Oneil Cruz Is Starting To Damage Low Pitches

When I first started writing this piece, it began something like this: The results had yet to come for Oneil Cruz. But after a week of hitting lasers all over the park, Cruz’s wRC+ is up to 126, the highest mark of his career outside of his brief 2021 call-up. The 6-foot-7 outfielder’s titanic bat speed and explosiveness ignite stretches of truly incredible performance. His current hot streak and season-long numbers are a glimpse into what he can do with his talent, and they stand in contract with last season, when he had a 110 wRC+ and posted underwhelming numbers in the lower third of the strike zone for such a long limbed and powerful guy.

Back in January, I examined Cruz’s greatest strength: his ability to pound pitches at the top of the zone. Players with such long levers aren’t normally as productive at the top of the zone as Cruz was last season. His .496 xwOBA ranked third in all of baseball! If you left a pitch up there against him, you were vulnerable to some real pain. But being locked in in one part of the zone often means making sacrifices in another. It’s difficult to be versatile enough to command both the upper and lower thirds, and Cruz only ran a measly league average xwOBA in the bottom third (.319). That’s odd, though, because these are the types of pitches you’d expect somebody with his stature to drop their barrel under the ball with ease. When I wrote my January piece, one obvious conclusion was that if Cruz could preserve his upper-third excellence while doing more damage in a part of the zone that should mesh well with his physical abilities, then his batted ball profile would be fully unlocked. It’s still early, but Cruz’s .367 xwOBA in the lower third so far this season is a big improvement.

The story has a few layers to it. I like to bucket a hitter’s potential adjustments into two areas: swing changes and swing decision changes. A hitter might attempt one or both when trying to address a hole in his swing. Let’s start with Cruz’s swing decisions. Overall, Cruz is chasing (and swinging) far less this season than he did last year, going from the 27th percentile to the 62nd percentile in chase rate. That has helped him nearly double his walk rate, from 8.5% to 15.6%. So, in general, he’s being more selective. But selectivity goes in both directions. You can swing less at the pitches you can’t damage and swing more at the ones you can. Cruz has been less aggressive overall, but let’s see if that decrease is concentrated in a particular area of the strike zone:

Cruz is still swinging nearly every chance he gets against high pitches, with essentially no change in his swing rate there. Instead, the big change has come in the middle third (a 14.4 percentage point decrease), with a slight decrease in the lower third, the zone where he swung the least last season. Ideally, you’d like to see Cruz taking greater advantage of pitches in the middle of the zone. According to Robert Orr’s SEAGER metric, which is a measure of how well a batter identifies and swings at the pitches he can damage, Cruz’s overall Hittable Pitch Take% has dropped from the 44th percentile to the 35th. There is still more room for improvement there. As for his dip in swings in the lower third, swinging less often down there could make sense for him as long as he is attacking the pitches he can match his plane with more often than the ones he can’t. Let’s dive into that further.

In my piece from January, I mentioned that Cruz hardly ever got his barrel under the ball on low fastballs. As his bat moved through the zone, it typically didn’t get to an attack angle that allowed him to make the most of his bat speed and long levers. In theory, his long arms should allow him to get on plane against low pitches pretty easily when he’s at full extension, but the old mantra of a lefty dropping their barrel under low-and-in pitches didn’t apply. His contact quality was good (.459 xwOBACON), but not what you’d want from a player whose game is built off risking whiffs in order to do damage. This year, Cruz’s xwOBACON in the lower third has jumped up to .589, so something has changed. His decrease in swing rate makes me think he is targeting pitches better, but has the swing itself changed at all to allow him to contact these pitches with greater authority?

The differences in Cruz’s swing path are subtle, but that’s really all he needed. To maintain his strength at the top of the zone, it made sense for him to lean on smaller changes; after all, it’s just as important to preserve what you’re good at as it is to address your weaknesses. And when looking at Statcast’s new bat path data, we can see that subtle tweaks can be meaningful.

Cruz’s attack angle in the lower third has increased from 11 degrees to 13, and his swing path tilt has increased one degree from 35 to 36. But when specifically looking at breaking balls, his attack angle has jumped from 13 degrees to 16, and he has increased his contact point by about an inch and a half (43 to 44.4) farther in front of his body. Even with the change in swing path, he still isn’t that steep at the bottom of the zone. By making contact farther in front of his body, his bat has more time to match the plane of pitches. If he can’t manipulate his torso and shoulders early enough, then this is an ideal approach. It’s been especially key in his production against breaking balls. Since sweepers, sliders, and curveballs have a downward trajectory and are slower than fastballs, the shift in contact point allows his bat more time to match the plane of the pitch. This has been especially true for his performance against sweepers.

Last season, he only swung at 11 sweepers in the lower third; this year, that number is already at nine. He has a 1.050 xwOBA against them this year, compared to a .133 last year. The sample size probably isn’t large enough to say this has stabilized, but boy, is it a great sign for him. The difference in contact point, and as a result attack angle, is the difference between a low line drive and a hard groundball. And when you’re as strong as Cruz, those line drives often result in home runs.

This is why attack angle is often referred to as a timing metric. It’s indicative of when a hitter is able to get their barrel on a plane that can elevate the ball. The best hitters are able to get their barrel on an upward trajectory early in their swing and maintain that path, but everybody has their limitations, including Cruz. He’s more likely to match the plane of a breaking ball low in the zone with an out-in-front contact point than he is a low fastball because he has more time to get on plane.

I’ll leave you with some examples of Cruz swinging at low breaking balls versus high pitches to illustrate how the swings are only subtly different from one another:

Being aggressive towards breakers could contribute to Cruz’s already high strikeout rate, which is in the third percentile. But to be honest, I’m not sure that is ever going to change. His offensive profile will always be carried by how darn hard he hits the ball. If that comes with a ton of strikeouts, then so be it. Cruz’s current approach of just hitting the absolute snot out of the ball in different areas of the zone appears to have some sustainability. He’s a fascinating player, really, which is why I’ve written about him twice in just a handful of months. How many players are there who are likely to have a 30-30-30 season? That is, homers, stolen bases, and strikeout rate, of course.