Each season, there is a group of pitchers across the league who have notable velocity increases. In the age of hard throwers, it’s important to make sure you’re keeping up with the rest of the league. Every pitcher has a different situation, too. Some will adapt their body to increase how fast they move, and others will make a slight mechanical adjustment to clean up their kinetic chain — or a pitcher can do a combination of both those things.

For this piece, the focus will be on slight mechanical adjustments that three specific pitchers have made this year that have allowed them to gain velocity. The interesting thing about this group is the difference in size variation and mechanical traits. There isn’t one single way to throw hard, and this group is a great way to highlight that. Read the rest of this entry »

Between Cody Bellinger’s perplexing season, Dansby Swanson’s continued excellence, and Christopher Morel’s power surge, there are a lot of fascinating things happening with the Cubs. But I want to focus on their cleanup hitter and right fielder, Seiya Suzuki. In his introduction to the majors, he posted a 116 wRC+ in 446 plate appearances, but various hand, ankle, and finger injuries throughout the year kept him from getting in a prolonged rhythm; a 158 wRC+ in the first month and a 139 wRC+ in the final month sandwiched a 98 wRC+ from May through August. We got a few glimpses of what peak Suzuki could look like; health was the key to that becoming a consistent display.

Unfortunately for him, he suffered an oblique injury during spring training that forced him to withdraw from the World Baseball Classic and slowed down the start of his season. Early-season oblique injuries are incredibly frustrating; as you’re ramping up activities, the last thing you want is to hurt a part of your body that compromises your rotational power. He returned to action on April 14, but he wasn’t the best version of himself. His groundball rate that month was 49.1%, most likely due to an overly flat swing path. His 30-degree Vertical Bat Angle (VBA) — the angle of the barrel at impact — was flatter than any of his best months in 2022 by at least a full degree without a corresponding increase in pitch height, making it very tough for somebody of his size and mechanics to cover breaking balls and offspeed pitches consistently without significant body angle adjustments to compensate for his high hands preset and flat path. The blueprint for success from the previous season didn’t look like this. Read the rest of this entry »

As a hitting mechanics nerd, there are a few players on my shortlist of guys who I would love to get in the cage with and talk about their process, development, and mindset in the batter’s box. J.D. Martinez is one of them. He’s established a reputation for himself as a cerebral hitter. It was a key reason for his breakout season in 2014, his rebound in 2021 after a rough shortened season in 2020, and now his resurgence in 2023. Despite an IL stint earlier this month for a back issue, Martinez has destroyed baseballs recently and pushed his wRC+ up to a 146 on the season. In May alone, he posted a 172 wRC+ and .392 ISO.

His power stroke is back after working on recovering it with Dodgers hitting coach Robert Van Scoyoc throughout spring training and the opening month of the season. The Athletic’s Fabian Ardaya spoke to Martinez and Van Scoyoc in early April about Martinez losing efficiency in one of the most important aspects of his swing: his hand row. Martinez pointed to a line of physical compensations in his swing as a result of an ankle injury from the 2018 World Series that he reaggravated down the stretch in 2021. When you’re as in tune with your mechanics and where your barrel is in space as Martinez is, these little aggravations can significantly impact the way you understand how your body is moving. Before jumping into some video showing how Martinez has changed since last year with Boston, let’s take a look at some batted ball and performance data that detail how much better he has been this season:

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m going to say this bluntly because it’s something that most should agree with: Harrison Bader’s defense in center field is special. Unfortunately for Bader and baseball fans, he has never totaled above 430 plate appearances in a single season, so we’ve never had the privilege to see him run around the outfield for a traditional full season and rack up defensive value. But even with this limitation, he’s still at or near the top of just about every aggregated defensive metric leaderboard for the last few seasons. If you watch him roam the outfield — and I mean really watch him — you realize that this is a player who does everything correctly out there and has an unflappable baseball IQ. If you could write a script on how to be the perfect outfielder, all you would need to say is “be Bader.”

Let’s start by addressing where Bader ranks next to his peers this season in terms of defensive metrics. I’m only going to focus on Outs Above Average (OAA) for this piece. Defensive metrics are a great starting point to a conversation like this, but they are a complement to video analysis that will show us the details of a player’s fundamentals and decision making.

