CJ Abrams is one of the blossoming stars in today’s game. Entering play Friday, the 23-year-old shortstop who recently made his first All-Star appearance is batting .260/.333/.467 with 15 home runs, 16 stolen bases, a 122 wRC+, a .344 wOBA, and 1.9 WAR over 422 plate appearances. During the first month of what’s turned out to be his breakout season, I wrote about Abrams’ stellar offensive start. About a month-long slump followed, but he bounced back in late May and is showing that his plus-offensive profile is here to stay.

Now in his third season, Abrams is proving he can be the centerpiece that the Nationals can build around. Beyond his bat, his aggressive baserunning and speed make him one of the most dynamic young players in the game. Last year, despite his inconsistencies at the plate, Abrams was a menace on the paths. Thanks to his 28.6 ft/sec sprint speed (82nd percentile), according to Baseball Savant, he was worth +3 runs on the bases; he swiped 47 bags and had a 9.2 BsR.

This year, Abrams has been just as fast, but at least according to BsR, he is no longer a plus baserunner. (Baseball Savant says he’s been worth +1 run on the bases this year, which ranks 71st; he was no. 23 on last year’s leaderboard.) That’s because he’s been caught stealing 10 times already, with five of them coming via pickoffs, plus another pickoff that didn’t come on an attempted steal.

In 2023, Abrams went 47-for-51 on stolen base attempts. If he took off, the odds were in his favor. Pitchers weren’t exposing him for taking too big of leads or being overly aggressive. This year, his precipitous drop to 16-for-26 has been staggering. When a player who was so recently a great basestealer runs into a slump like this, it warrants a deep dive into understanding what exactly is going on. There are a few components of the steal that we have to pay attention to when trying diagnose this type of issue: the lead, the jump, and the situation. Let’s go through each piece and find out what’s gone wrong for Abrams. Here is a compilation of his pickoffs this year:

None of these look particularly great. He was either off balance or out by a good margin on almost every play. We can trace some of this back to his leads, so let’s start there. There are two main ways to take a lead against a lefty if you are thinking about attempting to steal second. You can take a normal 12-foot lead like Abrams did against Sean Manaea and then run on the pitcher’s first movement (as soon as the pitcher lifts his leg). Or, you can take a larger, one-way lead to possibly draw a throw over and get a feel for the pitcher’s pickoff move.

For the first one, you want to stay close enough to the bag so the pitcher doesn’t pick you off, but you want to get far enough out there that you have a good chance to be safe at second even if he does throw over; as soon as the pitcher lifts his leg, you break for second. For the one-way lead, you are an extra step or two toward second, but you are not attempting to steal on the upcoming pitch. Instead, you put all your weight on your left foot, toward first base, so you can dive back safely if the pitcher attempts to pick you off. If the pitcher doesn’t throw over, you are timing up his delivery so you can get a better jump if you decide to steal later. That doesn’t appear to be what Abrams was doing in the video above. All three times he has been picked off by a lefty this season have come early in the count, twice on the second pitch of the plate appearance and once on the first pitch.

In the 1-0 count against Manaea, Abrams took a standard 12-foot lead. He attempted to go on first movement but realized he would’ve been dead to rights, so he hesitated into shuffles instead. He should have just kept going and forced Pete Alonso to make a play. This was the most obvious mental mistake of the three. Against left-handers Kirby Snead and Alex Vesia, Abrams went on first movement, but because each pitcher expected him to go and was well-prepared to throw over, the defense caught him easily. As a pitcher, you know Abrams is an aggressive runner, but why in these two cases was it so easy? Well, this is a good time to point to Abrams’ tendencies.

Eight of his 16 swipes this season came on the first pitch, and of his six pickoffs, four were on the first pitch. If you’re a pitcher looking to control Abrams’ aggression, do it early. For lefties, it’s even easier to execute because you’re facing him as he leads off first. This goes back to the situational aspect I brought up before. Pitchers are smart, and these are the exact types of tidbits they become aware of as they prep for a good basestealer. Combine the early counts with pitchers being more willing to throw over if they haven’t yet used their allotted disengagements, and you have tough recipe for success. A potential solution here is for Abrams to wait for deeper counts before trying to steal.

The right-handed pitchers in these clips are equally prepared for Abrams to run early. He often uses the vault lead against righties. As a reminder, the vault lead is when you take your primary lead at about nine or 10 feet instead of 12. You take your same athletic stance and shuffle about 2-3 feet just as the pitcher lifts his leg. The momentum from your vault helps you accelerate into your sprint quicker than you would with a traditional, static lead, albeit with risks. The key to a successful vault lead is not the size of your shuffle; it’s your timing. If you venture too far out before or after the shuffle, or you mistime your vault and are in the air when the pitcher disengages to throw over, you risk getting picked off.

At times this season, Abrams has made both mistakes on his vault leads: Either his primary leads or his shuffles are too large. The vault lead is more technical than physical, based more on mechanics than reflexes and pure speed. Abrams is fast enough and reacts quick enough to steal bases with a traditional lead against favorable matchups, so if I were him, I would temporarily abandon the vault lead and work on getting the fundamentals down again before bringing it back in games.

