Brauny Man

With Corey Koskie suffering from post-concussion syndrome, and the platoon of Craig Counsell/Tony Graffanino not producing, the Brewers brought up Ryan Braun last May hoping he could quell any or all of their hot corner problems. The prospect with the nickname “The Hebrew Hammer”—odd, that’s Gabe Kapler’s nickname as well—did not disappoint, posting incredibly gaudy numbers in just 113 games. He would win the Rookie of the Year award and, by all accounts, had one of the best offensive rookie seasons in the history of the game.

In it, he posted a slash line of .324/.370/.634, with an 153 OPS+, 26 doubles, 6 triples, and 34 home runs. Remember, too, that his season did not begin until May 24th.

He has gotten off to a slow start this year, hitting .275/.306/.463, with an OPS+ of just 99, 13 doubles, and 5 home runs. Coming into the season the projection systems did not have much to work with, as he only played most of one season, but all saw him finishing the season with an OPS of at least .829; it is currently .769. Those with OPS counts in a similar range: Jeff Keppinger (.770), Ian Kinsler (.773).

***Actually, and I only leave this in because it helps prove a small sample size point, but this article was written seemingly before Braun’s stats from yesterday updated; with his game yesterday, some of the numbers change. Due to his two home run performance, his OPS jumped from .769 to .814. And, for anyone wondering, Kinsler went up to .793 while Keppinger skyrocketed to .800.***

MGL recently posted a study that takes a look at what hot or cold April’s tell us about hitters. He finds that those who started off slow essentially finished the year with their projected OPS; while this does not necessarily relate to Braun in the sense that those used in the study had OPS counts under .500, I think the above mention of his OPS jump illustrates how hot or cold starts can be very deceiving and not necessarily indicative at all of what to expect. His numbers still aren’t where they were last year but that does not mean they will not be by the end of the year.

Using the stats we have for this season, let’s try to deduce what Braun is doing differently this year, if anything, or if this is all just the work of evil small sample sizes.

Looking at his swing data, he is making contact much more than he did last year. Despite swinging at about five percent less pitches in the strike zone he is making contact over six percent more often. Additionally, he is swinging at over four percent more pitches outside of the strike zone but making contact three percent more often. As we would intuitively expect following such a tremendous season, he is seeing less pitches in the strike zone. While I will need to do a full Pitch F/X study on him to see what he’s doing with these pitches outside of the zone, one possibility is that he simply isn’t connecting as well to them.

Another area to explore involves his BABIP and rates of balls in play. He is hitting more line drives this year, going from 16% to 18%; his grounders have gone from 38.8% to 32.8%; and his flyballs have jumped from 44.9% to 49.2%. Last year, his xBABIP would have been somewhere in the .280-.286 range; it ended up at .367. This year, though, they are within reason; his current BABIP of .313 comes pretty darn close to his expected .306 clip.

Another interesting aspect of the Hebrew Hammer (Braun, not Kapler) is his walks deficiency. He walked just 6% of the time last year, resulting in a BB/K of 0.26; that 0.26 would have been the seventh worst had he garnered enough plate appearances to truly qualify. This year he is walking just 4.4% of the time and, despite reducing his K-rate by about four percent, his BB/K of 0.23 currently ranks as the eighth worst.

This is essentially just a recap of what he has been doing this year as compared to last, and it seems that a few of the aforementioned factors are contributing to his “slow” start. Then again, as MGL and Braun’s performance yesterday showed, things can quickly change. For the sake of Braun and Brewers fans everywhere, I hope in August, when Braun smacks dingers #42-43 we can revisit this article and go “Jeez, what the heck was Seidman talking about!?”