Here Is a Powered-Up Addison Russell

My hunch is that it’s easier for pitchers to make adjustments on the fly than hitters. In part this is because pitchers are simply more in control — they can aim for different areas, while hitters simply have to respond. Pitchers also get more and longer breaks between appearances, and sometimes a pitch can just click. Everybody everywhere is always tweaking something, and I’m no authority, but I’d guess that hitters make their biggest changes over offseasons. That’s when they have the best opportunity to identify a flaw and get to overwriting the old muscle memory.

Yet you do see midseason adjustments. Some players are just better at adjusting than others. Some players are more aware of themselves than others. Some adjustments stick, and some adjustments fade away. Muscle memory is a fickle thing. I can tell you that Addison Russell has changed on the fly. For a while, it seemed like he’d need to either improve his contact or improve his power. His power now is trending up. He is 22 years old.

This is easy enough to demonstrate with familiar statistics. Last season was one in which Russell made various tweaks to his swing. He’s made more tweaks in 2016, and to go with a blunt tool, here’s a table that splits his season between June and July:

Each sample, individually, is fairly small, but we still have some hundreds of plate appearances. In neither sample has Russell been horribly bad or outstandingly good. He’s been better lately, though, and the difference has been his power. Swing-wise, Russell has become more aggressive. He’s hit more balls hard, and he’s hit fewer balls to the opposite field, while supplying his batted balls with more lift. Russell, in other words, has been turning on his pull power. That’s the easiest kind of power, and here are some spray charts, from Baseball Savant:

It’s nothing dramatic — Russell didn’t go from DJ LeMahieu to Brian Dozier. But there is a real pattern in there, and what’s probably most interesting is how Russell has flipped around his hot and cold zones. Early-season Russell had a clear vulnerability. He’s been able to address it. Let’s look first at Russell’s contact rates:

Earlier, Russell had a big problem catching up to high pitches — primarily fastballs. Good high heat could blow him away, but then when you look to the right side, you see that Russell’s contact has essentially risen. He’s made less contact low, and he’s made more contact high. The high contact has also become better contact. Here’s a plot of slugging percentages:

Again, Russell has improved in the upper half. He’s better prepared for high pitches, and he’s doing more damage to high pitches. And it hasn’t been simply a mental adjustment. Here is an early-season swing, attempted against Fernando Rodney:

And now here’s a swing from Sunday:

This can actually be broken down with stills. A picture of Russell from May:

A picture of Russell from June:

A picture of Russell from July:

And a picture of Russell from Sunday, in August:

The thing to look at is the position of Russell’s hands. I wouldn’t focus too much on the one toe-tap — that probably had to do with the two-strike count. Earlier, Russell had his hands low, below chin level. Over the last few months, Russell has raised his hands up, more behind eye level. It’s looked also like Russell might’ve slightly shortened his stride, but that’s speculative. The hands are obvious — the pictures are right there — and the change has corresponded with a change in Russell’s batting profile. He can get to those pitches up, now, and he can lift them. The grounders are now coming on pitches low and away.

It’s funny — sometimes players adjust back to doing things like how they used to. When Russell first showed up in the majors, he had his hands high. He lowered them over the course of last season, but he also folded in a more closed stance, and the leg kick. The more closed stance is still there. The leg kick is still there. But the hands have moved back up, as Russell continues to search for the optimal compromise. I’m going to guess that keeping the hands high helps to remove a hitch; it should give Russell a shorter path to pitches around the belt. The numbers bear that out, as Russell has become more productive over the course of the year against fastballs. He has a new target area, and for a couple months now, it’s been working for him.

You never quite know which tweak will be the big one. You never know which one will cause a lasting change in profile. This one has been promising to date — Russell hasn’t stopped striking out, but homers are homers. He’s doing what he needed to do, cleaning up a troublesome area over the plate. Now the challenge is going to be how Russell responds to those softer pitches down. Over the past few weeks, pitchers have thrown Russell fewer fastballs, as they realize that he’s hunting them. And this is what it’s going to come down to. If Russell has simply changed from one vulnerability to another, then more adjustments will inevitably follow. It’s going to be a cat-and-mouse game between him and his opponents. But if Russell shows enough discipline, and if he can keep himself from chasing, then that’s it. That’s Addison Russell at a new level as a hitter. The biggest weakness he had, he patched. So begins the search for another.