Before letting you go, I also want to look at the plays on which Abrams was thrown out by a catcher to see if these caught stealings were because of bad decisions, poor jumps, or good defense. Here is a quick reel:

Off the rip, there are three plays that stick out. If you’re going to attempt steals against Gabriel Moreno and Patrick Bailey – perhaps the two best throwers in the sport – you have to pick your spots wisely. In the Arizona game, the Nationals were up two runs and the count was 0-2, providing a good opportunity to run and try to avoid a double play; against the Giants, my guess is he wanted to get into scoring position with two outs. These are valid enough reasons to run despite the poor matchups and are not comparable to the pickoff mistakes.

In the game against the Red Sox, righty Brayan Bello, who has an extremely quick slide step, was on the bump. Even runners who are faster than Abrams would have trouble reaching second safely when a pitcher delivers a 96-mph heater in the middle of the zone on a slide step. And perhaps not surprisingly, this came on the first pitch of the at-bat.

On the first play in the clip, against the Rockies, Abrams attempted to swipe third with a left-handed batter up. Even without seeing the quality of the lead that Abrams took, this was a bad decision. Dakota Hudson never took his eye off of Abrams before he delivered his pitch, making it much more difficult for him to get a good jump. On top of that, catchers love when this happens because with a lefty batting they have a clear throwing lane to third base; when righties are hitting, catchers have a more difficult play because they need to step back and around the batter before firing. Even with an inaccurate throw from catcher Jacob Stallings, Abrams was canned.

Abrams is an aggressive runner. Without his aggressions, he wouldn’t be able to steal nearly 50 bases in a season like he did last year. This isn’t something you want to take away from him. However, he does need to learn from these mistakes so he can use his speed and aggression more effectively. Most of these pickoffs and unsuccessful steals resulted from some a combination of being predictable and getting too jumpy. The good news is he is talented enough to make the necessary adjustments. Once that happens, we’ll get to see a much more complete version of Abrams, one who can swipe 40 bags at a high clip and pepper the gaps with line drives.

Like most things in baseball, baserunning is a blend of skills and smarts. It helps to be one of the faster guys in the league, but there are players who provide above average value on the bases despite not having above average speed, as instincts and feel can often make the difference between being safe or out.

One of my favorite parts of baserunning is the judgement calls that players are forced to make while running at full speed and expelling all their power and athleticism. In those moments, they have split seconds to weigh the many factors that can impact their chances of getting the extra base. While basestealing may be the single most exciting part of the game, the decision of whether to try and swipe a bag is much more black and white than other base-running plays.

Say you’re a major leaguer leading off first base and are determining whether to attempt to steal second. You already know the catcher’s pop time, and you have a pretty good idea of how long it takes the pitcher to deliver his pitch. You’re also familiar with the pitcher’s pickoff tendencies and footwork, as well as your own speed and ability to time your jump. Yes, maybe you can pick up on a pattern in real time that gives you a slight competitive advantage, or you notice either the pitcher, catcher, or both of them aren’t paying you much attention, allowing you to catch them by surprise. But for the most part, your decision to take off for second is still almost entirely going to come down to how fast all parties involved can boogie.

On the contrary, if you’re at the plate and lace a liner in the gap that splits two outfielders, you’re faced with several different variables that affect your decision outside of just your speed. How quickly do you get out of the box? Are you thinking two right away, meaning you’re running hard and already taking the angle that will allow you to cut the corner of first base and make a good turn that will give you a direct line to second.

From there, it’s based on feel and whatever data points you have in your head about the outfielders going for the ball. Which one is going to get there first? Does he have a strong arm? If so, is he accurate? Are his throws any weaker and less accurate if he’s pacing on a diagonal toward the gap and has to plant and throw off his back foot? Or, is the outfielder going to get to the ball quickly and have time to circle it, set his feet, crow-hop, and fire? There are other factors on top of these, too.

Let’s check out a few examples from some of the best base-running plays of the year. I’ll be using Statcast’s Runner Runs metric as a guide for choosing plays. This metric estimates the success rate for each base-running opportunity based on variables such as runner speed, outfielder arm strength, and distance from the given bag. Below, I’ve selected three plays — one at second, one at third, and one at home — that were worth at least .20 runs added.

We begin with a hustle double from Bobby Witt Jr.:

Sheesh! Out of the box, this looked like a clear single, even when you consider Witt’s 100th percentile sprint speed. This is a typical line drive to center field, not one that splits two defenders. But Witt knew that in this situation — runners on second and third with one out in the seventh inning and the Royals leading 4-2 — the Tigers might throw to the plate instead of second; he also knew who was playing center field.

