The One Thing Freddie Freeman Does Better Than Everyone
If you haven’t heard, Freddie Freeman is good at baseball. He’s currently second among first basemen by WAR and wRC+, behind only Matt Carpenter in each case. Since 2016, he’s recorded a 150 wRC+, good for sixth-best in baseball over that span. Nor is his more recent success unprecedented. Freeman ranks 29th in career WAR for active hitters, with only five players having produced a greater WAR figure than him (30.0) in fewer plate appearances (4,793): Josh Donaldson (35.6 and 3,757), Paul Goldschmidt (34.8 and 4,521), Mike Trout (62.6 and 4,547), Giancarlo Stanton (37.7 and 4,613), and Buster Posey (39.1 and 4,658). (All numbers current as of Wednesday.)
This news isn’t exactly earth-shattering for anyone who frequents the pages of FanGraphs. We have known this since Freeman’s breakout season in 2013. Despite that, however, it seems like there’s an increase in Freddie Freeman appreciation recently. Some of this is likely due to the fact that the Braves are — somewhat unexpectedly — fighting for a playoff spot. The Home Run Derby also helped his nationwide notability, even if he didn’t perform particularly well. Google seems to confirm the newfound recognition, as Freddie Freeman searches are up notably the past two years.
As noted, though, Freeman has been an extraordinary talent for a while now. He hits for average and power, is a good fielder (he ranks third in UZR for first basemen since 2013), and is a good runner for a first baseman (fourth-most baserunning runs since 2015). However, to add to all these skills, there is one thing that Freeman does better than anyone else in baseball, and it’s this one thing that helps put him in position to succeed.
Plate discipline is a notoriously difficult thing to define analytically. There are several plate-discipline numbers available here at FanGraphs, but one of the most popular and most referenced statistics is chase rate, or the percentage of pitches outside of the zone at which a batter offers. It isn’t a perfect measure, as batters do have to expand the zone in two-strike counts to account for possible umpire errors on close pitches. Moreover, if you are someone like Trout or Freeman, chasing a pitch an inch outside the zone might yield a better outcome on average than it does for, say, Alcides Escobar swinging at a pitch an inch inside the zone.
With that in mind, it’s useful also to consider zone swing percentage. Just as it’s generally best for hitters to avoid swinging at balls, they should also recognize and attack strikes. Like chase rate, zone swing isn’t perfect. Not all strikes are created equal. Some are “pitchers’ pitches.” And there remains the question of the batter himself: Mike Trout will still probably produce more against a pitch on the edge that Escobar will on a pitch down the middle.
Whatever the limitations of chase rate and zone swing rate, combining the two can give us a pretty decent portrait of a hitter. Unsurprisingly, there’s a pretty strong relationship between the two figures. Hitters who chase pitches out of the zone, also tend to attack pitches in the zone at higher rates. The correlation between chase rates and zone swing rates for qualified hitters sits around 0.55 for 2018 and has continued to hover around that number through the past few years.
Nor is this surprising when you consider it in practice. If you’re Javier Baez, who chases the second-most balls out of the zone in baseball at 49.1%, you’re likely a free-swinger and will especially be swinging on anything in the zone (80.4%). If you’re Joe Mauer and chase less than a fifth of the time — fourth-best in baseball — you likely won’t attack too many pitches even if they are strikes (50.3% zone swing rate).
This is where Freeman shines, though. In 2018, Freeman has chased 34.3% of pitches out of the zone, a little bit higher than the league average of 30.7%. Given the data, we’d expect that Freeman would swing at approximately 70% of pitches in the zone, plus or minus 9.5 percentage points. Instead, Freeman attacks the zone at an 84.4% rate, 14.4 points higher than we’d expect. This is the largest positive differential among qualified hitters by 2.5 points — ahead of Khris Davis. For reference sake, the plate-discipline king Joey Votto swings at 67.3% of pitches in the zone, versus an expected 61.1%.
Freeman’s dominance in this aspect of plate discipline is not a one-year phenomenon. Going back to 2016, Freeman has swung at more pitches in the zone than expected by nearly 14 points, again the highest in baseball. Since Freeman debuted in 2010, he has the second-highest positive differential between zone swing percentage and expected zone swing percentage, trailing only Brandon Belt.
| Player | O-Swing% | Z-Swing% | Expected Z-Swing% | Differential |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Freddie Freeman | 33.0% | 82.8% | 69.0% | 13.8% |
| Brandon Belt | 24.8% | 77.1% | 64.5% | 12.6% |
| Corey Seager | 30.3% | 78.8% | 67.5% | 11.3% |
| Khris Davis | 28.3% | 76.5% | 66.4% | 10.1% |
| Brandon Crawford | 31.3% | 78.0% | 68.1% | 9.9% |
| Jed Lowrie | 25.3% | 73.6% | 64.8% | 8.8% |
| Joey Votto | 17.9% | 69.4% | 60.7% | 8.7% |
| J.D. Martinez | 32.9% | 77.2% | 69.0% | 8.2% |
| Scott Schebler | 35.2% | 78.0% | 70.3% | 7.7% |
| Jay Bruce | 31.7% | 75.7% | 68.3% | 7.4% |
This simultaneously selective and aggressive approach has served Freeman well, and the numbers bear it out. By results-based plate-discipline numbers, Freeman walks 11.2% of the time and strikes out 20.9%. These are good numbers, but they are especially strong when one considers his offensive output. Of active players with a career wRC+ of 130 or better, only Andrew McCutchen, Carpenter, Donaldson, and Votto have a higher walk percentage and lower strikeout percentage. In addition, Freeman’s production on contact — .353 wOBA on contact, 12th-best in baseball — shows how his attacking of pitches in the zone can work to his benefit.
