Luis Robert Is Doing a Lot of Things
Heading into 2019, opinions differed about how much of Luis Robert’s potential would manifest in games. Those opinions got considerably more uniform after a breakout season that saw Robert tap into his power. One of the top prospects heading into 2020 (he ranked seventh overall on our Top 100), Robert has helped a surging White Sox club filled with young talent get a good jump on the season. His .354/.415/.542 batting line has been good for a 177 wRC+, and he’s checking off every box on his scouting report for better or worse.
While defensive metrics don’t hold a lot of water this early in the year, the scouting reports on Robert are great. Eric Longenhagen has said Robert is a “plus-plus runner, and his instincts in center field are terrific.” Here’s a seemingly easy play Robert made early in the season:
The ball left the bat at more than 100 mph. Unless balls like that are hit right at a fielder, they’re usually a hit. Instead, Robert covered over 50 feet in under three seconds (the GIF above is 2.8 seconds long). Statcast tracks each batted ball’s hang time and the distance a player has to travel to get it. This is what Robert’s profile looks like:
The only balls Robert didn’t catch either hit the wall, or came with a 0% probability of making the play. Robert has been as advertised in the field. The same is true as a baserunner. Robert’s 29.4 feet per second sprint speed is near the top of the league, and he has four steals in five tries, finally getting caught last night. He also has three infield singles. Here’s one of those singles, where a slight hesitation on a routine ground ball allowed Robert to make it to first in under four seconds, essentially a Byron Buxton-level time:
Robert’s fielding and baserunning create a very high floor for the 23-year-old, but how his bat develops at the big league level will determine if he reaches his incredibly high ceiling. So far, Robert has lived up to his scouting report. From Longenhagen:
It’s terrifying that Robert can generate the kind of power he does with such a conservative stride back toward the pitcher, and it juxtaposes with many of the movement-heavy swings that have been pervasive throughout baseball since Josh Donaldson and José Bautista broke out.
That power comes easy, with little movement from Robert, as we can see in this homer a little to the right of center field:
Robert took a 95 mph fastball and hit it 415 feet with an exit velocity of 106 mph without pulling the ball. Robert hits the ball incredibly hard. He’s one of just 15 players to hit multiple batted balls over 110 mph this year, but he’s hitting more at the extremes than he is making consistently hard contact. The table below shows Robert’s rankings and the number of batted balls he’s hit at different exit velocities.
| MPH | Batted Balls | Rank |
|---|---|---|
| 110+ | 2 | 8 |
| 105+ | 5 | 21 |
| 100+ | 12 | 10 |
| 95+ | 14 | 24 |
| 90+ | 17 | 46 |
| Under 80 | 10 | 29 |
Robert is near the top of baseball so far on batted balls hit over 100 mph. He’s also near the top of the league on batted balls hit with with an exit velocity of 80 mph or less. And that’s where we get to the last part of Longenhagen’s report on Robert, which addresses his current deficiencies:
Robert does have plate discipline issues. He chases a lot of breaking balls out of the zone and it took a lot of convincing from industry folks to move him as high on my Top 100 as I did even though Robert has the surface-level traits that tend to make me irrationally excited.
At the moment, Robert is swinging at everything, and he’s not making a ton of contact. His 25% whiff rate is the worst in baseball this year. The graph below shows the swing and contact percentages on those swings for all batters with at least 30 plate appearances this season:
Nobody is even close to Robert. And it doesn’t matter if it’s in the strike zone or out of it. He’s swinging at a higher rate than everyone else:
Robert has seen around 80 pitches in the strike zone this season, and he’s swung at all but eight of them. Of those eight pitches, four were the first offering of an at-bat. Two let a count run full against Corey Knebel after Robert took the first three pitches for balls. One was a low and away splitter on a 1-1 count from Tyler Clippard. The final taken pitch in the strike zone was a 98 mph fastball from Brandon Woodruff on an 0-2 count to lead off the game on Tuesday. Those are all of the pitches Robert has taken in the strike zone this season.
It’s not impossible to succeed with a somewhat similar approach. The last two years, Javier Báez has swung at 56% of all pitches and only made contact on 67% of those swings, but if your plate discipline profile is extreme for Javier Báez, it’s going to be hard to make it work over a long period of time. Robert can’t continue to swing through so many pitches and be successful. And it isn’t just that he’s chasing pitches. He’s whiffing through a ton of pitches in the strike zone. Here’s all hitters this season on pitches in the strike zone.