Riley Greene, an above average left fielder, had shifted shifted over to center earlier in the game, and his skills don’t exactly fit as well there. He has 66th percentile speed and 48th percentile arm strength. On top of that, Greene throws left-handed, meaning that because he was roaming to his right side (toward the left-center gap), he’d either have to take a few steps to line his body up with second (as he did) or plant his feet in the ground and pirouette before getting rid of the ball. In other words, this play is easier for a right-handed thrower. Add up all those factors, and you have a perfect recipe for Witt to take a calculated risk with only one out. If Matt Vierling were still playing center, as he was at the beginning of the game, his speed and righty throwing might have kept Witt at bay. Every single one of these details matters!

The next play features Anthony Volpe pushing for a triple on a line drive down the right field line. Volpe has very good, but not elite, speed (28.6 ft/sec, 86th percentile), and because of that he’s a bit more reliant on his decision-making than Witt. On this play, he had a favorable spray angle, but it was going to be bang-bang as long as Jo Adell played it right:

To me, Volpe seemed to realize that he had a shot at a triple as he rounded first and saw the ball bouncing around off the curved fence in right field. He didn’t have a particularly great turn around the bag, but the slight ricochet gave him enough leeway. Typically, runners should look up at the third base coach once they’re getting to second base, but in this case, Volpe was going three no matter what and kept his head down.

Adell delivered a great throw to the cutoff man, but the relay to third was short-hopped, which made it more difficult for the third baseman to field it cleanly and apply the tag before Volpe slid in safely. This is an example of a challenge play, where Volpe put the pressure on the fielders to do everything correctly, and because there were multiple steps that had to be executed perfectly, Volpe liked his odds that one part of the chain would be off by just enough for him to make it.

Coincidentally, our final play comes from the same Royals-Tigers series that also featured the Witt double from above. And like that play, the outfielder was Riley Greene. Though this time, the runner was MJ Melendez, who despite his 68th percentile speed has done well on the basepaths this year, with +2 Runner Runs. The play we’re about to watch shows how a runner with just slightly above-average speed can put himself in a position to have above-average outcomes. Here it is:

Wait a sec, how did he get around to score on a fly ball that seemed likely to be caught? You can’t see it on the broadcast, but Melendez played this exactly right. On a towering fly ball like this one, a runner who begins the play at first should be waiting on second base, ready to pivot in either direction. Once Greene dropped the ball, it was time to take off, and even though the ball landed right at Greene’s feet, there was enough time for Melendez to make it home ahead of the throw. That’s despite the fact that Melendez stumbled on his way around third base; he made up for that because he was in the right place when the ball dropped. Also, remember that Greene doesn’t have a particularly strong arm and was all the way out at the warning track.

We could keep going, but by looking at plays at second, third, and home, we now have a better idea of the circumstances that affect base-running decisions. We saw how electrifying speed can manifest plays out of nowhere, but also how sound fundamentals can put runners in a strong position for success. As you’re watching ball for the rest of the summer, pay attention to these types of plays and see if you can pick up on the factors that baserunners must consider when weighing whether to take the extra base. These small details can have a major impact.

Royce Lewis is one of the most intriguing hitters in the game right now. Despite how fantastic he has been on a rate basis, it’s hard to fully evaluate his overall value as a hitter because of how little he has played. He has amassed 4.1 WAR and a 159 wRC+ across 93 career games, but as is well known, he’s been limited due to a series of injuries that includes two ACL tears, quadricep and hamstring issues, and an oblique strain.

This season, his explosive performance has added some confidence in what he can be as a hitter. Despite suffering a quad injury on Opening Day that kept him out of the lineup for two months, he’s clobbered 10 home runs in 23 games, showing that he doesn’t need a bunch of plate appearances to shake the rust off his swing before catching fire. His raw talent has never been in question, but there’s one part of his game throughout his power surge that seems to defy logic and is worth keeping an eye on moving forward: His xwOBACON sat at .473 entering play Sunday. If he were a qualified hitter, that would rank in the top decile. Given what we’ve seen from Lewis, that isn’t all too shocking – he can really put a charge into the ball. But when zooming in a bit on a particular detail of his swing, it becomes a bit surprising. Here are the leaders in xwOBACON to date in 2024:

I’ve included Vertical Bat Angle (VBA) here because, except for Juan Soto, Lewis has the lowest average VBA of all hitters on this list. After Lewis, the hitter with the next-lowest VBA is Giancarlo Stanton, who generates so much power and bat speed that it would be nearly impossible for him not to have a top-of-the-line xwOBACON, even with such an unorthodox swing. How Soto can impact the baseball with ferocity despite having one of the flattest swings in the entire game is a bit more complex. The simplest explanation is he has incredible upper body athleticism, which allows him to let the ball get extremely deep in the hitting zone and still adjust his bat path to get on plane with the pitch.

Otherwise, though, hitters hardly ever generate this level of contact quality with these types of VBAs. So it’s remarkable that Lewis is among the exceptions. For the rest of this piece, let’s ignore Stanton because he is, in the words of Yankees manager Aaron Boone, a “weirdo” and what he does with his violent, choppy swing is almost certainly impossible to replicate. Soto is also a singular hitter; the difference is that what he does — using his flatter bat path to make more consistent contact while still having the strength to do damage, and pairing that hit tool with 80-grade swing decisions — would be worth emulating if anyone were talented enough to do it. At a glance, it seems Lewis might have the skills to follow a somewhat similar recipe. So far this season, Lewis has a 98th percentile SEAGER, a metric from Robert Orr that weighs how selective hitter are and the rate at which they attack hittable pitches. It’s especially encouraging that Lewis lets only 28.2% of hittable pitches pass him by, meaning that when he gets a pitch he can crush, he’s attacks it. That’s a great foundation to have.