Freeman has been an elite hitter for the past six seasons. He doesn’t do it by topping leaderboards with eye-popping exit velocities (89 mph) or incredible launch angles (13.7 degrees). However, the thing he does better than anyone else is mastering a selectively aggressive approach at the plate that sees him heavily attacking and punishing strikes while still laying off balls at a reasonable rate. While Votto may be the plate-discipline king, Freeman’s approach is one that should allow him to challenge for Votto’s throne.
Stephen Loftus is a Visiting Assistant Professor in Mathematical Sciences at Sweet Briar College in Virginia. In his spare time he usually can be found playing the pipe organ or working on his rambling sabermetric thoughts.
My only nitpicking of Freddie is his power (.206 ISO) is down considerably from the past two years (.280 -2017 and .267 2016). Is it reasonable to think his hand is still bothering him from last year? The lack of power i think is going to cost him a run at MVP unless he gets hot these last two months which is possible (10 game hit streak at the moment).
Freddie’s hitting for less power than he has in the recent past, but if you look at his xwOBA on contact this year, it’s almost exactly the same as it was last year, when he had an ISO that was 80 points higher. He probably should have better power numbers than he does. If a handful of his doubles turn into homers, his ISO looks a lot better. Some of it is also a ball that isn’t flying as well this year. Freeman doesn’t have huge power, so the extra 10 feet of carry he was getting in 2016 and 2017 compared to this year may have an outsized effect on his power numbers relative to other players.
One thing that I’ve noticed but am not sure if it matters is that other teams are playing him with an aggressive shift, and Freeman appears to be trying to poke it more the opposite way (with success, IMO). That (in addition to the dead ball argument) might be depressing his ISO
I love Z-Swing% minus O-Swing% as a measure of strike zone awareness, and it’s especially important for players unlike Freeman who have poor contact rates.
I have always said free swingers should try to maximize their z-o swing, not their o swing.some reduction in o swing would be great but make the difference as big as possible.
The worst that can happen to a free swinger is trying to work the count with fake patience which then creates a bad z-o (marginal reduction in chase rate but massive drop in zone swing.
What a free swinger should do is try to reduce the massive chases. Don’t worry about laying off an inch outside but learn the tunnels of the throat high heater and ankle high breaking ball and then hammer anything in between.
I think that computing an expected ZS% from OS% is backwards. It should be finding an expected OS% from ZS%. Also, the stat ZS%-OS% is not inevitable–the gain is greater when laying off a bad pitch than when swinging at a good pitch. So, some weighting is called for here, probably around ZS%-2*OS%. The author’s general point is correct, though–Freeman does have a good approach, given his physical abilities.
This serves as an excellent illustration of what sets Freeman apart from other hitters, but it also involves a bit of cherry-picking to make him look like the very most selectively-aggressive hitter. Namely, focusing on the absolute difference of the larger percentage, in-zone swing rate, rather than the relative differences of either.
Freeman swings 13.4% more often in-zone than Votto does, creating a 5.1% greater absolute differential, sure, but Freeman is 19.4% more likely (82.8%/69.4%) to swing at a pitch in the strike zone and bordering on twice as likely (+84.4%, 33.0%/17.9%) to chase a pitch out of the zone. Even just comparing those absolute differentials leads to Votto coming out ahead, swinging 13.4% less when he putatively “should” and 15.1% less when he shouldn’t.
Pardon my ignorance, but how is expected Z-swing % determined? Is it just from O-swing %, and just from the average of all players with a given O-swing %? Can someone point me to a basic primer on this stuff?
Also, why do you call Freeman’s pattern of very high swing rates both in and out of the zone “simultaneously selective and aggressive”? What is selective about it? It seems to me that being selective is a combination of (a) not chasing, and (b) swinging more at the most hittable strikes than the “pitcher’s strikes”. All we see in the data shown here is Freeman swinging at the vast majority of all strikes, and chasing a lot. Selective?
Thank you for an interesting insight.
Z-Swing%-O-Swing% scatter plot could indicate that freeman is a surely more effective hitter than other hitters in terms of eye. But I want to suggest the point that he is also very high contact rate guy which is not also frequently found.
There may some ‘bad ball hitters’ who can convert O-zoned ball into hit and I’m not sure the upper side of the trend line is always better than lower one.
Anyway, Freeman is a great hitter enough. Not many guys can contact balls as many as he’s tried to hit.
Respect for Freeman is hard not to have! But it would be nice if he, the braves, and the Phillies slumped a bit for a month or so.