DJ LeMahieu Gets No Respect
Monday afternoon, I put up an InstaGraphs post titled “The Least Intimidating Hitter in Baseball.” The idea was to use a formula including fastball rate and zone rate, because, the way I figure, the more aggressively a hitter gets pitched, the less the pitchers are afraid of. I combined a couple z-scores to get a number I’ll refer to today as the Aggressiveness Index, and many of the players in the linked post are unsurprising. Turns out pitchers go after Ben Revere aggressively. Ditto Nori Aoki and Billy Burns. There’s nothing weird there.
But a certain name showed up in eighth place. Last year, pitchers didn’t show any significant fear of facing DJ LeMahieu. That makes sense if you weren’t paying attention, but LeMahieu played every day, and finished with a 128 wRC+. LeMahieu, ever so quietly, had himself a breakout, four-win season, yet it looks like pitchers just didn’t care.
LeMahieu is a fascinating player for a few reasons. One, we pretty much never talk about him, so he’s gone about his business under the radar. Two, he’s so far run a career BABIP of .352, and it’s been elevated even away from Coors Field. Three, he just pulled only 22% of his batted balls, easily the lowest rate in baseball among qualified hitters. And four, LeMahieu just took a substantial step forward. So many times, we’ve talked about hitters who’ve sacrificed contact for power, or power for contact. LeMahieu got better at contact and power without sacrificing anything.
Over the last two seasons, 237 hitters have batted at least 250 times in each year. LeMahieu just managed the 16th-biggest improvement in hard-hit rate, and he also managed the fifth-biggest improvement in contact rate. You see him there next to two other dots. One belongs to Chris Iannetta, which is odd. The other belongs to Wilson Ramos, which makes a lot more sense.
Anyway, LeMahieu posted a career-high wRC+. And yet pitchers remained aggressive on a regular basis. His fastball-rate z-score was 2.3, and his zone-rate z-score was 1.0, meaning his Aggressiveness Index was 3.3. That was one of the highest in the game, and in this plot, you can see LeMahieu since his career began in earnest.
The Aggressiveness Index has actually gotten higher each season. That made enough sense until 2016, when LeMahieu reworked himself into a threat. I’ll apologize now for the number of plots I’m embedding, but here’s Aggressiveness Index and wRC+ for individual hitter-seasons going back five years. LeMahieu is highlighted in appropriate purple.
The purple point is among the ones that stand out. Now, I do hear you, all the way over there. LeMahieu finished last year with a BABIP closer to .400 than .375. He hit just 11 home runs, and, again, he seldom pulled anything. I can see why some people might conclude that LeMahieu’s wRC+ was inflated. I’m prepared for this! Here’s a similar plot, except instead of wRC+, I’ve used a hard-hit-rate index, also z-scored.
LeMahieu wound up with a hard-hit rate that was 0.6 standard deviations higher than the mean. His Aggressiveness Index was 3.3, but according to the best-fit line, it should’ve been -0.6. That’s the biggest positive difference in the whole sample. Which means, no other point is further above the dotted black line.
This is the Statcast era, right? Might as well do one better than hard-hit rate. The latter might be somewhat subjective. Here’s Aggressiveness Index against average exit velocity for the last two years, using the corrected EV numbers to fill in missing data.
I highlighted LeMahieu’s 2016 point. Perhaps I should’ve also highlighted his 2015 point, which is the one immediately to the left. Two years ago, LeMahieu ranked in the 92nd percentile in average exit velocity. Last year, he ranked in the 96th percentile. If you can believe it, he wound up with a slightly higher average EV than David Ortiz and Freddie Freeman. For LeMahieu, it’s more about consistent good contact than occasional great contact, but you see how that point is an outlier. Despite everything LeMahieu was doing, he wasn’t getting pitched with respect. Pitchers either weren’t buying his improvements, or they didn’t know about them.
You might be wondering: Is LeMahieu another one of those recent swing-change guys? No.
LeMahieu said he hasn’t changed his swing mechanics this season.
Instead, he changed more of his mental approach. He went into each plate appearance with more of a plan.
“Usually when a guy gets to 28 or 29, DJ’s age, he’s pretty much set,” the scout said. “But DJ is starting to figure out major-league pitching. He used to just go up to the plate and slap at the ball, but now he’s a lot more selective and looks for a pitch he can drive.”
In fairness, he did also get stronger. Standing 6’4, it’s not like LeMahieu is a little dude. He’s coming off a career-high walk rate, and a career-low strikeout rate. He’s also coming off a career-low grounder rate, and a career-high pop-up rate. That last point is interesting — LeMahieu wound up with 11 pop-ups, where over his career he had just six before, combined. That speaks to someone trying to get more lift, and trying to drive the ball somewhere. Pop-ups themselves obviously aren’t good, but a changing rate is another indicator.
