Searching for the True Matt Adams

Many people were disappointed with Matt Adams in 2014. Most were probably fantasy owners. In real life, Adams had a solid year, and hit a really important home run off of the best pitcher in baseball during a really important playoff game. You might remember the one:

Being the first lefty to homer off of Clayton Kershaw’s curveball and clinching a playoff series in the process is a job well done in most books. There are a lot of different ways to excel in baseball, and Adams was certainly above-average offensively in 2014 (116 wRC+) — he just wasn’t the type of good that most people wanted out of him, the type in which 30 baseballs leave the yard. He was something other than expected in 2014, but that doesn’t mean he should be considered a disappointment.

Still, the awesome power potential that he flashed in limited time during 2013 (.220 ISO in 108 games) specifically didn’t reach expectations last year, so that area of letdown is at least somewhat understandable. It’s easy to get swept up in the hype when a player hits eight home runs in one month (September of 2013), but the fact remains: Adams’ true offensive output is still a question, and perhaps more than ever following a 2014 that differed substantially from 2013.

Already documented in these fine digital pages were some of his adjustments to the shift during the early part of last year, but let’s aim to answer that true talent question in depth today. What batted ball trends and adjustments did we see from him in 2014, and what might they tell us about his potential 2015? Who is the real Matt Adams: might he return at some point to his 2013 form, bashing homers left and right, or might he be more like the 2014 version moving forward?

Let’s set this up with a few simple things we know offhand about Adams: he has shown a pronounced platoon split during his time in the major leagues, and his BABIP has been high for a player without a speed tool. Let’s see his splits vs. LHP and overall BABIP for 2013 and 2014:

Season	BB%	K%	ISO	wRC+	BABIP (Overall)
2013	0.0%	36.5%	.192	77	.337
2014	4.6%	27.7%	.107	47	.338

Adams has really struggled against lefties while in the majors, and that’s become something of a label for him. His high-level minor league numbers don’t support that, however, as he slashed .295/.359/.523 in 2011/12 between Double-A and Triple-A against southpaws. There is one serious issue with labeling him a platoon player at this stage of his career: he simply hasn’t seen enough plate appearances against left-handed pitching in the majors to form credible conclusions about his performance.

In total, he’s faced left-handers 203 times in the majors. Among the stats that haven’t yet stabilized by the 200 PA mark: XBH rate, AVG, OBP, SLG, and line drive rate. There are many more, but you get the point – Adams needs more time against lefties before we can draw any predictive conclusions. I am not saying that Adams is going to immediately start crushing the ball off of lefties, just that regression is likely to occur in the future.

Now, about that BABIP. We know a lot goes into a player’s BABIP, such as foot speed, batted ball type, batted ball quality, and luck. Adams isn’t exactly a speed demon, so he’s taken a different route to posting above-average BABIPs for the past two years. Is it luck? That’s hard to say for certain, as we have limited plate appearances (BABIP stabilizes after about 2000 balls in play), but it’s telling that Adams has never posted a BABIP below .296 at any level of professional baseball (besides four games in a rehab assignment last year in Triple-A). He has always been a high BABIP player, and without any speed, that points to type and quality of batted ball. Let’s take a look at the last two years of batted ball data to see what we can find:

Season	LD%	GB%	FB%	IFFB%	HR/FB
2013	19.4%	44.4%	36.1%	2.6%	21.8%
2014	24.3%	34.5%	41.2%	8.1%	8.7%

What’s interesting about Adams posting almost identical BABIPs in 2013 (.337) and 2014 (.338) is that they were borne from very different batted ball profiles. That is not to say that batted ball profile is the sole driver of BABIP, but they play a fair share, and Adams is an interesting case. In 2013, he had about a league-average profile except for the exceptionally low infield fly ball rate (and the elevated HR/FB, of course). In 2014, he lowered his rate of ground balls by 10%, boosting his line drives above average while also inflating his fly ball rate. His HR/FB crashed down to earth, which was a big driver of his power decline, but he was able to keep his infield fly balls below average, though not as exceptionally as in 2013.

Put the pieces together — the high line drive rate, the low infield fly ball rate — and you have at the very least the makings of a player that trends toward high BABIP. Given his minor league track record and his marks so far in the majors, it’s more likely he maintains that elevated tendency than not.

Besides batted ball profile, the other major adjustment for Adams between 2013 and 2014 was his approach to the opposite field. As Mike Petriello pointed out in his article on Adams’ reaction to being shifted in the early stages of 2014, the change in approach wasn’t something that Adams consciously tried to do — it was something that resulted from where he was pitched. We now have a full year of data to look into, and that fact checks out in his zone profiles: he was pitched almost identically between 2013 and 2014, but his zone breakdown of balls in play are very different. First let’s take a look at how pitchers attacked Adams in 2013 and 2014, with the help of Brooks Baseball:

Pretty much identical between the years — low and away, far from the inside power zone. That makes sense. After seeing the low and away approach from pitchers in 2013, how did Adams adjust in 2014? Here are just his line drives for the two years in question:

That’s a pretty clear shift in approach in 2014 to take advantage of the way he’s been pitched. And, while the ability of a batter to hit the ball where they want to is very sketchy, that change in approach has likewise been a driver behind a batted ball angle change between 2013 and 2014. Let’s look at the angle of his line drives, fly balls, and home runs for those years from Baseball Heat Maps, with positive values on the y-axis representing increasingly left of straightaway centerfield:

This data confirms what we already had a hunch about: Adams went with the way he was pitched more in 2014, spraying balls to the left side of the field. If Adams was a young contact hitter, we might pat him on the back for a job well done. After all, his contact rates improved across the board in 2014, he cut his strikeout rate by 5%, and we can see he made smart adjustments to the way he was pitched.

The only issue is that many people expected Matt Adams to hit a ton of home runs last year, an expectation largely fueled by one incredible month at the end of 2013. Unfortunately, the adjustment in batted ball angle did seem to sap some of Adams’ power, which was surely the idea pitchers had when attacking him: his batted ball distance dropped from 289 feet in 2013 to 274 feet in 2014. Pitchers would much rather give up a single against the shift than a home run into the right field stands. If enough of those hits start to go to the opposite field, however, the shift becomes ineffective, the pitches start creeping back over the plate, and Adams has forced the readjustment.

Here’s the thing: we know Adams has huge power, because we’ve seen it. He’s entering his age-27 season, which should be his power prime, and unless he is a player who ages quite differently than others, his most productive power days are hopefully in front of him. Perhaps the more important takeaway is that Adams has shown an ability to adjust, to become a more well-rounded hitter, and to force pitchers into readjusting to his approach. We might want gaudy power numbers out of Adams, and we might get them one day, and soon. He might be that 30 home run hitter everyone had in mind during that great September of 2013, just maybe not immediately. For now, he’s shown that he can make do with what pitchers give him, which may be just a step in the grand plan of getting to where we expect him to be.