough for Cole to stick to his guns and continue with the high heat. Unfortunately for him, Bregman adjusted by choking up and shortening his swing even further as he drilled this 100 mph fastball on the black right back up the middle at 105.7 mph.

By this time, Bregman had already laced a few liners off triple-digit fastballs. He had a hit in all three of his appearances against Andrés Muñoz in the ALDS, with the hits against fastballs coming in Games 2 and 3. Here they are:

Two fastballs over 101 mph, both of which were barreled over 105 mph to give Bregman a single and double, respectively. Both came on 0-0 counts, so I’m inclined to think Bregman was sitting on this pitch. He took Muñoz yard in Game 1 on a hanging slider, so he probably anticipated that the Mariners reliever wouldn’t go back to the pitch. Of course, even when you sit on a 101 mph fastball, you still have to barrel it. That’s a tough task for any hitter and Bregman made it look quite easy.

And it’s not as if Bregman was cheating his load or leg kick for those pitches against Cole and Muñoz. It looks natural for him to get his bat on plane and in the hitting zone very quickly. Given that, you might ask why Bregman was so bad against high velocity this year. As I said before, he had a .242 wOBA against these pitches, and it’s not like his .298 xwOBA was much better. Of the 23 home runs he hit in 2022, not a single one came on a fastball thrown 96 mph or higher. His swing type should enable him to hit these pitches well, but sometimes the eye test doesn’t align with a hitter’s outcomes. Still, by the looks of it, his performance in 2022 may have just been a blip. The following table shows Bregman’s performance against fastballs 96 mph and higher throughout his career:

The gap between his wOBA and xwOBA can probably be explained by a combination of bad BABIP luck and spray angle, but nonetheless, a career .363 xwOBA on this group of pitches is impressive. Focusing on just launch angle and exit velocity might miss out on some context, but it’s still a good representation of Bregman’s ability to hit these pitches hard in the air. If you exclude 2022 from the totals, Bregman’s wOBA/xwOBA split is .356/.385. Now, excluding 2022 isn’t exactly fair; this season did indeed happen! But I wanted to show you what Bregman had done before his struggles this year.

Even relative to the rest of the league, Bregman was a great hitter against high velocity. His .363 xwOBA against the pitch group since 2017 ranks him 26th in the league among hitters who have seen at least 750 of these fastballs. This was a proven skill that suddenly fell off hard in 2022 despite it being Bregman’s healthiest season in terms of games played since 2019. Sometimes a hitter’s mechanics get out of whack, and they just suddenly can’t handle a pitch they never had an issue with before. When that happens, it makes sense for high velocity to be the first thing a pitcher goes to. After all, fast things are hard to hit! After churning through swings from various months, I realized Bregman’s stride was slightly more open than it was in the playoffs. Here are two representative swings on inner-third pitches. The first is from June and the second is from September:

Unfortunately for Bregman, even such a small difference in stride direction made a huge difference in his batted ball quality. If you re-watch the swings from the playoffs, you can see Bregman staying near neutral to slightly closed. In the two swings above, Bregman’s stride leads to his front hip leaking out early. As a result, he flared a fly ball and chopped a groundball. The front foot rotation tells you where his direction is heading in both pitches. He is losing his center of balance while trying to throw his hands at the high velocity. His swing is so short that he is still able to get to it, but the slight mechanical difference distorts his bat path enough to ruin his contact quality. Now that we know this, we can better understand why Bregman has been so fantastic in the postseason from a mechanical perspective, but do the batted ball statistics match? Yes, they do indeed.

