J.J. Hardy’s Hidden Offensive Collapse

Last season was a banner year for the Baltimore Orioles. The team won 96 games in the regular season and advanced to the ALCS despite a whirlwind of adversity: significant injuries to Matt Wieters and Manny Machado, and huge power declines from Chris Davis and J.J. Hardy. Hardy’s 2014 was quite interesting. He was hampered by back issues throughout the season, hitting only nine homers after clubbing a total of 87 his first three years in Baltimore, but it ended well, as he quickly signed a three-year, $40 million extension after the season ended. The scary thing is, Hardy’s offensive performance last season was quite a bit worse than his .268/.309/.372 line indicated.

Hardy was the Brewers’ second-round draft pick in 2001 out of Sabino High School in Tucson, Ariz., and quickly advanced through the minor leagues. He was given a challenging assignment in his first full pro season in 2002, opening at High-A and receiving a promotion to Double-A by season’s end. Each year, I compile an ordered list of minor-league position player prospects based on their OBP and SLG, relative to their league and level, adjusted for age. Traditional scouting techniques are then used to tweak the order. Hardy’s minor-league performances resulted in three top 100 rankings, quite unusual for a shortstop. His peak ranking was No. 20 after the 2003 season, when he hit 12 homers as a 20-year-old in the pitcher-friendly Southern League. Such rankings and performances projected a long major league career, with some offensive upside.

Hardy indeed has had a long run as a regular MLB shortstop, arriving in 2005 with only a couple of injury interruptions since. After hitting all of 29 minor-league homers — with that single-season high of 12 — Hardy has gone on to hit 167 as a big leaguer, clearing the 20-homer mark five times. In many ways, Hardy has tracked the performance of Jimmy Rollins, who hit 36 minor league homers — also with a single-season high of 12 — before hitting 215 in the majors through his age-35 season. Rollins also was a second-round high school draftee, and earned a ranking on my minor league position player prospect list four times, including two top 100 slots, with a peak at No. 44 in 2000.

They’re very similar defenders, as well: solid but unspectacular range, great hands and extremely accurate throwing arms. Both like to swing the bat, causing their respective OBPs to suffer as a result; but they grew into some power, and have extremely respectable 97 (Rollins) and 96 (Hardy) career OPS+ marks for shortstops. The big difference between them, of course, is Rollins’ speed, which separates the two into different tiers as players.

Enough about Rollins. Let’s get back to J.J. It’s tempting to chalk up the entirety of Hardy’s 2014 offensive struggles to his back injury, which primarily affected him in the early stages of the season. After all, he didn’t hit his first homer until June 21, and then managed eight more the rest of the way. That’s way down from his 2013 total of 25, but one can easily make the case that a healthy Hardy would have hit 15 or so. Once you dig a little deeper into the numbers, however, other disturbing items emerge. To get to the bottom of Hardy’s 2014 campaign, let’s examine his plate appearance frequency and production by BIP type data. First, the frequency info:

FREQ – 2014
Hardy	%	REL	PCT
K	18.3%	98	50
BB	5.1%	65	17
POP	8.1%	101	52
FLY	27.0%	94	42
LD	21.1%	100	55
GB	43.7%	104	60

Hardy’s 2014 strikeout rate was smack in the middle of the population of MLB regulars, with a percentile rank of 50. That doesn’t seem notable at first blush, but it’s way up from his first three years as an Oriole, when he posted K rate percentile ranks of 44, 30 and 11. His BB rate percentile rank is poor at 17, but that’s no surprise, as it has been floating in a narrow band between 17 and 23 since 2011.

His only BIP type frequency of any note is his liner rate. Though a 55-percentile rate might not catch your eye, it’s way up from the 21, 8 and 8 marks he posted in his first three years as an Oriole. While liner rates fluctuate more than those of other BIP types, some hitters do develop strong tendencies to post high or low marks. It would seem that Hardy’s inability to create line drive contact — he’s had liner rate percentile ranks below 10 in four of the past seven seasons — is part of his “true-talent” portfolio.