To better understand his swing, I’ll refer you all to the third hitting installment from Tess Taruskin’s invaluable video scouting series, specifically the part where she compares grooved and adjustable swings. Because Lewis is a hitter with such a flat swing, my initial hunch was that most of his damage comes against pitches down the middle or in top half of the zone, leaving a hole for pitchers to target at the bottom of the zone. This would indicate that Lewis would have a grooved swing, one that repeats a specific swing path over and over, leading to a limited space for barrels. Although Lewis’ sample size is still hardly significant this year, it’s worth looking at where his best swings in terms of contact quality have been located. Here are his 10 home runs this season:

Interesting. All of Lewis’ homers have come from the middle of the zone. That’s not necessarily a bad thing – the best hitters in baseball are the ones who crush mistakes the most often. And as we saw from his SEAGER, he is great at attacking pitches in hittable zones. Basically, we can’t just knock him simply because his homers come from meatballs. However, it’s relevant context to the conversation around distinguishing whether his swing is grooved or adjustable. To go a bit further than just his pitch chart on home runs, we can look at his performance by zone to see if he’s had a hole below the zone.

Lewis has actually been quite successful in the bottom of third of the zone, with a .380 wOBA and .355 xwOBA on pitches in this location. (I included both 2023 and 2024 to increase the sample size a bit.) That’s pretty impressive for a hitter with such a flat swing. Soto’s wOBA/xwOBA line in that span is .264/.260, though his sample is much larger. Lewis’ contact quality on lower-third pitches is also quite strong.

Looking at video, it becomes clear how Lewis is succeeding against lower-third pitches, and this is where he is different from Soto. Remember, it is Soto’s upper body flexibility that propels him to impact pitches that get deep in the zone against him. Lewis, on the other hand, uses his lower body to get down in the zone and do damage on pitches in the bottom third:

If you focus on where Lewis’ head starts on these swings versus where it finishes, you can see the angles he can create with his lower body to get his barrel to the lower third despite his flat swing. It’s reminiscent of Fernando Tatis Jr. The hands start high and stay high, but the lower body creates space for the barrel to still maintain a positive attack angle – the angle of the bat path at contact relative to the ground – at the bottom of the zone. It’s a difficult move to make, but when your swing is this adjustable, you can rely on it from time to time when you identify pitches correctly.

The contrast between Lewis and Soto is a great reminder of how different hitters can be, even when a key trait in their swings is similar. Lewis’ superpower lies in his lower body. Whether the pitch is inside, outside, or in the middle of the zone, he uses his legs and hips to go down and get pitches.

Now, if I were an opposing pitcher, I’d challenge Lewis to make these moves over and over again and prove he can still elevate pitches down in the zone. Like I’ve said, we’re dealing with a limited sample. However, based on what we’ve seen so far, there is reason to believe Lewis has the skills needed to continue producing elite contact with his flat swing.

Things aren’t particularly bright in Anaheim right now, but even amidst the Angels’ struggles, some of the team’s young players are thriving. One of those players is Zach Neto, who in his sophomore campaign looks like an improved version of himself at the plate. His full-season wRC+ is up to 107, a mark that has been propelled by continued improvement as temperatures have gotten warmer. In the first month of the season, Neto posted a meager 79 wRC+, but in the two that have followed, he has looked like an All-Star, with a 130 wRC+ in May and a 123 so far in June. Despite not having big raw power, he’s been able to consistently drive the ball.

Last year, Neto was abysmal in the top third of the strike zone. He simply couldn’t handle high heaters, with his .194 wOBA in that area of the zone in the bottom decile of the league. It’s a hole that is too easy to expose. Any pitcher with a decent four-seamer that features at least average ride could live there when facing Neto and not be worried the shortstop would do any damage. It was a problem that held back his entire offensive profile, and without mitigating it, his prospects as a hitter weren’t promising. But as struggling young players often do, Neto looked to make a change. Read the rest of this entry »

Bo Bichette is a ton of fun to watch at the plate, and that’s especially the case in two-strike counts. He takes on the old school approach of physically altering his swing to avoid striking out. There is something aesthetically pleasing about a player who refuses to strike out; it’s admirable, even. It can also be rewarding.

Bichette has used a no-stride two-strike approach his entire career, but back in 2022, he started standing a bit taller, with his weight pre-shifted into his rear hip to go along with his no-stride load. In 2021, his .212 wOBA with two strikes was well behind the league-wide mark of .236. As a hitter with an above-average hit tool and a knack for making good contact on pitches off the plate, that performance simply wasn’t good enough. Indeed, it’s the exact sort of thing that would force most hitters to try something else, which is what Bichette did. While his wOBA and xwOBA in two-strike counts showed no tangible improvement, 2022 was (and still is) his best full season by wRC+ (130). Whatever the results were, Bichette’s overall offensive game was thriving, so instead of reverting back to the more crouched setup, he built upon his new two-strike stance to improve it.