His .518/.468 wOBA/xwOBA split gives us additional context to the quality of contact Bregman made. There is a gap between the two, but it doesn’t really matter in this case. A .468 xwOBA is still a very, very high mark. He is on the short list of hitters who seem especially well equipped to deal with the high velocity playoff pitchers bring to the mound. The swings I showed you against Cole and Muñoz are good examples of that, but I’d like to take you through an at-bat from Game 4 of the World Series when Bregman faced José Alvarado. Bregman looked overmatched to start, but he eventually came out on top even though he was down 0-2 in the count. The bases were loaded with no outs. Alvarado came in to limit the damage. Here’s how it started:

On the 0-0 count, Bregman took this 101 mph sinker, which ran back over the front door. Coming from Alvarado’s arm slot, this pitch is a doozy. Good decision to take. Down 0-1, he had to be aggressive to try and drive a runner in:

Bregman was definitely swinging for a 101 mph sinker again. He didn’t recognize the spin, and the pitch broke under his barrel. He checked in with the umpire to see if the pitch was in the zone to reinforce his understanding of where it ends up after it breaks. Heading into the 0-2 count, Bregman had to cover the diving cutter and the turbo sinker:

This pitch was slightly higher than the previous one and allowed Bregman to get a little more of barrel on it. Realistically, you can’t cover every zone against Alvarado with the sweet spot of your barrel, as he has two pitches that break in opposite directions. This is the very best you can do if you’re simultaneously trying to beat 101. By the looks of it, Bregman had no problem doing so in the next pitch:

That pitch was meant to run over the front door like the first one, but Alvarado committed the biggest sin when it comes to front-door sinkers: He let it run over the middle of the plate and right into Bregman’s ideal bat path up and away. Bregman was doing his best to cover the high velocity while down in the count, and he did. In Game 1 of the series, he had a very uncomfortable at-bat against Alvarado and wasn’t able to cover the sinker or cutter. He knew he had to make a slight tweak to get a different result. Swings like this are why he leads all players in the postseason in hits (six) and wOBA (.518) against heaters 96 mph and above.

Don’t get me wrong, a .518 wOBA against the best fastballs isn’t sustainable. Not even Aaron Judge posted a wOBA like that while hitting every fastball to the moon this season. However, the combination of Bregman’s swing and career-long skill of hitting high velocity makes him significantly more capable of producing hot streaks like this one than the vast majority of players in the league. Here I’ll remind you that over the course of a season or a career, a player doesn’t perform to their average mark the entire way. There are hot and cold streaks wrapped in there that bring them to their true average. Bregman is having one of those hot streaks, and it couldn’t come at a better time.

As his team takes a crucial 3-2 lead heading back to Houston, don’t be surprised if Zack Wheeler and the rest of the Phillies’ pitching staff avoid heaters against Bregman. The Phillies have no room for error, which means they must avoid Astros hitters’ strengths. Right now, Bregman’s swing mechanics are locked in to beat these pitches and the Crawford Boxes are lurking in left field, just waiting for him to yank one out like he did against Luis Severino in the ALCS.

There were a few times during the ALCS when I glanced up at a game and mistook Chas McCormick for Jose Altuve. Why? Both he and McCormick don’t set their feet in the box like a typical hitter would. Instead, they have distinct foot placement which aligns their front shoulder with the right fielder instead of the typical alignment with the center fielder. In McCormick’s case, it’s more pronounced than that of Altuve. And that’s not just in the setup; it includes the extent to which the Astros outfielder strides closed as well.

Every hitter, player, human, etc. has a different body. Depending on one’s body and its strengths and limitations, different adjustments need to be made to get the most out of that body when it comes to swinging a baseball bat. You may think it’s weird or ugly, but that doesn’t matter. McCormick’s closed setup and stride unlock a part of his game that he otherwise would not have. During the ALCS, I progressively came to realize he is a dangerous hitter when he drives the ball to the opposite field. If you pitch to his strengths that play into his inside-out bat path, then he can get lift on the ball and pepper the short porch in Minute Maid Park. Read the rest of this entry »

Some are calling it a legacy at-bat. I think it’s one of the most impressive displays of pitch-to-pitch adjustments I’ve ever seen in a postseason game. Whatever way you want to describe it, all that matters is Bryce Harper sent his team to the World Series after five games of leading the Phillies’ offense with fantastic, historic hitting. If he hadn’t already proved the worth of his contract with an MVP performance in 2021, he did in this series, chewing up Padres pitching with eight hits in 20 at-bats, including two home runs, three doubles, and five RBI.