So we have a guy who doesn’t and won’t walk, whose K rate spiked considerably and who hit a bunch of liners that he doesn’t normally hit. Some orange, or even red flags there. The single most piece of damning information suggesting that Hardy over-performed his true talent level in 2014 sits in his production by BIP data, which gives us a better feel for his batted-ball authority. Let’s take a look:

PROD – 2014
Hardy	AVG	OBP	SLG	REL PRD	ADJ PRD
FLY	.173		.436	39	42
LD	.674		.872	103	98
GB	.343		.376	197	120
ALL BIP	.329		.456	94	78
ALL PA	.265	.303	.368	92	77

Hardy’s actual production on each BIP type is indicated in the AVG and SLG columns, and it’s converted to run values and compared to MLB average in the REL PRD column. That figure then is adjusted for context, such as home park, luck, etc., in the ADJ PRD column. For the purposes of this exercise, SH and SF are included as outs and HBP are excluded from the OBP calculation.

Hardy’s fly ball contact was not very authoritative in 2014. He batted just .173 AVG with a .436 SLG in the air, good for an actual 39 REL PRD, adjusted upward minimally for context to a 42 ADJ PRD. Last week, I wrote about Austin Jackson, who also had a 39 REL PRD on fly balls in 2014, tied for 11th worst among American League hitters with 215 or more batted balls. Among those 12, Jackson was the outlier, the only one with above average fly ball velocity. Hardy’s average fly ball was over a half standard deviation below the 2014 AL average fly ball velocity. That’s down from 2013, when it sat squarely in the average range. This is one area in which the back injury would seem to have a direct impact.

As also indicated in the Jackson article, a small decrease in fly ball velocity can make a huge difference. When hitters hit a fly ball at a speed of 92.5 mph or higher in 2014, they batted .560 and slugged 1.884. When they hit a fly ball between 75 mph and 90 mph, they batted .077 and slugged .148. Hardy has always lived in close proximity to that fly ball cliff. Most of his homers are dead pull, and many are of the just-enough variety. Regardless of whether Hardy’s back is healed, he has already about tapped out his ability to selectively pull the ball in the air (1.93 fly ball pull ratio). On balance, one would expect Hardy’s power to be in retreat at this stage of his career.

The one area in which Hardy most clearly, grossly overperformed in 2014 was on ground balls. Somehow, someway, Hardy batted .343 AVG with a .376 SLG on grounders last season, good for an outlandish 197 REL PRD. That was third in the AL behind 2015 crash-landing candidate Danny Santana (210) and Mike Trout (203), both of who can fly. Hardy is righthanded and quite slow. Though he does hit his grounders fairly hard (120 ADJ PRD) and doesn’t have an excessive pulling problem (3.27 grounder pull ratio), the singular explanation for Hardy’s 2014 grounder performance is dumb luck.

Once all BIP are combined, Hardy’s actual 94 REL PRD plunges to a 78 ADJ PRD. Add back his K and BB, and those marks retreat subtly further, to 92 and 77, respectively. In other words, based on true talent, J.J. Hardy wasn’t a .268/.309/.372 hitter in 2014, but more like a .240/.279/.335 guy instead. Reliable, in-demand dependable defensive shortstop or not, does he get a three-year, $40 million deal if he puts up those numbers? Pretty good question.

Let’s go back to his back injury for a second. Let’s take that true-talent level and apply his 2013 fly ball impacting ability to it, and see what happens. Despite hitting 25 homers in 2013, he only had a fly ball ADJ PRD of 74; that reflects the high number of dead-pull, just-enough homers, as well as the multiple friendly dead left-field environs in the AL East. With a 74 fly ball ADJ PRD, Hardy is a .250/.288/.370 true-talent hitter. Let’s now dock him for the unusually high number of liners (for him) he hit last season; putting him down into the 10th liner percentile where he generally resides makes him a .240/.279/.360 hitter overall.

Camden Yards might make him a little better than that, but not much. The bottom line is Hardy’s offensive game is in decline, and the extent of that decline was obscured by the 13 or so extra ground ball hits he received last season just by randomly hitting them where fielders weren’t standing. He may be able to squeak out enough value to justify his contract by simply remaining healthy and making the trains run on time defensively, but those expecting material offensive value from Hardy moving forward are likely to be disappointed.