Here are the leading outfielders in terms of OAA this season:

One of these is not like the others! Given that OAA is a counting stat, a player with at least 16 fewer games played (usually more) should not be on this list, but Bader only trails Robert this season in OAA, and that is mainly due to his Success Rate Added. That gives some more insight into how valuable he has been in his limited sample this year. Read the rest of this entry »

Coming into the season, two players were the obvious front runners for their respective league’s Rookie of the Year award: Corbin Carroll and Gunnar Henderson. Not only were they each elite in the minors in 2022, they both came up to help their big league club late in the season and continued their incredible all-around play. Carroll hasn’t skipped a beat in 2023. He has a 140 wRC+ and 13 stolen bases, and has played good defense. But despite posting a 125 wRC+ in 132 plate appearances in 2022 — a performance that suggested he would hit, hit, and just keep on hitting — Henderson has struggled so far. After 161 plate appearances this year, he sits at a 103 wRC+. The holes that were present in his game in the minor leagues before 2022 have popped back up, leading to a 31.1 K% and a bottom-decile whiff rate.

Let’s go over a few notes from Eric Longenhagen’s offseason report on Henderson. I want to focus on three things: a worse than average in-zone whiff rate, a surgically precise approach, and huge all-fields power. For better or worse, these three aspects of his profile are all holding up almost perfectly. Right now, Henderson’s in-zone whiffs are indeed below average. This year, the league-wide in-zone whiff rate on fastballs is 16.9%. Henderson’s mark is 33.3% after being much better last year at 23.4%. Now let’s go to the good parts. His approach still seems to be surgically precise. His 20.4% chase rate is in the 89th percentile, so it’s not like pitchers are suddenly getting him to leave his ideal zones, and his highly impressive 16.1% walk rate has carried his offensive production this season. Lastly, his all-fields power is still present. He has two 400-foot home runs to left field and another that went so deep to right field in Kaufmann Stadium that the camera could hardly track it. I say all of this because it means Henderson is still who we knew him to be. But the main hole in his game is being exposed more in this year’s sample than last year’s. That’s what this piece will explore.

When such a talented hitter experiences a 10 percentage point jump in his whiff rate on fastballs in the zone, my mind immediately goes to two things: swing decisions and mechanical changes. I’ve already mentioned that it seems like Henderson’s approach hasn’t faltered out of the zone, but let’s double check that the trend holds in the zone – particularly at the top of the zone, since that’s the potential hole in his swing that we already have knowledge of. Interestingly enough, his swing rate has significantly decreased in the upper third from last season. In 2022, he swung at 72.4% of the pitches he saw in this zone; this year, it’s only 37.8%. Given that we know Henderson’s approach is so sound, it makes sense that he would try and cut down on swings in this zone. However, despite this logical downtick, Henderson has nearly doubled his Whiff% from 28.9% to 52.6%. This brings me right back to the other part of the investigation: his swing mechanics. Below are two swings from 2022, followed by another two from 2023. Each pitch is a fastball in the upper third:

2022

2023

The two swings from 2022 were both barrels hit over 100 mph. Eric noted in his report that one of Henderson’s key skills is his ability to let the ball travel deep into the zone before driving it to the opposite field. Both swings from 2022 displayed this ability, and the one against Justin Verlander’s nicely located four-seamer was even more impressive. If you have a hole in your swing and can still occasionally barrel the ball when pitchers attack that hole, you’re going to be alright. If you can’t get to that barrel, like what’s happening so far this year, then it becomes more of a concern.

Henderson’s swing against Reynaldo López wasn’t necessarily a bad one. It was hit at an ideal 27-degree launch angle. But it wasn’t hit nearly hard enough (88.7 mph) and resulted in a can of corn fly out. Similarly, against Josiah Gray, Henderson couldn’t get to quality contact and fouled the pitch straight back. I picked these two swings because each pitcher’s four-seamer hasn’t performed well this season (> .500 SLG%). It’s my quick way of showing that Henderson isn’t getting to four-seamers with sub-optimal pitch shapes. These are pitches that you’d expect most good hitters to have a decent shot at barreling up, especially one with Henderson’s skill and power. But he is either missing them altogether or not squaring them up.

Earlier this week, I talked about how Vertical Bat Angle (VBA), the angle of a hitter’s barrel at impact, could be a factor in explaining these types of fluctuations in a hitter’s performance and habits. However, this most likely isn’t the case with the struggling rookie. His VBA last September/October was 34.5 degrees; in the first month of this season, it was 34.6. Instead, I’d like to focus on a different measurement of bat path called Vertical Entry Angle (VEA), also courtesy of SwingGraphs, and its relationship with VBA. SwingGraphs defines VEA as the angle of the bat 83 milliseconds before contact, but for simplicity’s sake, it’s basically the angle of the bat right at the start of the downswing.