So in DJ LeMahieu, we have someone who seemed to make positive changes. He improved, such that he no longer resembled so extreme a slap-hitter. At the same time, in DJ LeMahieu, we have someone who was pitched very aggressively. That reflects a lack of fear, which in turn reflects either ignorance or disbelief. Other pitchers didn’t think of LeMahieu as a problem, meaning they’re either behind the times or out in front of them. It’s hard to be certain, although my inkling is that LeMahieu deserves more credit than he’s received.
Pitchers delighted in going after Matt Carpenter in 2014. That year, even though he posted a 117 wRC+, he had an Aggressiveness Index of 3.2. The following year, that dropped to 2.4, and this past season, it dropped further, to 0.9. Pitchers have become increasingly cautious around Carpenter, because he’s proven he can punish them. Carpenter, granted, does his damage by pulling the ball, and putting it in the air. LeMahieu’s damage is a little less conspicuous. We’ll see if he can keep it up, and if he does, we’ll see how much longer it takes before pitchers figure it out. For now, signs are tugging in opposite directions.
Jeff made Lookout Landing a thing, but he does not still write there about the Mariners. He does write here, sometimes about the Mariners, but usually not.
Outstanding, Jeff. As usual.
wow. excellent work, Jeff. this is eye-opening.
Shhhh…. Don’t let any opposing pitchers see this!
A key point about DJ Lemahieu is that his BABIP is actually very sustainable. My xBABIP formula puts his xBABIP at .384, only 4 points below his actual BABIP of .388.
Why such a high xBABIP? His batted ball profile. Among 268 players with at least 300 PA, Lemahieu ranked 8th in LD%, which correlates well with BABIP. Additionally, Lemahieu ranked 21st in GB/FB ratio, which is critical for having a high BABIP because fly balls are the lowest BABIP batted ball event.
Additionally, Lemahieu makes great contact on his ground balls. Lemahieu ranked 9th in Ground Ball exit velocity, which correlates well with Ground Ball BABIP. Finally, Lemahieu also sprays his ground balls to all fields, making it impossible for other teams to shift him, a key factor for players with low ground ball BABIPs.
Lemahieu is an elite offensive player, with or without Coors. I would even argue that there’s room for improvement with him, because Coors Field could push his already high BABIP profile to astronomical heights.
I agree he certainly doesn’t get the credit he deserves, but I’m not sure “elite offensive player” is the right term for a guy who posted a 101 wRC+ away from Coors Field in 2016, which happens to be the first time he’s ever posted a wRC+ above 100 away from Coors. And, a BsR of -0.4 doesn’t buoy his “elite offense player” tag.
I’m not trying to disparage him… he’s a fine, fine player. One I’d like to have on my favorite team, but I don’t like overuse of superlatives.
Depends on how you define elite. His total offensive value (“Off”) was 33rd in baseball last year. He is within close striking distance to the mid 20s, so you can slot him around 25th-27th accounting for the Coors Hangover. This is ahead of players like Cespedes, Machado, and even his teammate Arenado.
I agree that “elite” is a special word and he isn’t quite there yet…but I would guess he is a lot closer than you expected, even as someone who admits he doesn’t get enough credit.
Yea, I’d agree that elite may be a bit of a stretch. If he posts similar numbers next year, then I’ll say that he’s an elite contact hitter, but there’s not enough power for an elite overall game. I think he’s pretty comparable to a peak-level Mark Loretta, which is not an insult to him by any stretch of the imagination.
Jeff, I have a slight bone to pick with WRC. I understand that Coors players WRC takes park factors into consideration, but my understanding is it does not take the “Coors field hangover” into consideration. So when you play at Coors you get the park benefit, but studies has shown how much it hurts you when go on the road and balls go back to their normal movement. So why isn’t that factored in? I feel WRC is very unfair to Coors players due to this since they play half their games at Coors before going on the road.
Coors Hangover is undoubtedly a thing, but it’s equally undoubtedly hard to quantify. I wonder if teams have better ways to use park effects in extreme circumstances like that.
Agreed. Jeff is aware of the Coors hangover, as are most other people by this point. Still, wRC+ is the best measure we have right now in the public sphere. A few years down the road, I think we will see Statcast-powered park factors that are much more accurate and can account for the hangover effect.
In the meantime, I think a lot of people mentally add ~5 extra points of wRC+ to all the Rockies hitters and call it good.
I agree with this. On the MLB network a few sabermetric guys were caling Carlos Gonzalez an average MLB hitter which I had major objection to. The 5 points might be a good guess for now, but this probably should be even higher in the era before the humidifier because the hangover is not all based on ball movement.
