Byron Buxton’s Tough First Day
During our marathon Opening Day chat at FanGraphs on Monday — you can revisit all 27,000 words here — I was tasked with following the 4 p.m. ET games. That slate of games featured an unfair fight between Clayton Kershaw and the Padres, the entrance of Zach Britton into a tie game against the Blue Jays, and the Twins against the Royals. While I flipped between games trying to maximize the use of the one available television in my living room, I tried to take in most of Byron Buxton’s day at the plate.
As you’re probably aware, Buxton was once the consensus No. 1 prospect in the game. He, unfairly, drew Mike Trout comps. While he’s certainly not anywhere near Trout the batter, Buxton is one of the premier athletes in the game. He made the first five-star catch of the season Monday as MLB.com documented both with video and Statcast data.
But Buxton will never fully unlock his potential, his considerable potential, until he cuts down on the swing and miss in his game.
Even during his excellent September, when he offered hope of a turnaround, a .287/.357/.653 slash line, and nine home runs over the final 29 games of the season — exhibiting burgeoning power to go with his plus-plus speed — Buxton still struck out in 33.6% of his plate appearances. He finished with a 35.6% strikeout rate for the year, a mark that was largely responsible — along with a healthy dose of infield pop ups — for his unsightly .225/.284/.430 slash line and 86 wRC+. His strikeout rate increased four points from his brief exposure to major-league pitching in 2015. And he even struck out 28% of the time during his demotion to Triple-A last season, covering 209 plate appearances.
Judging from my weekly chats here, Buxton is of some interest to many this year given a strong finish to 2016 that coincided with swing adjustments, including a return to the leg kick he used in high school but which was originally phased out by the Twins. He struck out in 20% of his at-bats this spring. While perhaps not ultimately significant, it was preferable to striking out in more than a third of his plate appearances.
This time of year always carries a small-sample disclaimer. It’s April. We don’t want to make too much of performance. But I was curious to see if Buxton, on Day One, would seem different, improved — as far as his approach goes — from the Buxton of 2015 and 2016. I was in search of compelling anecdotal evidence.
His first day back at work in 2017 was a tough one, as he continued to struggle to recognize and make contact with breaking balls and changeups.
Buxton saw 21 pitches over five plate appearances in his first work of 2017: 10 fastballs, seven changeups and four sliders. He swung at 10 of those breaking and offspeed pitches. The following GIFs document those 10 swings: seven swings and misses, two foul balls, and an infield pop up for an out.
Here’s Buxton’s first plate appearance of 2017, against a tough opponent in Danny Duffy, who possesses a quality changeup and slider:
Buxton swung and missed against the first change at which he offered. Later in the at-bat, after swinging through a fastball, he whiffed on a changeup for the strikeout…
While the first change was elevated, it had fading action away from Buxton. The second changeup was a nasty pitch few hitters with which would have success.
But it’s also a pitch with which Buxton continues to struggle. To date in his short career, Buxton has whiffed on 45.1% of changeups at which he’s swung, 45.9% of sliders, and 48.3% of curveballs. He had the 19th-highest swinging-strike rate in the game last season (15%) among hitters with at least 300 plate appearances.
In Buxton’s second at-bat in the third, Duffy started him off with two straight changeups …
Granted, they were excellent changeups, pitches that featured velocity separation and which faded below the zone. Nevertheless, through the first three innings of the season, Buxton and swung over the top of four changeups. He did contact a changeup later in the at-bat, fouling it down the third-base line…
… before his at-bat concluded with a line out to center off a fastball.
In the fifth, his third time facing Duffy, Buxton watched a changeup be called for a strike and then whiffed on a slider down…
And finished by striking out on his fifth swing and miss via changeup…
In the seventh, Peter Moylan began Buxton with five straight sinkers before back-to-back sliders.
Buxton fouled off the first, before swinging and missing at the second for his third strikeout of the afternoon. But these were not particularly good sliders.
While Buxton demonstrated a discerning batting eye in the minors, while he was not among the worst chasers in the game last season (ranking 74th in out-of-zone swing rate), he was grouped with Todd Frazier, Joc Pederson and Brett Lawrie in terms of zone-contact percentage.
In his final plate appearance of the afternoon, Buxton made it a one-pitch at-bat by popping up on a hanging Mike Minor changeup. It appeared to be a missed opportunity.
It was a rough first day for a player from whom so many hope and desire to see great improvement — from the Twins to fantasy leaguers. It was just one day, maybe it was back-to-school nerves, but it was more of the same as Buxton struggled to identify and contact offspeed and breaking pitches and do damage against pitches that were hanging in the zone.
Buxton, like everyone, knows the weaknesses and adjustments that need to be made. This April, we will continue to look for signs of progress, and hope he can tighten his holes and unleash his considerable gifts.
A Cleveland native, FanGraphs writer Travis Sawchik is the author of the New York Times bestselling book, Big Data Baseball. He also contributes to The Athletic Cleveland, and has written for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, among other outlets. Follow him on Twitter @Travis_Sawchik.