In this piece, D.K. Willardson presents data explaining how excessive flattening in bat angle from VEA to VBA can be a bat speed killer. This makes intuitive sense. From a pitching perspective, we know that having an asymmetrical relationship between the direction of your left and right arm can be a velocity killer. Luis Castillo needs a side-swiping glove to match his side arm slot, and Verlander needs a vertical glove tuck to match his high arm slot. Doing otherwise might kill their velocity. From a bat speed perspective, a hitter entering the zone at an extreme vertical angle and adjusting their bat too much to a flat angle can throw off the connection between their torso and hips and effectively decrease their rotational velocity. Now, let’s focus on how that relates to Henderson.

Last year, the degree of flattening between Henderson’s VEA and VBA was 15.4 degrees (49.9 to 34.5). In April, that number increased to 17.2 (51.8 to 34.6). The question is, did that result in any batted ball differences for Henderson? Well, yes it did. His max exit velocity is down 1.7 mph from last year, while his average exit velocity is down 1 mph. These fluctuations seem small, but Henderson was already teetering quite close to flattening out too much. Per SwingGraphs, that gap between VEA and VBA is the 11th highest in all of baseball this year and puts him next to other struggling hitters such as Alec Bohm and Trent Grisham. For Henderson, a slight dip in bat speed is a pretty darn good explanation for why he might struggle to cover the top of the zone. This might strike you as a bit too theoretical, but the results (quality of contact and whiffs) both track well with this explanation.

So how might the Orioles communicate this information to him (or another hitter with a similar issue)? For that, we’ll look at some slo-mo video. The first clip is a slowed down version of the swing against Verlander, while the second is the swing against López:

Unfortunately, I’m not an overlay wizard, so I can’t draw a distinct line at VEA, but the slo-mo video should help you see that the angle of his bat this season is steeper as it begins it descent. Henderson is obviously quite good at adjusting his bat angle according to pitch height, but by starting his entry more vertically, he’s forced to adjust his bat angle even further to get to the plane of the high fastball. All hitters have to adjust their bat angle at the top of the zone, but the more you increase how much you need to adjust it, the more time you spend getting to your ideal angle. The video suggests two potential options. The first is to cue the top of his bat in a different direction than he currently is if he wants to start his entry just a little bit flatter. The second is to slightly adjust his hand setup to start on the plane where he wants to be.

I know, all of this just to say he needs a cue to slightly change his entry into the zone. But with hitters this skilled, small changes are usually the difference between a slump and a hot streak. And it’s not like Henderson is hitting that poorly anyways. It’s more just that he isn’t performing to projections and probably his own expectations, especially when it comes to swing and miss. I expect him to get it going pretty quickly. He is simply too good to not be a force in the already gaudy Orioles lineup.

There are a few star shortstops off to slow starts with the bat this season. Trea Turner and Willy Adames are two of them, but the one I want to focus on for this piece is Carlos Correa. Through Saturday’s games, he ranked 11th among qualified shortstops with a 90 wRC+. The good news is that his defense and speed look great! But 2023 represents the slowest start at the plate of his career. Over a quarter of the way through the season, Correa is still looking to turn it around with the stick.

Like many of the Padawans of the Astros’ hitting development system over the last 10 years, Correa has always run above-average whiff and strikeout rates. That’s the M.O. of the core of hitters who came up in Houston – they don’t strike out too much and still hit for good power. Correa has typically paired that with above-average walk rates as well, and this year is no different. But for the first time since 2016, Correa is running a 39th-percentile whiff rate and a 38th-percentile strikeout rate. So what’s going on?