I can go on about Harper’s postseason hitting forever, but for this piece, I want to focus on his at-bat against Robert Suarez that gave Philadelphia the lead in the bottom of the eighth inning of the series-clinching victory. Nobody was better suited for that moment than the reigning MVP; after each pitch, you could see him processing his swings, which he took a lot of, in preparation for the next one. If there is one thing a hitter needs in the postseason when facing elite pitching, it’s pitch-to-pitch adjustments. Allow me to guide you through how Harper made his. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, when I wrote about some of the league’s strongest throwers, I ended up exclusively featuring outfielders. The nature of the position is more suited to making full capacity throws than in the infield, and as a result, only outfielders ended up on the list. Because of that, I feel obligated to acknowledge and highlight some of the strongest throwers in the infield. On average, these throws won’t be quite as fast. The footwork and time required to throw the ball is one reason for that, and that will be the focus of this piece.

Similar to last time, we’ll have to sort through some qualifications on how I came up with this short list of names. The first is at least 100 throws in the infield. One thing I ran into when sorting through the leaderboard was that several players near the top were utility players, rather than just strictly infielders. That led me to using the 2B/SS/3B filter and sorting the list by the overall throws at those positions only. See the full leaderboard here.

After working that out, I wanted to select plays where a player needed their plus arm strength to get an out. For example, a shortstop and/or third baseman needs to fire a rocket when moving multiple steps to use their backhand. A second baseman needs to have the correct footwork to fire a ball when ranging up the middle or quickly spinning a double play. Those are the types of plays I’m looking for, but they were harder to find than you would expect, given how so many plays in the infield are routine. I started with about 15 players from the top 20 on the list and worked my way down to a representative sample of five. Now, let’s get into it. Read the rest of this entry »

Well folks, that’s what we call a pitcher’s duel. I don’t think there’s a universal definition for the term, but Wikipedia tells me it’s when both starting pitchers allow very few runners to reach base. That seems about right! Zack Wheeler and Yu Darvish both came up big Tuesday night in San Diego, with each starter limiting the success of the opposing team’s hitters after each offense had put up an incredible performance in their respective Division Series. As the game progressed, both attacked their foes with a variety of pitches spread across the zone. Neither was predictable, and neither gave their manager much reason to remove them, but one made a few more mistakes in a few more at-bats than the other. Those mistakes ended up being the difference in the game.

To understand exactly what happened in those at-bats — specifically, why the batter was successful — it helps to know what happened with each pitch and what the pitcher-catcher tandem’s potential thought process was for each of them. John Smoltz always sprinkles in tidbits about pitch sequencing that are worth listening to when he broadcasts a game. It’s easier said than done, but a pitcher holding back some pieces of their repertoire until later in the game — or say, a hitter’s third at-bat — is a good way to maximize deception. If there’s anyone who knows a thing or two about that, it’s Darvish. Darvish’s never-ending pitch mix allows him to change how he attacks hitters as the game progresses. In his first battle against Bryce Harper, he opted for a three-pitch mix and attacked Harper in the zone. No nibbling the first time around:

Read the rest of this entry »

Gerrit Cole is your prototypical right-handed power pitcher. With an upper 90s fastball and upper 80s slider, he is consistently among a few at the top of the strikeout leaderboard; unsurprisingly, he led all of baseball in strikeouts this season with 257. Given his stature and that season mark, you’d expect he would also be somewhere near the top of the WAR leaderboard. Well, not quite, largely in part because Cole also led all of baseball in home runs allowed with 33, the most in his career.

As a primary fastball pitcher who lives in the middle to upper part of the zone, Cole is bound to give up home runs. His approach is and, as long as he still has velocity, will be: here’s my fastball, try to hit it. In early August, I wrote about how his mechanics can sometimes fluctuate from inning to inning through the course of a game, and how in turn the shape and locations of his pitches can get distorted. I didn’t get too in the weeds of how his fastball shape declined this year, but Michael Ajeto of Baseball Prospectus dove deep into Cole’s fastball shape just a few weeks ago. In his piece, he explained the various contributing factors: a higher release point due to a slight change in his lead leg block/plant; decreased spin despite career-high velocity; and a near-career-low vertical approach angle (VAA) of -4.6 degrees. Ajeto also pointed out that it might be a good idea for Cole to up the usage of his slider, the pitch with the highest RV/100 in his arsenal.