That is why it makes me sad to see guys like Larry Walker likely getting left out of the HOF. Not only do they have to contend with the “He played half his games at Coors” narrative which is not true, but he also plays in a much smaller market, which very few of the hall of fame voters are watching consistently. Guys like Derek Jeter who had phonebooth range at SS are going to get nearly 100% of the vote on their first try, and guys like Larry Walker who put up nearly the same war (68.7) to Jeter (71.8) in 759 less career games are going to get left off. Walker was an above average player EVERY SINGLE SEASON of his entire career. His worst season ever was 1.3 WAR ( in 83 games). His worst season where he played most the season was 3.2 war. Jeter did not touch that for that last 5 years of his career. Larry Walker had a BETTER PEAK, a BETTER DECLINE, and a BETTER CAREER. But when he retired he did not get a farewell tour. He did not get batting practice fastballs lobbed down the middle. He just retired. End rant.
You’re trying to make an evidence backed stat answer a theoretical question. wRC+ answers the question of ‘how much value did a player produce from the batter’s box per at bat?’ Considering that runs are less valuable in Coors than they are elsewhere does this. You want a stat that tells us a player’s true talent, ‘what would they have produced playing 162 games in a neutral environment?’ At the moment, any answer to that question is fantasy, not fact.
Maybe LeMahieu would have had more productive at bats in Chavez Ravine if he hadn’t played the previous day in Denver, but we can’t know how much better for certain, and more importantly he didn’t. wRC+ doesn’t exist to guess what a player might have done under different circumstances.
Ah, but park adjustments turn this fantasy into a reality! wRC is actually the stat that answers the question ‘how much value did a player produce from the batter’s box per at bat?’
wRC+ is park adjusted, so it is in fact answering the question ‘what would they have produced playing 162 games in a neutral environment?’
I get what the point is, but what I am saying is wRC is wrong for the Rockies, and by a lot due to the Coors Hangover. When they go on the road their hitting is worse than it should be. wRC does not account for park adjusted wRC based on the ballpark they played their games at before, which hurts Rockies more than any other team, and by a large margin. So the point is that the Rockies hitters (and other teams hitters after leaving coors) suffer a “hangover” (since it resembles a performance hangover) when they go to other ballparks since they have to readjust to sealevel. I would argue that the hangover might be understated due to the exact ballparks they go to, but neverless, this is a very, very real thing.
I hope this does not look like I am responding to my own comments (even though I sort of am). What I am saying is by and large Rockies Hitters are bad on the road. Last year they posted a 100 wRC+ at home, and an 84 on the road. That was actually an improvement over their average of -17wrc on the road, which is more than double the average for the 2nd place team. So Rockies players wRC+ does not seem fair.
Here is my sample size of 1. I played during a time period where metal bats were at their absolute peak. I spent a summer playing for a team out of Reno. Reno in the summertime is an amazing place to hit. This was back when I thought the way to be a good baseball player was get as big as possible and try to hit every baseball 900 feet. During batting pratice you could routinely hit balls 100+ feet over the fence, across the street and off a building. You feel confident, breaking balls do not break, etc. We then went on the road to play a tournament in the bay area. These balls that we were launching across the street were going off the fence in the 52 degree summer days in San Fran. You then try to muscle up even more, and pull the ball even more which when you couple with breaking balls moving more, balls not traveling as far, and messing up your swing, you realize that things change drastically. Those singles that became doubles off the wall in Reno were dying quails that the outfield runs in for in San Fran. Coors hangover is real.
Sidenote, Barry Bonds was amazing.
No, the point I am making is wRC does not do that due to the Coors field hangover
Confusion. Let’s establish some facts.
FACT 1: wRC is a stat that measures how many runs a player was worth over a specific time period. It is not park-adjusted. Jeff does not reference it in this article. It is inferior is (almost?) all ways to wRC+
FACT 2: wRC+ is a stat that measures a player’s ability to create runs, relative to the league average, and adjusted for that player’s home ballpark. Jeff uses wRC+ in this article.
THEORY-WITH-A-VERY-VERY-LARGE-AMOUNT-OF-EVIDENCE: Park adjustments (and by extension, wRC+) over-correct for Coors Field. Rockies players generally have more offensive value than current park-adjusted stats are showing. This applies to DJ Lemahieu, Larry Walker, Nolan Arenado…all of them. This doesn’t mean park-adjusted stats are useless for the Rockies, just that they need to be taken with a grain of salt.
OPINION: Anything else, including the magnitude of error in the Coors adjustment, Walker’s HOF case, etc.
wRC+ is what I was referring to. And the point I am making is it is not accurate. I was using Larry Walker as an example.