My first thought was to see if Correa has experienced any deterioration in his bat speed. Sometimes hitters lose a bit of bat speed and take a second to adjust; while that adjustment is ongoing, their whiffs tick up. But Correa’s bat speed indicators are all fairly typical for him. Here are some peripherals showing where Correa stands relative to his peers over the last few seasons:

Nothing out of the ordinary! Other than a slight downtick in average exit velocity, everything still looks darn good for Correa. The decrease in average exit velocity is probably indicative of more mishits than usual, but it’s a good sign that he is still capable of hitting the ball as hard as anybody. The next step is to check in on my hunch of him producing more mishits. Below are some additional details on his batted ball profile:

Right away, my eyes are drawn to Correa’s opposite field and popup rates. Correa has had the greatest success when he has kept his opposite field mark under 30%; the uptick here is worth looking into. It doesn’t appear to be related to Correa’s swing decisions — his chase and swing rates are in line with career norms. That makes me think it could be related to his contact point, which is tied into his swing mechanics. We might expect this type of change if his contact has gotten a little too deep and Correa isn’t impacting the ball on the upswing as frequently; we’d also expect more mishits, as seen in the increase in popup rate. Making deeper contact isn’t always a bad thing, but it seems like Correa’s bat angle is being thrown off by the change in depth. While we don’t have public access to contact point (the depth in the strike zone at contact), we can look at Vertical Bat Angle (VBA) courtesy of SwingGraphs.

VBA is the angle of a player’s bat at impact. A player’s average VBA doesn’t always tell the entire story because the number is highly dependent on pitch height. But it can help inform our understanding of fluctuations in a player’s bat path and contact point. If a player swings at higher pitch heights on average, their VBA should decrease. If they swing at lower pitch heights on average, it should increase. It’s about a hitter matching their barrel to the pitches they see. If they’re making deeper contact than usual, you’d expect their VBA to decrease because they haven’t gotten to their peak upswing. Typically, a hitter is better able to get their bat on an upswing farther out in front of the plate.

First, I’ll try to control for pitch height to make sure my hunch is valid. Using Baseball Savant, I searched for the average height of the all pitches Correa made contact with last season and this season. In 2022, that mark was 2.54 feet, while this year, it’s 2.52 feet – a negligible difference. Because of that, you’d expect that his VBA year-over-year would be somewhat close as well. In 2022, his average VBA was 33.6 degrees, and fluctuated between 33.5 and 34.1 degrees in the final three months of the season. This year, that number is 30.6 degrees. Basically, his swing is flatter at impact than it was last year, which perfectly tracks with making deeper contact, adding popups, and increasing his oppo rate.

Correa may be expecting his barrel to be in one place when it’s actually in another. For a hitter with fantastic barrel accuracy, this difference might well be enough to throw off his sense of how his body is moving. In this case, his increased whiff rate and career-high popup rate make sense. To provide even more context, we can look at how Correa fares when pulling the ball. If he’s making deeper contact than usual to the pull side, I’d expect there to be a change from previous seasons. The below table focuses on Correa’s hard-hit balls (>= 95 mph) to the pull side from 2021 through this season:

Well that’s interesting! Correa isn’t getting nearly as much out of these batted balls as he has in the past. His average launch angle has decreased by over 4.2 degrees since last year, and his xwOBACON has shot down as a result. This tracks with the theory of him having a deeper contact point than in the past and explains why Correa’s overall xwOBACON sits at .385 despite an overall barrel rate of 80%. That’s still pretty good, but for a player who routinely runs an xwOBACON greater than .415, it’s a bit underwhelming. If Correa can adjust his timing to be earlier and move his impact point further in front of the plate, I’d expect this to turn around quickly. He is still hitting the ball as hard as ever has. Sometimes a hitter takes a little more time than usual to get their timing down, and that’s what I’m leaning towards here. What’s more, against fastballs this year, Correa’s xwOBA is .372, but his actual wOBA is .292. On top of his timing being slightly off, he has gotten a bit unlucky.

All of this is to say, we shouldn’t be too worried about Correa’s profile. His 107 wRC+ and .224 ISO in the month of May suggest that he is working his way back to his career norms. This is still a very good hitter, one we should expect to continue to be as successful at the plate as he always has been.

All statistics are through May 20.
An edit was made to reflect that the relationship between VBA and pitch height is inverse.

There is some fantastic coaching happening in Milwaukee. Over the last handful of years, there have been multiple instances of catchers completely turning their defense around with the Brewers, with Omar Narváez the most notable example. The team’s latest success story is William Contreras. In his first 146 games with Atlanta, Contreras was a solid player with an exceptional bat. In 376 plate appearances in 2022, he had a 138 wRC+. That is a great mark for any hitter, let alone a catcher. However, his defense was lackluster across the board. The skills were there — that didn’t seem to be a major concern — but Contreras’ performance was below average when it came to framing, blocking, and throwing. It seemed like his defense might be a slow burn, but Milwaukee had another plan in mind.