Cole, however, went in a slightly different direction at the end of the year:

Focus on the last two points on that graph, when Cole’s curveball usage shot up to its highest usage rate of the 2022 season. Similarly, in his ALDS Game 1 start against the Guardians, he threw the pitch 26% of the time, yielding eight whiffs on 11 swings; that whiff rate (73%) is his highest in a single game this year for either of his breaking balls when throwing the pitch at least 10% of the time. It’s something Guardians hitters did not plan for, either, as it hasn’t been in Cole’s bag for the last couple of years.

In ALDS Game 1 especially, the key for Cole was command and consistency in placing the ball at the bottom or under the zone. Add that to the two regular-season starts when he upped the curve usage, and you can see how impressive his control has been:

Aside from two hits, including a home run on a pitch right down the middle, Cole has buried the pitch under the zone time and time again — pink, pink, and more pink! The success has come as a semi-surprise; as Ajeto noted, Cole could have simply just thrown his slider more. But the curveball has brought a level of surprise to at-bats that Cole hasn’t had given his aggressive approach. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m not sure about you, but I’ve been eagerly awaiting the release of Statcast arm strength data for a while now. At the end of September, the day finally came, inspiring me to dive into the metrics of some of my favorite throwers in the league. Fielding mechanics are an under-appreciated part of the game. So much goes into having the appropriate footwork to direct yourself towards a base in order to make an accurate, strong throw, and some do it better than others. With the help of the Statcast Arm Strength leaderboard, I’m going to show you exactly what sets those players apart from the rest of the pack.

There are a few different ways to sort through the leaderboard. You can change the minimum number of throws if you’re mainly interested in finding who has the highest peak arm strength, regardless of how many total throws they’ve made. I settled on 100 throws, the default on the leaderboard. From there, I set out to find concrete examples of players near the top of leaderboard making accurate throws to nail runners between second base and home. Why? Because throwing isn’t just about arm strength – accuracy also plays a big role when it comes to outfield throws. The time it takes for a fielder to step to a ball or move their glove across their body can be the difference between a runner being called safe or out, while a strong and accurate throw gives their teammates the best chance to make a play. At home plate, throws on a fly or one long hop are crucial for catchers. It’s extremely difficult to make a play on a short hop while trying to get a tag down. After my search, I settled on five players from a sample of 20 to 25 who showcased great footwork and instincts to pair with their strong, accurate throws. Below is a representative play for each. To MLB’s Film Room!

Nate Eaton, Kansas City Royals (no. 1 overall)

Nate Eaton has an absolute cannon for an arm. Of all the players in the league with at least 100 throws in 2022, he ranks first on the arm strength leaderboard with an average throw of 98.1 mph. Statcast calculates this number by averaging the top portion of a player’s throws. Eaton is the only player with a number above 98 mph; he also has the highest maximum throw at 103.3 mph. There are only a few players who make your jaw drop when they make throws and Eaton is one of them.

After Gary Sánchez lined this pitch down the left field line, Eaton had a beat on the ball and immediately knew how to attack it. Knowing Sánchez’s speed, he got to the ball and took a few extra steps to plant on his back foot and push a speeding mack truck’s amount of force into the ground. I sometimes get frustrated watching position players throw because they forget their glove side exists. That isn’t a problem for Eaton. After planting, he creates a perfect angle to use his left arm as a coil to throw off of, leading to a seed right over the bag and a nice outfield assist.

Aristides Aquino, Cincinnati Reds (no. 3 overall)

It isn’t hyperbole to say that this is one of the most impressive throws you’ll ever see. Some of the best opportunities for a guy to make a play with his arm come after a misread, when he has overestimated his chances of making a play with his glove. After Aristides Aquino jumped up on the wall to save a few runs, the ball ricocheted off and forced him to scurry after it. After gathering himself and seeing how far Rhys Hoskins was from home, he knew he had a shot.