This is not to say that Robert will not be a successful major leaguer going forward. He’s currently hitting pretty well. What we can say is that his performance is not likely to continue in the same way that it is right now. Robert is going to see fewer pitches in the zone, which will result in either more whiffs or more weak contact. The league is likely to react pretty quickly, and pitchers will not challenge him enough so that Robert will be able to make the hard contact he’s capable of. To not end on a down note, here’s another example of Robert’s immense skill, even if it is only a single:
Robert pulled an inside fastball for a base hit. That might not seem noteworthy, but no right-handed hitter has pulled an inside fastball that low and inside for a hit this season. All of last season, there were only 10 such hits. Three of those hits never left the infield and only three were hit in the air with an exit velocity above 100 mph, like Robert’s shot. Robert’s talent is immense, and his ability to tweak his swing ahead of the 2019 season to get to more power in games is a very good indicator of his ability to adjust as the league adjusts to him. Robert is already a good player due to his defense and baserunning, and if he continues to develop at the plate, greatness isn’t that far away.
Craig Edwards can be found on twitter @craigjedwards.
“His 25% strikeout rate is the worst in baseball this year.”
This doesn’t seem accurate. Maybe swinging strike rate?
They meant Swinging Strike rate.
Thanks. Fixed.
“His 25% strikeout rate is the worst in baseball this year”. Not even close to accurate
While he still swings and misses a lot, there are signs in the very small sample size that he is trying to adjust. He had one walk in his first 8 games and 4 in his last 4.
I don’t think anybody is ever going to describe him as a patient hitter, but it is reasonable to expect him to get to the point where pitchers can’t get him out just by making sure they are nowhere near the strike zone.
5 walks is like an infinite number more than Francouer for his entire career though.
Yep.
I looked at his rates and…they didn’t look that bad! That gives me a lot more confidence than anything else I’ve seen so far. When his BABIP regresses back to merely being good/above average/whatever instead of impossible, only having a 3:1 ratio of K’s to walks is a pretty good foundation for success given his power.
Yes, my thoughts exactly. But, of course, very small sample, lots of pitching adjustments coming, and still to be seen how well he adjusts to those adjustments.
But good God, based on early action he’s the most exciting White Sox position player prospect since Frank Thomas. Maybe somehow more exciting because he isn’t as one dimensional and he doesn’t have to hit at an elite, all time, rate to be very good.
I saw Frank Thomas’s first MLB appearance live. I don’t really need to tell this to you (I’m sure you saw him live too) but his power was off the charts. Luis Robert is going to be a little different; he’s exciting because with the power and the speed you get lots of extra-base hits that aren’t home runs. So Robert is going to be really fun to watch, no matter how “good” he is.
They are totally different. Thomas was the prototypical “hitter with power,” and it was a joy to watch him every time he came to the plate, but he was one dimensional that way. After his AB was over, there wasn’t anything to see.
You have to watch the whole game for Robert because he can do something exciting on the bases or in the field. At least twice there have been line drives in the gap that my mind tells me are doubles, but he has easily made the play. I’m pretty sure the first gif above was one of those. His talent is changing the way I watch the game and that doesn’t happen very often.
Funny, I wrote this and then had a game that pushed him away from the 3:1 ratio. Baby steps!
he’s a very exciting young player. it might not be exaggeration to say that the difference between Robert and young Mike Trout right now is plate discipline; however, that gap in PD is a huge one. excited to see if and how he adjusts. anecdotally, his minor league teammates acclaimed him for his ability to adjust to how pitchers attacked him, which may be related to him decimating four minor league levels last year.
Long term he’s probably a better defender, but it’s awfully hard to see him grow into an 80-grade hit tool. In addition to the pitch selection, he doesn’t have the bat control Trout did/does.
That’s not really a knock on Robert though, because Trout is a really unfair comparison.
Yeah the version of Robert that’s something like “peak Adam Jones at the plate, Lorenzo Cain in the field/on the bases” could be both a MVP candidate and still worse than Trout by a good bit
That would be a hall of famer.
A wRC+ of about 125 with Cain’s defense and baserunning is a 5.5-to-6-win player (I mostly know that because Cain has actually done that a couple of times, so it was easy to look up). It’s certainly possible.
I’m not disagreeing with you, but plate discipline is the most important skill an MLB hitter can have. Obviously a baseline level of bat speed is a requirement to make the league, but even pitchers are capable of running into one and hitting a home run at some point. It would also be technically accurate to say that plate discipline is the biggest difference Jorge Alfaro and JT Realmuto.
Wish I had saved my offseason comments on Robert. He made adjustments in AAA over the course of a half season and was not given credit for this by most observers. I expect he’ll do the same in the majors. Yes, the SwStrk% will be high – but I genuinely believe he will adjust. In addition to the projections, he’s one of the most fun players in baseball to watch and should be a shining star of this short sprint season.