To get an idea of how incredible Contreras has been so far, we will start with the numbers. You might be shocked when you see them because this isn’t a story of a catcher going from below average to average. This is the story of a catcher going from below average to top tier:

Are you confused? I’m confused. When I first saw these numbers, my jaw dropped. Catcher is the most physically demanding and difficult position on the field. To suddenly become one of the best at the position in a matter of months is inconceivable to me. Typically, a player will see improvements in one area one year, another in the next, and so on and so forth. Contreras didn’t have a typical ascent though. Instead, he did all of this practically overnight. His framing has moved from the 20th percentile last year to the 74th percentile this year. In 2022, he wasn’t even in the top 50 of blocking runs saved, but he now leads all catchers. Yes, that’s a better rate than J.T. Realmuto or Sean Murphy have managed. Lastly, his throwing has been good this year as well. Despite no real improvement in terms of his pop time, his CS% jumped from 7% to 33%. That is most likely due to significantly improved accuracy and footwork. So what gives? How in the world is he pulling this off?

I’ll start with blocking. A rapid improvement here makes more sense to me than framing. I say that because blocking is all about preparation, both pre-game and pre-pitch. Pre-game, you have to do the necessary work to understand your staff’s pitch shapes and tendencies. If this becomes back of the hand knowledge to you, then blocking in game is that much easier. Pre-pitch, you use that knowledge to determine your setup and decision making. After watching every pitch that Statcast labeled as a block for Contreras both last year and this year, it’s become clear to me that the improvement is rooted in Contreras no longer attempting to block right-handed breaking balls and offspeed pitches with his chest. Here is some video from 2022 to start:

All three of these pitches are standard blocking attempts. There isn’t a 30 foot spiked pitch or one with wicked side-to-side spin. Technically, they are all executed blocks since the runner doesn’t advance and they didn’t scoot far enough away to be passed balls. However, each of these locations should be areas that a catcher stuffs right in front of them. Now, let’s see what Contreras does this year in the face of right-handed breaking ball and offspeed pitches:

This is unorthodox! When I think of the great pickers, names like Yadier Molina, Francisco Cervelli, and Joe Mauer come to mind. But the weird thing is, they didn’t all exclusively pick! Usually there is a time and place where you just have to get your body in front of the ball, but for Contreras, his hand is the best possible extension of his body he could have. On spiked curveballs or side-sweeping sliders far in front of the plate, he is picking the ball with ease.

There were signs this was a special skill for Contreras last year — he picked countless nasty sliders from Spencer Strider all season. But it’s quite unorthodox to tell a catcher to completely sell out for this approach. However, if you’re confident enough in the scouting that says he has 80-grade hands and readability, then heck, just go for it! The early returns are quite promising too. You may think this is luck, but these four examples are representative of a skill that Contreras has shown to be repeatable all season no matter the pitcher or pitch shape.

Now, let’s move on to the other key part of catching directly related to smooth, strong hands: framing. If you can recall from the table above, Contreras’ strike rate has increased by 4.1 percentage points since last year, and his framing runs have increased by 5. The best opportunity for a catcher to make a big jump in framing is the bottom of the zone, from the middle of their body and away from their glove hand – and that has indeed been the point of focus and improvement for the Brewers backstop. Statcast defines these two zones as Zone 18 (middle-low shadow zone) and Zone 19 (arm side-low shadow zone). In Zone 18, Contreras’ strike rate has jumped from 43.6% to 62.7% (third in baseball). In Zone 19, it’s jumped from 20.3% to 29.7% (ninth in baseball). That’s another huge increase that warrants some video work. Here are six videos of pitches in Zone 18 – the first three are from 2022 and the second three are from 2023:

2022

2023

This trend was much easier to pick up on than the picking! Right away you can see that Contreras has changed his pre-pitch hand position. In 2022, his hands were stabby at the bottom of the zone. One crucial part of framing fastballs at the bottom of the zone is having a loose wrist as the pitch is being released. That slight quarter turn he did before the pitch wasn’t enough for him to keep consistent looseness between his wrist and elbow. Even when he did attempt a quarter turn (as with Kyle Wright’s sinker), it was off tempo and he still ended up bringing up his glove to the middle of his body before the pitch arrived.