The two most important parts of this throw are the lead leg block (foot plant) and the crazy sub-scapula adduction (pinching of both scapula). Foot planting like this after running is nothing to bat an eye at. That, on top of his hyper mobile scapula, equated to a beautiful throw. Aquino’s max throw this year was 101.6 mph. I imagine this was pretty close to that.

Michael Harris II, Atlanta Braves (no. 18 overall)

Michael Harris II isn’t quite as large as Eaton or Aquino, making this throw and his maximum throwing velocity of 100.0 mph incredibly impressive. And unlike Aquino and Eaton, this play came on a standard outfield groundball. Harris played the hop perfectly, used a pro step to direct himself, and threw a missile through the would-be cutoff man for a perfect one-hopper to nail Luis Guillorme at the plate.

The pro step is a simple fundamental move where you take your throwing-side leg and swing it right behind your plant foot to properly align yourself toward the ball’s destination. It’s a quick move and the perfect one for attacking a grounder you need to make a throw on. It’s not in this view, but Harris also finishes with a nice little spin after releasing, also known as a janitor throw. It’s a reciprocal movement for the quick rotation that a throw like this requires.

Aaron Judge, New York Yankees (no. 25 overall)

Aaron Judge ranks 25th (92.3 mph) on the arm strength leaderboard. You might expect to see him ranked higher given his size, but if you watch him regularly, you know that he tones it down to make accurate throws like this one. I’m not sure there is a better baiter in the league than Judge. His awareness and feel around the short porch in Yankee Stadium allows him to fool runners into thinking they have a shot at second base.

Tommy Pham is pretty fast! His 64th percentile sprint speed is decently above average, yet, Judge makes him look slow as molasses as he waltzed to this ball in the corner. The fundamentals here are all impeccable. Once Judge knows he can’t get it on the fly, he reorients himself and prepares his hands for a smooth transfer. That part reminded me of a catcher. As a backstop, you’re taught to transfer the ball as deep into your body and as close to your ear as possible when preparing to throw a runner out. It leaves little room for error. Judge did exactly that when reacting to this hop off the wall and made throwing out Pham look easy with a perfect no-hopper. If I had to guess what his hardest throw of the year was, it would be this one.

Julio Rodríguez, Seattle Mariners, (no. 14 overall)

Speaking of baiting, this play by Julio Rodríguez was prime example of the skill. As the ball was lined into center, Rodríguez remained calm and threw up his hands as if he was preparing to catch it on a line. Little did Lourdes Gurriel Jr. know, this ball wasn’t even close to being caught on a fly. This is a combination of lack of awareness and trickery leading to a perfect chance for Rodríguez to nab Gurriel on a force out.

He wouldn’t have been able to do this without his 96th percentile arm strength. Ranked 14th, Rodríguez is a threat to throw out any runner. Typically, a player should have no chance of getting a force out at third base from the outfield, but a slight hesitation due to the hand deke was enough for him to unload a pill. Unlike Harris, Rodríguez opted for a mini crow hop and not a pro step. It’s a slower movement, but my goodness, if you can throw a ball this hard off a crow hop, then I’d say you’ve made the right decision!

I’m going to have a ton of fun with this new leaderboard. To me, a high throwing velocity is just as impressive as a high exit velocity. Seeing arm strength numbers on broadcasts will add interesting insight and context to games. How fast does a throw need to be to turn a double play or nail a runner at home? These are great questions that I’d love to see answered. For now, I’ll leave you with this. Arm strength is the first step in being a great thrower from the outfield, but that doesn’t mean you can discount the importance of accuracy. Each of the throws I highlighted today has something in common in addition to their impressive speeds: they all ended up right over the bag or plate.

Decision-making in the playoffs is a micro-focused as you can imagine. The level of preparation which goes into these games will never be fully known in the public sphere, but if a team wants even the slightest competitive edge, you better believe the details are as granular as the fine sands of Puerto Rico’s Playa Negrita.

Every opposing hitter has a zone and/or pitch that is a weak spot. You must know who on your pitching staff is best suited to throw to those weaknesses, and what hitters are most adaptable to use pitch sequences that will play to those same weaknesses. The following matchups are a few areas that could sway any given game in either direction. They are certainly not the only of high importance, but the statistical or situational holes make them worth mentioning. I’ll go through series by series and pick one that deserves attention, starting with the Yankees against the Guardians.