In 2023, Bichette’s .233 two-strike wOBA was in line with the league average (.232), while his .250 xwOBA was .018 points higher than league average. He decreased his whiff rate with two strikes by about four percentage points from 2022, and his strikeout rate dropped three percentage points as a result. That’s notable, of course, but remember: More contact isn’t always better for a chase-prone player like Bichette, as a batter’s quality of contact on pitches outside the zone is typically worse than on those over the plate. The key here is that Bichette’s reduction in whiffs came with better contact; last year he had the best xwOBACON with two strikes (.389) of his career. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been a fun couple of weeks seeing all the work that has been done as a result of Statcast’s expanding into bat tracking. The great thing about this game is that there is always more to learn. With the addition of bat speed and swing length, we now have a better idea of telling the story of a player’s swing, but there is still so much more to tap into.

Back when I was using a Blast Motion bat sensor on a daily basis, I was exposed to every component of the swing that you could think of. Bat speed was one of them, but that only scratched the surface. There were pieces explaining my path at different points in the swing, how long it took my barrel to meet the plane of the ball, where in space that happened, and so much more. For a while, the public data available was focused on the outcome. What was the pitch? What was the result? What was the exit velocity and/or launch angle? With this new update, we’re progressing toward the how. How fast did the player swing? How long was their swing? We can now tie that in with the result, but there are additional details needed to understand the full scope of how results happened. That’ll be the focus of this piece.

First, it’s important to highlight the great work that has already been done explaining the new data we have and what the information tells (and doesn’t tell) us about the swing. Ben Clemens explained some applications of the new metrics and what their relationship with performance is on a macro scale. One thing Ben mentioned that resonated with me is thinking about the new (and old) information as inputs for us to use to understand performance rather than the answers themselves. Each piece works together to tell a story, whether that be league wide or player specific. Basically, these are pieces of information that need additional context.

Relatedly, Patrick Dubuque and Stephen Sutton-Brown from Baseball Prospectus, provided a great analysis of how to put bat speed into the context of pitch counts, from the perspective of both the hitter and pitcher. And there is more beyond just these two, including Noah Woodward’s Substack post about bat speed, swing length, and understanding what they mean and how they contribute to the swing.

Woodward touched on a few components of the swing that I’ve talked about in previous work that we still don’t have comprehensive data on from Statcast: contact point and attack angle. Swing variability, swing adjustability, having A and B swings, etc. are all extremely important to being successful at the big league level. If you have a hole in your swing, generally speaking, pitchers will expose you, so having multiple high-quality swings is going to set you up to have consistent success, just ask Triston Casas. Swing-by-swing data on attack angle, vertical and horizontal bat angle, and point of contact will all help the public understanding of swing variability, or when and how the swing changes in general.

Let’s start with attack angle. This is the angle of the bat path at contact, relative to the ground. As your bat travels through the zone, it creates a trajectory. To optimize your chances of hitting the ball in the air, the bat should be on an upward trajectory at contact, meaning you should have a positive attack angle. One component of swing variability is creating a positive attack angle at different heights, widths, and depths. You pretty much just want to be able to manipulate your barrel to move upward no matter where the pitch is. To get a better idea of what attack angle looks like, let’s look at a video from David Adler outlining a swing from Oneil Cruz:

Bat path tracking — Oneil Cruz 120.4 mph single (hardest-hit ball in MLB this year)

84.5 mph bat speed (75+ mph is the "fast swing" threshold) pic.twitter.com/FO9gA6fqva

— David Adler (@_dadler) May 21, 2024

While attack angle is officially measured as the angle of the path at contact, seeing the path leading up to contact can tell us what kind of depth the hitter creates. In this clip, the angle of the path changes as it moves from behind Cruz’s body to in front of it. This illuminates how attack angle is dependent on point of contact. In general, the farther in front of the plate your bat is, the easier it is to create a positive attack angle. However, this thread from Driveline’s Director of Hitting, Tanner Stokey, discusses the importance of creating bat speed deep in the zone. The best hitters create their peak speeds in tight windows. Like all facets of baseball, swinging is about striking a balance of creating high levels of bat speed and positive attack angles. You don’t want to have a one dimensional swing that is focused on high bat speed while ignoring the need to create ideal bat angles both deep in the zone and in front of the plate.

Depending on how you start your swing and enter the zone, it takes time to turn your barrel over into an upward slope. For many hitters, the bat needs to travel a greater distance to create the positive attack angle that leads to optimal contact. This, of course, takes more time. But, as Robert Orr pointed out last week in his piece on the relationship between pulled fly balls and swing length, a long swing isn’t necessarily a bad thing; it’s really just another data point. With access to attack angle, we could better tell the story of how a hitter like Isaac Paredes creates depth in his swing while often making ideal contact far out in front of the plate, versus a hitter who makes contact out in front without creating the necessary depth in their swing to avoid major holes.