So Fangraphs was notoriously low on Robert – compared to other scouting sites – rating him in the teens even after last season. Robert has proceeded to come out of the gate and lead the AL in fWAR through 12 games (20%) of the season. I was excited to see what Craig or someone else would write about Robert.
The article written certainly discusses his vast tools positively, but I can’t help but feel that this article attempted to act as evidence that fangraphs was right in their evaluation? I can’t help but feel that this article points out critique’s of Roberts start instead of the fact that a 23 year old rookie has been dominating the league. It insinuates that his value has been driven by speed and defense, but Robert has a 177 wRC+! It calls into question his plate discipline, but Robert has walked 4 times in 4 games and has a near 10% BB rate, despite being hyper aggressive he has already shown an ability to be patient when being pitched around.
Robert has holes, as all young players do, but despite the holes that were pointed out repeatedly in this piece (in a way to justify the bizarre under ranking of Robert by FG for over a year) he’s been the best player in the American League through 12 games. Yet still, this piece felt like a critique on Robert the player… instead of a celebration of his start and the tools on full display, it pointed out questions on his lack of perfection.
Robert is the most exciting young player I’ve ever seen – I’m 33 years old. Having watched him every single day, he has adjusted on the fly – in games – like a veteran. He swings through pitches and then hits them 110 MPH the next time. He gets pitched around and blind takes the walks without hesitance. Robert said before the year started that he didn’t walk last year because why would he? He was doing so much damage and they were throwing him pitches to hit. He said this year he will take walks when he can’t hit pitches. He has already started to show that adjustment. He has shown FG to be wrong every step of the way in their underrating of him, and this piece used quotes from that evaluation to show how accurate FG was about a prospect in which they took a stance much lower than industry standard on… a prospect who is now leading the league in fWAR.
I will say when I commented on this article that I was critical of, I realized I hadn’t bought a membership yet because I hadn’t logged in while reading in a while. So I got one… so Craig’s piece that made me feel shorted made me realize I had been shorting fangraphs for a while so I guess we’re even!
Hopefully when Robert wins the AL MVP this year because Mike Trout miraculously has another child and misses another week, we won’t have to read more critiques.
Or in other commentor language:
Craig obviously hates the White Sox!!!!!!
I’ll upvote anytime someone gets a membership.
I think you are being a little unfair to fangraphs, but only a little. They always had him ranked highly, but he does have swing and miss issues and a limited minor league portfolio due to tax avoidance and injuries. They were never really sour on him, just unsure that he could really be a true 5 tool CF and perennial MVP candidate (in a Troutless world) like he has looked in, uh, 12 games.
But the good is undeniable. He looks great in CF, above average on the basepaths, and even if you scoff at the BABIP, he has undeniably been a force with the bat. I can’t imagine they move him out of the lead off spot when Anderson returns and I think it is likely that he will have some down times, but I don’t know why anybody wouldn’t expect him to learn as he goes, adjust to the pitchers adjustments, and continue to improve his reactions to major league pitching. He turned 23 a few days ago but still can take over a ballgame. He is a reason to watch the White Sox because he may do something great at any time.
They already said Anderson will be leadoff again when he comes back. I’m not thrilled, but I get the manager isnt gonna take a veteran, team leader who won the batting average title last year and was hitting well this year too out of his regular spot due to injury. Robert shouldn’t be batting 6 or 7th though either.
The BABIP is unsustainable obviously, but the upper limit of what is sustainable is something he can do between his hard contact and Ludicrous Speed.
Robert shouldn’t be batting 6 or 7 and Anderson should be batting 6 or 7.
Fortunately, lineup construction doesn’t really matter all that much.
The swing and miss issue can destroy a guy and tons of his value. Byron Buxton is a great example. I think a lot of scouts got really burned by him because it’s so easy to fall in love with his tools, but the man can’t stop striking out. So to me it makes sense when you see another other-worldly talent like Robert but can’t seem to get Buxton out of your mind as a possible end result.
Buxton only struck out 23% of the time last year. I don’t think the book is written on him yet, he put up an above average wRC+ last year. and nearly 3 WAR in less than half a season.
Buxtons biggest weakness is his inability to stay on the field
I feel like Anderson has to do something wrong before you don’t bat him in the leadoff spot. He mashed all last year. He came to spring and mashed all spring, then he has mashed all season before getting hurt. I would think that at the minimum he would have to struggle a bit before moving him out of the leadoff spot.
If it’s a strike why not swing at it?
LuBob is still in growth mode. His development will be fun to follow on the field and here in Fangraphs.
I hope he and other ball players can avoid the COVID–evidence suggests heart issues in atheletes (see E-Rod). Doctors are seeing renal and other organ issues, too. It definitely isn’t influenza.
Be safe.