In 2023, he has bought into a soft quarter turn that allows him to stay under the ball through reception. If you can stay under every single pitch, you can better manipulate the presentation of the ball. Pushing up through a fastball is much smoother than stabbing it and picking your glove back up. The best way for you to do that consistently is by making sure your glove always starts under the height of the shadow zone. It’s a simple concept that doesn’t require the catcher to take on a complete overhaul. Cue the right motions and targets, and the catcher will begin to understand what that reception should feel like. Contreras clearly now has that understanding and ability to execute every pitch.

As far as throwing is concerned, it’s not surprising to see early success for Contreras just from a mental point of view. If you’re confident in your receiving and blocking, then your mind is in a better place to execute solid mechanics and make an accurate throw. But I do have to point out how the improvement in framing can directly impact this as well. With a smooth motion from the ground up, your hands are in a better position to perform consistent exchanges. Stabbing at the ball brings your momentum back towards the ground, whereas a fluid motion starting from the ground lets you maintain a fluid motion towards your ear. It is all connected!

This early success is amazing for both Contreras and the Brewers. Last year, their two primary catchers were Victor Caratini and Narváez. Both were sub-90 wRC+ hitters despite their great catching. That led to 2.3 combined WAR on the year. Through 33 games (29 at catcher), Contreras has already accumulated 1.1 WAR. If he stays on that track, it will be a significant upgrade for the team. It’s an exciting development for both the club and a young catcher who looked like he might be an offense-first player behind the dish. Kudos once again, Milwaukee.

Position changes can be risky. The outcome depends heavily on the timing and circumstances of the switch, and the natural ability of the player. Sometimes, rookies need to carve out a roster spot for themselves and end up switching on the fly, like Jordan Walker. His shift to the outfield is a work in progress, just like it would be for most rookies. Then there are cases of a more experienced player moving due to roster construction, as with Jazz Chisholm Jr.’s move to center field.

Chisholm’s switch was precipitated by the Marlins’ offseason trade for Luis Arraez. With the sixth-worst offense (88 wRC+) in all of baseball in 2022 and good starting pitching depth, a pitcher-hitter swap to improve the lineup was highly logical, and the Marlins saw their best chance to obtain an impact bat in Arraez. That created something of an infield logjam. With Joey Wendle penciled in at shortstop and Jean Segura at third, the question became what they would do with their young star, who was slated to start at second base. Soon after the announcement of the trade, Kim Ng revealed that Jazz would be moving to center field, their most important position of need. His speed, athleticism, and lack of premium defense on the infield made it worth a try. Read the rest of this entry »

Recently, I wrote a piece about the benefits of hitters simplifying the mechanical process in their load or gather. For many hitters, moving too much in the lead-up to their barrel entering the hitting zone can create inconsistent timing and suboptimal reciprocal movements. Taking noise out of the swing can better prepare a hitter to have a consistent bat path; if you always know where your barrel is in space, you’re better equipped to hit the sweet spot more frequently. The thing is, not all hitters are the same. What works for one may not work for another, and that is the beauty of baseball.

I’m afraid I may have left some readers with the impression that simplification is the only path to improvement, when in reality, some hitters need to add more movement to their process to put their body in a position to be athletic. More movement does not always equal more complication if that movement is in the right direction. If a hitter stagnates their mechanics too much, they could be taking away from their potential. The kinetic chain needs flowing energy to function at full capacity. To some people, cueing simplicity and less movement can be harmful. Read the rest of this entry »

Sean Murphy does not get cheated when he swings. No matter the count, he is going to put up his A swing in hopes of barreling up the baseball. His profile is one of my favorites to watch. Although this type of hitter can be more prone to strikeouts than most, Murphy has managed to maintain a respectable strikeout rate in the last few seasons due to solid bat-to-ball skills and above-average plate discipline. Add solid raw strength on top of that, and you have yourself a career 116 wRC+ hitter. But this year, he has blown that mark away with a 182 wRC+ through 119 plate appearances. That’s an incredible jump that warrants some investigative work.

If I were a hitter looking to improve, I would focus on two things. The first is tweaking my mechanics to make myself less prone to exploitation. In other words, I’d make sure my bat path could cover different heights and depths of the zone so that I can be adjustable to different speeds and locations. The other approach would be to learn with what pitches and in which zones I’m already good at making flush contact and adjust my swing decisions to cater to those tendencies better. These two things are often intertwined, but depending on where a hitter is at in their career, they may focus on one more than the other or have an equal split.