At the same time, it’s still possible to create a positive attack angle deeper in the hitting zone. To get there, you need to make movements that aren’t easy to do while generating bat speed and controlling your body. Some hitters with great mobility use lateral torso bend — they lean toward their back leg right before contact — to get their barrel on an upward slope deep in the hitting zone. Think of Shohei Ohtani or Edouard Julien:

These two have unorthodox skills that allow them to launch pitches high in the air to the opposite field. With point of contact and attack angle, we’d be able to quantify how different they really are from their peers on top of the visual analysis.

Then there are hitters who create flatter (but still positive) attack angles with a path that stays on a similar plane throughout their swing. They get on plane with the ball early and don’t do much to change their path throughout the swing. It’s nearly impossible to do this with a steep swing. Juan Soto is a great example of this, even if he is more powerful than the other hitters with this swing style. Here is a great angle that illustrates what I’m referencing:

Bat path tracking — Juan Soto 112.0 mph line-drive single off Justin Verlander

Staying on top of a hanging curveball at the top of the zone pic.twitter.com/IRhdzHVMy8

— David Adler (@_dadler) May 8, 2024

Soto’s vertical entry angle (angle of the bat relative to the ground at the beginning of the downswing) isn’t far off from his attack angle. You can see how much this swing contrasts with that of Cruz, who is a big dude with a narrow stance. Because of that, his bat path is vertically oriented, and his bat needs to travel a greater distance to get on plane with the ball. With more detailed information of barrel angles at different points in the swing, we would know more about how hitters like Soto and Cruz vary from one another when it comes to getting and staying on plane.

This has been a ton of information all at once, so I’ll leave you with one last tidbit. Depending on the hitter, the angle of the path at contact can be very different from the angle of the barrel at contact (relative to the ground), known as vertical bat angle. While I’ve cited average vertical bat angle from SwingGraphs on several occasions, I’ve always focused on putting the metric into context because it varies based on several factors. Luis Arraez and Aaron Judge can have similar average vertical bat angles, but that doesn’t tell us anything about how different their swings are. We know the metric depends on pitch height, but even that alone isn’t enough to explain why Judge is a launcher and Arraez is a sprayer. As we learned earlier, each data point is an input and isn’t meant to be used alone.

There is no question teams have been using, monitoring, and applying these data to scout and develop players for years now, but despite all the metrics that we have, the information on the public side is still lagging. Ideally, in future years, we will gain access to more swing data so that we can better understand the game we love.

First base defense is complicated. It isn’t one of the most difficult positions, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have its own challenges. Players in the latter half of their careers who have lost athleticism sometimes adopt the position as their new home, which is interesting because it is much more difficult to learn a new position when you’re past your athletic prime. But because first base doesn’t require top tier athleticism, it’s not uncommon for that to happen. Bryce Harper’s case is a perfect example of this.

Between Philadelphia’s crowded outfield and its interest in keeping its star healthy as he ages through his 30s, first base became a viable option for the former MVP when the position opened up and he was returning from Tommy John surgery in record time. Last year, he handled it well — even if he at times ventured too far off the bag for grounders in the hole, as if he were back in right field trying to cut the ball off in the gap — given that he was learning the position on the fly.

It was a bet on Harper’s baseball skills and IQ that seems to have worked out well. His defensive metrics looked solid in 2023 (+3 OAA); of course, considering the small sample, we shouldn’t take these numbers as bond, but they were encouraging nonetheless. Now, with a full offseason of learning the position and a month’s worth of plays, we have a better idea of what his true talent is at the position. Later in this article, we’ll watch some video of Harper playing first to evaluate where he stands. But first, let’s take a look at the numbers.

So far in his first base career, Harper has a +6 OAA and a Success Rate Added between three and four percent. His OAA this season is +3, which is the highest among first basemen. Basically, the numbers indicated that Harper had a solid foundation already, and with more experience, he’s become one of the top defenders at his position.

For the rest of this piece, we’ll use video to break down Harper’s handling of three fundamental facets of the position: his footwork on groundballs that he takes unassisted, his feeds and feel for flipping to pitchers, and his opportunities to make outs at second. There are other aspects that go into first base defense — such as catching pickoff attempts, securing scoops, and receiving cutoffs before delivering relays — but I’m most interested in his skills fielding groundballs. With that said, let’s start by looking at grounders hit close enough to the bag for Harper to make an unassisted putout:

Unassisted Groundballs

Two things stick out to me right away: Harper is good at working from the ground up, and he almost always keeps his body moving in the right direction. Any shortstop would tell you that progressively moving your feet and body weight toward your target as you field the ball is crucial. The same premise holds for first baseman.

With a slow chopper, you have to stagger your feet to make sure you stay under control and don’t overplay the baseball and get a bad hop. When working toward the first base line, as Harper has done so well, you balance how hard the ball was hit with the angle you take to it; on harder hit balls, you put your body on the line to protect against a double, whereas when a deep chopper comes, you reorient your center of mass toward the bag to make sure you’re ready for a race with the runner or to throw to the pitcher. Harper looks very comfortable making these decisions. I snuck the liner from Matt Olson in there to show how quick he can be on his feet. Not every first baseman can move like that. Now, let’s move on to a more complicated task: flipping to the pitcher.