Great write up. I have to believe a good portion of the aggressiveness has to do with that he bats between Blackmon and Arenado. If you look at the Rockies top 5 batters Blackmon-LeMahieu-Arenado-Gonzales-Story/Dahl, LeMahieu is the guy to challenge.
Reminds me of Freddy Sanchez.
Yes, prime Freddy was annoying as heck for opponents, as I’m sure DJ is. DJ though has that natural oppo stroke, which also means he can’t be shifted. He’s a tough one to deal with, and if he ever learns to turn on inside FB’s and hit some homers that way, he’ll be truly elite.
Isn’t it also possible that Rockies players as a whole are going to see more fastballs than would be otherwise expected because breaking balls are less effective at Coors field then they would normally be.
This is an excellent idea for an article! Look into the pitch-distribution for non-Rockies pitchers in Coors Field and at their home field, and Rockies pitchers in home vs. away games.
I checked out LeMahieu & the Rockies’ Home/Road splits. He had a .199 ISO at home last year, which was 4th out of 4 Rockies with at least 300 PAs, and 8th out of 13 Rockies with at least 100 PAs. On the road, he had a .092 ISO, which isn’t going to intimidate anyone, and was 4th out of 4 and 10th out of 13, using those same categories.
It seems like regardless of the success he had, it takes extra bases to intimidate pitchers, and he wasn’t generating very many. His history of weak and terrible may also have played a role.
Most players play better at home. Plus I don’t think a 100 point ISO split in a single season is statistically significant. Probably need a larger sample size to really prove that his power is merely a Coors Field illusion.
Agreed Noah, and great article Jeff. It’s definitely a little simplistic to look at Rockies players splits and say, “Hey look they hit better at home with more power”, and just chalk it up to Coors. A lot of players hit better at home with more power, and don’t suffer from the same sort of easy criticism.
Here’s a good example:
Player A 2016 stats: home splits- ISO 253, babip 364, wrc+ 159 –
road splits – ISO 156, babip 347, wrc+ 115 –
Any guesses? Is this Arenado or some other Rockies hitter taking advantage of Coors? Nope, it’s Corey Seager, a great player who had a MVP caliber season while playing much much better at home in a pitchers park. Of course it can be easy to pick one example to make a point, but there are lots of others, and j agree with a few other readers here that wrc+ a little unfairly punishes Rockies hitters after all the adjustments the park has gone through really to this day, and that simply looking at a couple of splits is not enough to guage the true talent of any player on the roster.
LeMahieu might hit the ball hard, but he’s not very good at turning that into extra base hits, which is probably why pitchers don’t care. He was 85th in extra base hits last year, lower than 4 other Rockies, including Story who had a 1/3 less PAs. He had even less the year before.
Anyone want to try to explain that? I’m guessing it’s STATCAST messing up his groundballs. He has a high exit velocity but STATCAST says he only barrels up 4.7% of the balls he hits which is pretty low.
To quote Brad Pitt (I mean Billy Bean), “You get on base, we win. You don’t, we lose. And I *hate* losing…”
Seems to me a bunch of singles is much better than a few extra-base hits which is exactly the point. Whether STATCAST is messed up or not, his opposite-field profile doesn’t translate to many extra bases which is fine when you are winning batting titles and getting on base at such a high rate. In fact, there are quite a few Rockies fans who would rather see him lead-off than Blackmon.
I see a lot of people waiving this away because LeMahieu lacks power, so pitchers don’t care. I think this is exactly what Jeff is driving at…pitchers shouldn’t be worried about power, they should be worried about giving up runs!!
DJ creates tons of runs in his own way, so pitchers should still be scared of him, even without the power.
Id say this is purely mental because pitchers see him, see the rest of the lineup, and say to themselves, this guy is not a HR threat whereas everyone else who hits in Coors is, so ill throw him more over the plate.
Theo’s only mistake with the cubs! Ian Stewart turned out to be a douche while he sucked.
I don’t have a grasp on this Aggressiveness Index. How does this info jibe with the steady rise in LeMahieu’s unintentional walk rate? 4.9% in 2014, 7.5% in ’15, 10.1% last year.
Similarly, his rate of first-pitch-in-play has been falling steadily — 15.3%, 10.7% and 8.2%.
That just doesn’t sound like someone who was still being pitched very aggressively. Help?
Interesting point. The only thing I can think of is the fact that Jeff’s metric (fastball rate and zone rate) are completely controlled by the pitcher. You metrics, on the other hand, are also affected by the batter.
Lemahieu can’t directly influence how many fastballs he gets, but he can influence his walk rate and rate of first-pitch-in-play pretty easily.
DJ LeMahieu is so frequently undervalued because he plays at Coors field. What a shame. He is one of the most unappreciated baseball players around today.