For Murphy, it seems the focus has been more on matching his swing decisions to his strengths, and that has worked very well thus far. Below is a table with his swing rates by pitch type in the last few seasons:

This year, Murphy is swinging at fewer fastballs and breaking balls than he typically has, leading to an overall Swing% decrease. In 2021 and ’22, he swung at fastballs and breaking balls 47.6% and 49.3% of the time, respectively. This year, that number is down to 43.0%, the lowest since his best offensive year in the shortened 2020 season, where his Swing% was 41.3%.

The bulk of that change comes from not chasing as often. Murphy’s chase rate on fastballs and breakers have both seen notable drops. For somebody who had a chase contact rate of 61.1% in 2022, this is a big improvement. Most hitters aren’t good at finding the barrel outside of the zone, and Murphy is no different. If you chase less frequently, you take away opportunities for more whiffs and barrel suppression.

As a hitter, if you get better at targeting locations where you know you have more room for error in terms of getting your barrel to the ball, then you can move your batted ball profile towards its optimal form. And that is exactly what Murphy has seen happen so far this season. For the first time since his cup of coffee debut in 2019, he is pulling half of his batted balls (50.7%). In the previous two full seasons, he pulled the ball 39.7–41.5% of the time. Pulling the ball isn’t always the right prescription for every hitter; for some, it risks too much top spin that can drag down your batted balls in the air, or it can mean not making contact when your bat path is in an upward trajectory (rolling over). But Murphy’s best contact has always come when he pulls the ball. Below is a table of all of Murphy’s batted balls greater than or equal to 95 mph and between an 8–32 degree launch angle; the former is Statcast’s definition of hard hit, and the latter is its definition of the sweet spot:

The most ideal way to display this data would be bucketing by spray angle, rather than using Statcast’s directional definitions, but that data is not publicly available. If this were separated by spray angle, it’d be easier to see that batted balls to the left side of the field are most ideal for Murphy. Either way, the percentages clearly show that he doesn’t have the kind of opposite field power that would justify trying to make that a main part of his game. His best chances of hitting the ball hard in the air is by hitting it to the left side. The following spray chart shows you what this group of batted balls looks like on the field. (The venue chosen for the dimensions is Truist Park.)

If you couldn’t see it on the table, you can definitely see it here: Murphy’s home run power is from the pull side gap to the left field foul pole. Unfortunately for him, this wasn’t ideal for a right-handed hitter in Oakland. According to Statcast’s park factors, Oakland Coliseum has been the third-least hitter-friendly park for right-handed hitters in the last three seasons in terms of wOBACON, whereas Truist ranks seventh. And while home/road splits analysis doesn’t always tell the entire story of a hitter, Murphy’s 106 wRC+ at Oakland compared to 126 elsewhere during his tenure there is notable. Perhaps he feels more comfortable with this approach in his new home, but no matter what, it’s clear this is something that should be a permanent change.

Typically, this is the point in a piece where I introduce mechanical changes as a complement to the swing decision and batted ball analysis. But when I was watching Murphy’s tapes from this year and last year, he didn’t look all that different. See for yourself: The first three swings are from his final month in Oakland last year, and the other three are from his first month in Atlanta, all on fastballs in the heart of the plate:

2022 Swing 1

2022 Swing 2

2022 Swing 3

2023 Swing 1

2023 Swing 2

2023 Swing 3

The setup and finish are both very similar, the leg kick hasn’t undergone any significant changes, and the stride direction is almost identical. All I can say is that things look smoother and more connected. There might be slightly different timing mechanisms going on with the leg kick that has led to a more connected swing between the upper and lower body, but again, there haven’t ben any significant changes. That tells me that the change in swing decision is the leading factor in this early hot streak.

As hitters get older, they often better understand who they are and what their swing can do. There are multiple variables at play with Murphy, but it seems as if he has gotten to the point where he understands the exact approach he needs to have to be the best version of himself. We’ve seen this happen with hitters in Atlanta before, and he is most likely another example. Will pitchers adjust to his changed approach? Probably; that’s just life in the big leagues. But from his perspective, it can take years to get to this point where you know your recipe for success. Even when he sees his inevitable regression from his exorbitant .340 ISO, he will still know what his blueprint is to optimize his profile, and that is huge for himself and his team.