Guardians’ offense vs. Yankees’ sinkerballers

The Yankees’ bullpen is loaded with turbo sinkers and groundball pitchers. Lou Trivino, Jonathan Loáisiga, and Clay Holmes, to name a few, all feature a sinker as their primary fastball. Each of them will be used in high-leverage scenarios against any layer of the Guardians’ lineup, which has been the very worst in the American League against the sinker, posting the second-lowest wOBA (.317) and the lowest xwOBA (.319).

There’s plenty to suggest the Yankees’ bullpen will give the Guardians issues. Because of those turbo sinkers, New York’s bullpen led all of baseball in GB% (49.1%) and Run Value (-20.3 runs). The next best in both categories was Baltimore, which trailed in each by a decent margin (1.5 percentage points and 1.9 runs). In today’s game, being better than every team at throwing sinkers provides a significant competitive advantage, as it keeps batted balls out of the air and on the ground. Read the rest of this entry »

The life of any top prospect is filled with pressure, but for Jarred Kelenic, that pressure might have been even greater than usual. Being the marquee prospect in a blockbuster trade must put extra weight on a player’s shoulders. For a time, it looked like the Mariners had pulled one over on the New York Mets. Kelenic was ranked fourth overall entering the 2021 season as a 60 FV prospect, and was viewed as one of the first in a wave of young players meant to save the Seattle Mariners from a protracted playoff drought. But the discourse around the trade that sent him to Seattle — in which he, Jay Bruce, Gerson Bautista, Justin Dunn and Anthony Swarzak went to the Mariners while Robinson Canó, Edwin Díaz, and $20 million went to the Mets — has flipped. Kelenic has struggled in his time in the majors, while Díaz has struck out half the batters he’s faced in 2022. Sometimes prospects get the chance to adjust to the big leagues in relative quiet, but Kelenic’s first 400 plate appearances have come with a high level of scrutiny, and his struggles have forced us to reconsider his ceiling as a hitter.

Yet Kelenic has recently made some strides. In 2021, he was bad against breaking balls, posting a .214 wOBA against them. Jumping ahead to 2022, Kelenic’s issues with breaking balls became even more apparent. In the season’s early going, his wOBA fell even further, down to .093. That’s not a passable mark for a quality big league hitter, and Kelenic was sent down in the middle of May. After a few months in the minors, he got another chance in August, but he had barely finished his cup of coffee before being optioned again. Read the rest of this entry »

I remember the first time I heard Marcus Semien talk about hitting. Coming off a fantastic season with the Blue Jays, he was a finalist for the AL MVP award along with teammate Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and the eventual winner, Shohei Ohtani. Not many likely paid him much attention during his interviews on MLB Network’s award show; as you would expect, everybody was patiently waiting for Ohtani to talk about his historic season on a national stage. But in every Semien soundbite during his interview with Greg Amsinger, there was a fascinating tidbit about hitting and progressing through a season. Since then, I have looked at his at-bats differently.

That’s what made watching Semien in the first two months of the season mind-boggling. He was one of the worst hitters in baseball, with a 55 wRC+, and couldn’t keep the ball off the ground. I’m a big fan and supporter of his swing, but that performance had me doubting what his future would be. But the Rangers’ second baseman got hot in the early summer, posting a 137 wRC+ over June and July, and after an average August, his September has been one of the best months of his career, with a .337/.388/.589 line and a 177 wRC+.

Through all that, Semien’s hard-hit rate stayed consistent, including his awful start and two great months in June and July, but since hard-hit rate is strictly a measurement of exit velocity, that isn’t all that surprising. What is a shocker is how he’s nearly doubled that same rate month over month.

On the year, Semien ranks 95th in all of baseball in hard-hit rate, but in September, he has ascended to 15th among all qualified hitters. That type of jump is sticky and often indicative of a concrete swing adjustment. In other words, you don’t luck yourself into hitting rockets for this long. So let’s find out what that change was. Read the rest of this entry »