Flips to Pitcher

Harper has done well sticking to the fundamentals here. He has a rhythm established with Zack Wheeler in particular, but his execution of leading each pitcher to the bag is on point. He maintains composure throughout each of the throws, even when the batter-runner is a speedster like Elly De La Cruz. Urgency and pace are important aspects of fielding grounders at first because you can get caught in a foot race with a runner. But if you’re consistent with your delivery and have a good feel for speeding up your arm when necessary, there is no need to rush your feet.

I’m impressed by Harper’s ability to make plays moving to his right. He uses his right foot to plant or pivot very well. That has a lot to do with his athleticism. He gets into good positions to stay under the baseball and make reads with his hands. The next clips highlight that even more:

Potential Plays to Second

There are three different moves that you can make as a right-handed thrower when deciding to deliver a fire to second from the various first base positions (shallow, medium, deep) — you can pivot toward your throwing shoulder to square your body to the bag, you can spin toward your forehand and non-throwing shoulder to square your body, or you can make the throw on the run. Harper clearly has a feel those three moves.

On the grounder hit by Olson, Harper’s footwork is fantastic as he spins, turns, and throws, and his delivery is to the correct side of second base. Then on a similar grounder (the third play), he realizes he doesn’t have a throwing lane and decides to take the sure out at first. On the hard groundball from Mike Trout, Harper switches his feet very quickly (like a catcher would) and delivers the ball right on top of the bag. The only hiccup comes in the final play in the clip, when he gets the groundball near the outfield and decides to hold it instead of making a spinning throw to second. If he fires to second instead, the Phillies have had a shot at an inning-ending double play. This is something to keep your eyes on as Harper continues to develop at the position. It’s the longest throw a first baseman will make and requires a quick decision. He’s clearly comfortable making the spinning throw from a shallow depth, but this last piece will help him become more complete at the position.

In general, I’m impressed with how comfortable the Phillies slugger looks at his new position. His fundamentals are on point. He can pop off the bag quickly after holding a runner on and get his feet in check to move in any direction. Even when he makes a mistake, it’s not because he isn’t prepared with his feet. This might not be a Mookie Betts-level position switch, but it’s still worth appreciating.

CJ Abrams has that look this year. After showing a glimpse of his offensive potential in 2023, his skills are on full display to start the season. Abrams’ projectable frame always seemed like it could facilitate him adding power. Whether he ever got to that power was dependent on his swing mechanics.

Up until this year, the lefty had a steep, pushy entry into the hitting zone. That resulted in a suboptimal launch angle distribution. In 2023, he had a 32.6% sweet-spot rate, which was in the 30th percentile. (A player’s sweet spot percentage is defined as the percentage of their batted balls hit between eight and 32 degrees.) So instead of hitting balls at launch angles that would result in line drives and hard-hit fly balls, Abrams hit a ton of popups and groundballs. His swing had a limited range of quality contact points.

He may have swatted 18 home runs, but those long balls were mixed in with consistent mishits. When you swing down into the hitting zone like Abrams did last year, it can lead you to be what a lot of hitting coaches call a collision hitter. If your bat path doesn’t have much room for error, you might still run into some homers from time to time, but there is only a tight window for you to do so. Rather than your barrel moving up through the entire hitting zone, it only does so at one point in space. That might be hard to conceptualize, so let’s check out some video of Abrams last year, focusing primarily on how his hands descend when he starts his swing. Read the rest of this entry »

Anthony Volpe had a rough rookie season at the plate. He hit just .209/.282/.383, which amounted to an 84 wRC+ despite his 21 home runs. Neither his mechanics nor swing decisions looked viable. A swing tailored to consistently lifting the ball propelled his minor league success, but it was also a key reason why he struggled in 2023. He never showed the requisite discipline or contact skills on low and away breaking balls to rely on this swing style, and he failed to make up for that deficiency with plus performance in other parts of the zone.

Volpe’s .142 wOBA against same-handed breaking balls low and away was among the worst in the game. A big part of adapting to major league pitching is proving you can perform against breaking balls. Volpe never did that, so pitchers spammed him with them. Out of the 267 hitters who saw at least 1,250 pitches in 2023, he saw the 22nd-highest breaking ball percentage. He got the classic rookie treatment and couldn’t handle it. So instead of trying to make his existing swing work, he flattened out his bat path with the hope of creating strengths in other areas of the zone while mitigating his big weakness.

I’m going to offer my own video analysis here, but there already has been a lot of great work done on Volpe’s swing change. The Athletic’s Chris Kirschner spoke with Volpe during spring training about how and why flattening his swing path was an offseason priority. Daniel R. Epstein of Baseball Prospectus just provided an analysis on the swing decision part of this and how it has paired with improved contact. Volpe’s adjustments have resulted in an increase of 11 percentage points in Z-Contact%, and he has chased and whiffed significantly less often as well. Entering play Wednesday, he is batting .349/.438/.508 with a 183 wRC+ in 74 plate appearances. And while it is early and small sample caveats apply, his adjustments, as I’ll detail below, are fueling a hot start that has the juice for a real breakout.

