Jonathan India Is Bouncing Back in an Unexpected Way

Jonathan India
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Jonathan India started his career with a bang. In 2021, the Cincinnati second baseman put up a 120 wRC+ and 3.0 WAR over 150 games, good enough to snag National League Rookie of the Year honors. Last year, a hamstring injury limited him to just 103 games, and he struggled to a 95 wRC+ at the plate. He looked like a natural bounce back candidate coming into the 2023 season, and here he is bouncing back. After a big day on Sunday, India’s .306/.397/.460 slash line consists of three career-best figures. His underlying metrics are also better than ever in a host of categories.

Jonathan India – Year-Over-Year Stats
Season Chase% Whiff% BB% K% GB/FB Exit Velocity HardHit% wRC+
2021 25 22.8 11.3% 22.3% 1.32 87.6 38.1% 120
2022 27.9 21 7.2% 21.8% 1.14 85.1 28.8% 95
2023 22.1 14.3 11.6% 14.4% 1.19 90.2 43.8% 130

Let’s start with plate discipline. India is chasing less than ever, whiffing less than ever, walking more, and striking out way less. Those developments are all — and please excuse the inside baseball jargon here — very good. His chase rate has either improved or held steady against every pitch type except for sinkers, which have been something of an Achilles’ heel this year. He’s hitting them harder, but 71% of the sinkers he’s put in play have been groundballs, up from 54% in previous years.

India is reaching base more and hitting the ball much harder. After the previous paragraph, you might assume that his increased exit velocity has come from hitting more pitches in the zone, but the difference is smaller than you might think: 87% of his balls in play came on pitches in the zone, as opposed to 84% in 2021. Further, a close look at his batting line reveals something interesting: Although he’s hitting the ball harder and his BABIP is at a career high, his production on balls in play is still a ways off from where it was in 2021.

Jonathan India – Balls in Play
Season BABIP wOBA xwOBA
2021 .326 .413 .395
2022 .305 .357 .339
2023 .343 .390 .366

Again, this is not necessarily a bad thing; walking more and striking out less has so far made this a worthwhile tradeoff. But it’s worth exploring why India’s newfound exit velocity hasn’t translated into as much power as we might expect. He’s currently running a .153 ISO, closer to the mark he put up last year than the .190 he posted in 2021. His barrel rate is likewise between his 2021 and ’22 figures, and his HR/FB is at a career low.

The first problem is that the lion’s share of the extra EV has come on groundballs, rather than the line drives and fly balls that can do real damage:

Jonathan India – Groundballs vs. Fly Balls & Line Drives
Season GB EV FB/LD EV GB xwOBA FB/LD xwOBA
2021 83.4 93 .239 .578
2022 82.8 88.6 .212 .494
2023 89 93.5 .248 .502

The other issue is in the bottom right corner of that chart. Although India’s EV on air balls is higher than it was in 2021, his xwOBA is still 76 points worse. That’s largely because he’s pulling those balls just 33% of the time, far below his career rate of 43%. Although it helps that he plays in a small ballpark, he doesn’t possess the kind of power that will let him spray the ball to all fields for extra-base hits. Take a look at where his base hits have fallen this season, courtesy of Baseball Savant:

Across India’s three years in the big leagues, just 16% of his extra-base hits and 9% of his home runs have gone to the opposite field. He needs to pull his balls in the air in order to maximize their value. That’s more true than ever this year, because if you only take a cursory look at his Statcast numbers, you’re likely to get the wrong impression.

The 2023 edition of Jonathan India is a walking advertisement for the importance of 95th-percentile exit velocity. Say you’re a coach and you have to pick between two players with an average exit velocity of 90 mph. One hits the ball 90 mph every single time; the other hits it 110 mph half of the time and 70 mph the other half of the time. You’re going to want the second player, the one with the 95th-percentile EV of 110 mph. All those 110s will more than make up for the 70s.

At the moment, India is veering closer to the first player in the Parable of the 95th Percentile Exit Velocity. While his hard-hit rate is higher than it’s ever been, he’s largely achieved that by avoiding mis-hits: 28% of his batted balls have been below 85 mph, compared to 38% in 2021 and 45% in ’22. That’s great, but it’s masking the fact that he hasn’t yet accessed his highest gear. In fact, despite this recent power surge, his hardest-hit ball of the year is 107.9 mph, a far cry from the 110.2 and 111.3 he maxed out at in 2021 and ’22, respectively. With apologies to Jonah Heim and Anthony Rendon, he’s one of just three players with an average EV over 90 mph and a max EV under 108. And his 95th-percentile EV? It’s the lowest it’s ever been:

Jonthan India – Exit Velocity Metrics
Metric 2021 2022 2023
Average EV 87.6 85.1 90.2
Max EV 110.2 111.3 107.9
95th Percentile EV 106 104.9 104.7
Hard-Hit% 38.1 28.8 44.7
105+ mph % 9.6 4.5 3.9

If the top of India’s power scale really has dropped by 2 or 3 mph — and after 105 batted ball events, that’s not an unreasonable question to ask — it would represent a significant change. I can only offer speculation as to the reason he hasn’t yet approached his previous heights. Maybe it’s a side effect of his more passive approach. Maybe it has to do with the fact that he’s returned to the batting stance that he used for most of the 2021 season (though I don’t personally subscribe to that notion, as he just tends to tinker with his stance a lot). Another possible factor is that after bulking up before the 2022 season, he decided to slim down during this offseason. India said coming into camp that he had lost 10 pounds and gained 3 mph of sprint speed in an effort to increase his defensive range. Statcast actually has his sprint speed slightly down, though his baserunning and defensive metrics are improved. It’s possible that cutting some weight could have cost him a bit of power, but again, that’s merely speculation.

For an article that’s supposed to be about India having a great year, we’ve been spending a lot of time on the things that aren’t working, so let’s end on a positive note. Thus far, this new, more patient version of India is certainly seeing results. The improved on-base ability has been worth the reduced power output. If he manages to lay off a few more sinkers or to get more of his hard-hit balls in the air, or maybe if those two or three ticks of exit velocity that he lost turn up in between the couch cushions on Tuesday, he could hit a whole new gear, or at least have a better chance of maintaining his current level of production.

As things stand right now, India is at the point where if you squint, his profile starts to look a bit like Alex Bregman’s. While India’s improved plate discipline and contact ability still can’t match Bregman’s, which are truly elite, he is following the Bregman playbook of making consistent hard contact despite middling raw power. Both players get the bulk of their production by pulling the ball, and both feature a ton of doubles ripped down the left field line. The biggest difference is that Bregman has leaned into that profile and mastered the art of lifting the ball into left to take advantage of his ballpark’s batter-friendly dimensions.

Lastly, let’s remember that it’s still early. I started writing this article on Thursday, when India’s wRC+ was 105. Over the weekend, he raised it 25 points, going 8-for-15 with two home runs and two doubles. On Sunday, at the exact moment that I was typing the paragraph about how India needs to pull the ball in the air in order to maximize his power, he hit his second consecutive extra-base hit of the day to right field. So maybe I’m wrong about that one. That’s why they play the games.





Davy Andrews is a Brooklyn-based musician and a contributing writer for FanGraphs. He can be found on Twitter @davyandrewsdavy.

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OddBall Herrera
10 months ago

Interesting read on how we’re not necessarily just back to 2021 form with India. I for one am just happy we’ve improved at all from 2022 form

Haha though it does read a bit like the Key and Peele Chopped sketch