Would be interesting to see something similar on McCutchen’s first game of the season, possibly compared with last year where he seemed late on everything.
I’m going to guess we get that article and a Heyward one before the end of the week.
Winning the game has allowed me to “forget” this some….but it is worrisome. You have to be able to hit the ball when you swing. I’m going with “he’s very young, and it will get better” right now. Because if he’s not very good to great, the rebuild is loooooong.
You could write an article about his different leg kicks. I possibly wouldn’t read it, but just look at how inconsistent Buxton is. He has some toe taps, some moderate high leg kicks and a few giant slow ones all in one day. That is all pain that he is inflicting upon himself. He doesn’t see the ball and do a crazy leg kick, he is doing that independently.
The only silver lining is that these injuries are self-inflicted. If he ever feels like simplifying the game and succeeding, then it just might happen. I think he has demonstrated the ability to put the barrel on the ball, but he puts himself in a very poor position to do it consistently. It is really sad when you consider that he is a speed-first player. He should really focus on putting the bat on the ball. When he was in the low minors he was keeping things simple with a toe-tap for what it is worth.
I think someone actually did that a while back.
Is that true? In any case, Buxton’s nightmare only seems to be beginning. There is literally no reason to have him out there until he decides what he wants to do. He is beating himself.
I hope I’m wrong but I have no hope that Buxton’s bat will ever be any good. A lot of players run into pitches over the course of a month, that’s not unique to Buxton.
I was looking at the list of players who struck out about a third of the time over the last few years and it’s really hard to make a good career that way, especially if you don’t hit a lot of homers. If he doesn’t improve the K rate (or the power output), the best case scenarios are guys like Steven Souza, Drew Stubbs, or Colby Rasmus. That can pass in center field, but it’s a sad outcome for Buxton.
I too would like to see him “tighten his holes and unleash his considerable gifts”.
really? “tighten his holes”? phrasing…
Maybe it’s more mental with him than anything.
My question is, what specifically is his problem? Is he late to recognize thus leading to a lot of swing and misses or his swing just bad? He seems to swing a lot which seems to point to him recognizing pitches and knowing to swing hence my question. I’d love to see a breakdown once there’s enough samples to compare this season for when he has bad games and good ones. This is assuming he continues to struggle which isn’t a guarantee.
Hitting baseballs is hard.
Obviously, but there’s a multitude of reasons one can be having problems.
In my opinion, a player swinging at a pitch not necessarily at all correlate with the player recognizing anything about the pitch other than it was in fact, thrown mostly in the direction of home plate.
Slightly unfair example gif of Jake Arrieta yesterday: https://gfycat.com/VainFairAlbacoretuna
I think they key for him is power and elevation. He will lower his Ks a little but probably not that much. But if he hits for some pop (say 25 bombs) with 28% strikeouts and some walks he still would be an above average hitter (maybe 105 to 110 wRC+) and with his defense that would play.
That version of buxton is not mike trout but it is mike Cameron who also had an elevated k rate, some but not great pop, solid walk rates and great defense.
He was not super flashy and 260 with 20+ bombs, some walks and great D is not super sexy but still cameron was a 4 to 5 win player in his prime.
Now that of course is not guaranteed, he would have to lower his ks, raise his walks and stablize his power at 20+ to become cameron and there is also a chance he stays at 30% ks and 15 hr but I think the cameron outcome is reaonable.
I dont ever see him a 20% k and 35 hr type although I can see a case were he becomes a 30+ guy with contact issues like carlos Gomez.
I agree, the upside is certainly there, which means he will get plenty of chances. Carlos Gomez was all potential and little results for the first 5 years or so of his career before figuring it out in 2012.
He’ll be fine. He had a nice ST – about 20% k-rate v. 10% walk rate or so. He might not be Mike Trout but he’ll be an all-star.
I hear you… but you don’t shake off what he is doing right now. Every at bat is an embarrassment and he doesn’t seem to know what he needs to do about it. I want him to succeed and I think he can do it, but he needs to get his head on straight first.
ST isn’t very reliable. Never know what pitchers are working on stuff vs trying to pitch well or what hitters are working on soecific stuff vs trying to hit as well as possible in order to impress.
Three more today (so far). I think the last AB was three straight FB in the middle of the plate (if mlb.com is to be trusted). Not good.
A silver lining for Twins fans – at least Sano appears to be possibly making some adjustments.
He just got an infield hit. That is better than a K, but a bad AB in reality. This guy needs to be simply putting the bat on the ball. I know non-pulled non-flyballs are taboo these days, but it would work with his skill-set just fine. This is a guy that could make a living out of speed and defense, but he gets caught up trying to be something that he is currently not. He would be well served to learn how to hit MLB pitching and then start looking at lifting and yanking the ball when his speed starts to dry up – AKA the Mike Trout model.