Volpe is already showing his new swing and mindset can handle breaking balls; he has a .345 xwOBA against them, and his chase rate against them (15.7%) has decreased by over 14 percentage points compared to 2023. Given his immense struggles last season, just laying off the pitch more often would do him wonders. On top of that, having a flatter entry into the zone makes it more difficult to get to same-handed breaking balls low and away, making it even more important he lay off the pitch as much as he can. He’s off to a good start as far as that’s concerned.

This spring, Volpe told Kirschner, “… if I can still be late and shoot the ball to right field or when I’m early and out in front, still have enough to do something with the pitch, that’s the goal.” Flattening your bat path isn’t the answer for everybody, but if it helps you create more depth (positive bat angle at different depths in the hitting zone) in your points of contact relative to your previous swing, then you can create more room for error because your barrel is on plane for a longer period of time. Here’s how it works for Volpe: Against high heat, he can still be on plane to shoot the ball to right; against a back-foot breaker from a lefty pitcher, he can be early and still make flush contact in the air.

This approach doesn’t work as well for a hitter with a steep swing. If your bat head is pointing up, you have to turn your barrel over to point it down. The steeper your bat angle, the more you have to turn the barrel. It’s much easier to get your bat flat deep into the zone if you start with your bat relatively flat and rotate from there. It takes less time and less movement, hence there being a better chance at making contact more consistently. There is more nuance to it, but that is generally how the process goes. But remember, this doesn’t work for every hitter. Creating bat speed in deeper parts of the zone while maintaining an upward slope with your swing isn’t easy. Luckily that has always been a skill for Volpe.

In the shortstop’s prospect report, Eric Longenhagen said, “His swing is like a right-handed version of Juan Soto’s, capable of getting underneath the baseball in basically every part of the zone, in part because of the flexibility and athleticism in his lower half.” Soto has one of the flattest swings in baseball, but he can still elevate a variety of pitches because of the combination of his torso bend and lower-half maneuverability. In layman’s terms, he can rely on body adjustments to do the work of creating lift while keeping his bat flatter through the zone than most hitters can. Volpe can do the same: The lift will happen even with his flatter swing because he can combine body adjustments with a barrel that is on plane through most of the hitting zone.

Eric also pointed out that Volpe worked with a private instructor to re-engineer his swing before his prospect breakout. That is not an exaggeration. Volpe literally made his swing in a hitting lab with the help of biomechanical data. That process is probably a big reason why over this offseason he was able to remake his swing again, this time to flatten out his entry into the zone while maintaining the key strength of his swing: lower half maneuverability. So let’s explore how Volpe did this, going step by step through it.

Setup Into Load

First thing: Volpe isn’t a big guy. He can naturally create a flat entry into the zone just with an upright stance and high hands. Even last year, it’s not as if he had an extremely steep swing, just steeper than was ideal for him. By standing more upright, he immediately sets himself up for a flatter entry because his shoulders and torso are neutral relative to the ground.

Peak Leg Kick Into Foot Plant

Volpe’s leg kick was a bit all over the place last year, but he ended up with a relatively closed stance. That complicated things for him against inner-third pitches because opening his front hip while maintaining a deep path was a strength of his. Closing out may have put more pressure on his backside to hold his stability. He went back to a neutral start this year and now looks more like he did as a prospect. As he plants his foot, he is still able to hold his posture and start his flatter entry into the zone without putting pressure on any particular part of his body to do the work.

Swing and Follow Through

The differences here may be tough to discern at first glance, but there are two things that are important to pay attention to. First, in the 2023 clip, Volpe’s back leg starts to collapse before contact. That alters his timing and path to the point that he catches the ball off the end of the bat and skies it for a fly ball out. This year, that leg is staying strong through the swing and only dips after the point of contact. That is much more stable and controlled. It’s the difference between a fly ball and a line drive over the wall.

Also notice how his front foot withstands and then transfers energy. Against Patrick Corbin in 2023, that foot peels over and eventually needs another step to the side to catch the energy transfer, whereas against Jesús Luzardo from last week, it has the initial peel but transfers back toward the midpoint of his body without needing that extra sidestep. That indicates better weight transfer. If you can make tight turns around the midpoint of your body, you’ll always be in a better position to adjust. This swing is one example of that.

Small sample aside, Volpe looks like a completely different hitter this year. This piece mostly focused on his mechanics, but he is also showing tremendous poise and conviction in his swing decisions. His swing rate in the Shadow Zone has dropped 12 percentage points. He is taking borderline pitches off the plate with no hesitation whatsoever. Combine that with a drastically improved swing process and you have what we’ve seen so far. At some point, pitchers will adjust and Volpe will need to do the same, but a more versatile swing should help him do that.

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’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.