The Rays Ditched Their Bad Fastball Hitters
Last spring, I detailed how the Rays had, over the years, created a cult of the high fastball. Nor did their commitment to the pitch waver at all during the 2017 regular season. The club’s pitchers remained fully invested in throwing fastballs up last year — despite some of the negative side effects (notably, the home run) suffered by an arm like Jake Odorizzi, whom they have since dispatched to Minnesota.
Interestingly, at least to this author, the Rays now appear to be paying closer attention to fastball performance on the other side of the ball — that is, with regard to their hitters. If you are among that class of hitter who has difficulty with the fastball, the Rays seem increasingly less likely to employ you. Tampa Bay ranked 28th in performance against fastballs last season, according to linear weights. This offseason, however, they have shed some of their weakest fastballs hitters.
That the Rays designated for assignment a 2017 All-Star in Corey Dickerson earlier this month was a shock to some. The move appeared to be little more than a cash dump at first. Then, however, the club sent Dickerson to the Pirates not only for Daniel Hudson and his contract but also prospect Tristan Gray, of whom KATOH is more enamored than most scouts. Ultimately, the Rays only cleared $1 million in the deal. So while the Rays wanted some return for Dickerson, it also appears as though they were motivated to move on without him in 2018.
The Rays also had little interest in reuniting with Logan Morrison, who remained available until the Twins signed him over the weekend — this a player who hit 38 home runs last season. Welcome to 2018! The club also dealt Steven Souza Jr. to Arizona in another deal curious to some and which, again, appeared to be something of a salary dump. Souza is a 28-year-old coming off a three-win season. But like Dickerson and Morrison, Souza had a similar flaw in that he was unsuccessful against the high fastball.
While Dickerson, Morrison, and Souza combined for 93 home runs, 9.9 WAR, and an All-Star berth at total cost of $6.1 million a year ago, they all each ranked among the top 10 in whiffs on four-seam fastballs, as demonstrated in the following chart — one which I included in the Dickerson post last week.
| Rank | Player | Results |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Corey Dickerson | 172 |
| 2 | Mike Zunino | 133 |
| 3 | Steven Souza Jr. | 121 |
| 4 | Keon Broxton | 116 |
| 5 | Mark Reynolds | 116 |
| 6 | Cody Bellinger | 115 |
| 7 | Scott Schebler | 107 |
| 8 | Logan Morrison | 107 |
| 9 | Domingo Santana | 105 |
| 10 | Giancarlo Stanton | 105 |
Moreover, all three players were worse in the second half last season. Morrison posted a 143 wRC+ in the first half, 112 in second; Souza 136 and 98; and Dickerson 139 and 90.
Dickerson and Souza’s struggles coincided with an increased number of fastballs:
For the season, Souza had a 33% whiff rate and .233 average against four-seamers. Dickerson recorded a 35% whiff rate per swing and .219 average. Morrison whiffed on 32% of his swings against four-seamers and hit .185 against them.
There has always been this idea that laying off the fastball up is difficult — and maybe even more so at a time when velocity continues to increase each season, reducing hitters’ reaction time. This perhaps shows up in Dickerson and Souza’s struggles to lay off and connect with the elevated fastball — not just in 2017 but also a season earlier, according to Baseball Savant.
C.J. Cron, who essentially replaces Dickerson, is a much more adept fastball hitter. Cron whiffed on just 21% of four-seamers last season and hit .297 against them. Carlos Gomez fills some of the Souza void — and, while Gomez has plenty of swing and miss in his game, he’s been slightly better against four-seamers the last two seasons, posting .253 and .243 averages, respectively.
With all the data available MLB clubs, teams are likely only to further try and exploit such weaknesses. Perhaps there is feeling within the Rays, specifically, that not only is this an exploitable weakness, but also one that is difficult to improve.
So maybe this goes beyond payroll efficiency or an attempt to flip some players coming off productive 2017 campaigns for prospects, controllable years, and future surplus value. Jeff opined last week that, despite perceptions to the contrary, the Rays are not really any worse off after these moves. Perhaps one reason why is that the three players mentioned here have flaws that are hard to correct and that will be further exploited in this age of video and information.
So if you cannot hit the elevated fastballs, don’t expect a call from the Rays. Maybe they are on to something.
A Cleveland native, FanGraphs writer Travis Sawchik is the author of the New York Times bestselling book, Big Data Baseball. He also contributes to The Athletic Cleveland, and has written for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, among other outlets. Follow him on Twitter @Travis_Sawchik.
Please add shading showing where the Yankees series fell on this graph, I bet it would illuminate.
ILLUMINATE!
I’d be interested in seeing that graph, normalized against strikeout rate and PAs. My guess is Mike Zunino and Keon Broxton whiff against all kinds of pitches, and their problems hitting this type of pitch is just a problem with hitting.
Kudos to “budman3” who noticed this on Travis’ “Pirates Acquire Dickerson” article.
Also, Rays ditched 69% of their 25man roster from 2017
That’s impossible. Not nice!
Very good post. I’d found these moves by the Rays to be curious, so I appreciate this potential explanation.
It’s always been important for teams to figure out if a relatively short period of good or bad performance by a player is a true inflection point due to adjustments and/or counter-adjustments, or if it’s just noise. I suspect, though, that it’s become even more important because teams on the whole have gotten so good at the basics of using analytical information.
I’ll throw out another hypothesis, which I’ll admit will be woefully underdeveloped in this comment but may make for an interesting post by a Fangraphs writer after more research.
Jeff Sullivan pointed out around a month ago that the Rays dramatically underperformed their BaseRuns expected wins by a total of 32 wins from 2014-17, which was the worst in baseball. One underlying statistic is that the Rays have had a much worse wOBA differential in high-leverage situations: 5th-best in the majors in low-leverage, 11th-best in medium leverage, last in high-leverage. https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/tampa-bays-lost-window-of-contention/
So, expanding on the hitting performance side of that differential, isn’t it logical to think that hitters with a weakness for high 4-seam fastballs could be particularly susceptible to underperforming in high-leverage situations? After all, high-leverage situations are by definition weighted toward the late and close game situations in which teams deploy bullpen power arms, the sort of pitchers who tend to be very capable of throwing swing-and-miss fastballs up in the zone.
Here’s each of those player’s 2017 wRC+ in low / medium / high leverage situations:
Dickerson: 125 / 112 / 78
Morrison: 149 / 125 / 57
Souza: 99 / 134 / 147
So Dickerson and Morrison both fit the hypothesis of these types of players performing much worse in high-leverage situations, at least in limited sample sizes for 2017, though Souza is the exact opposite.
To repeat my first point, caveats abound and much more work would be required to shore up this idea. Souza’s performance doesn’t fit this hypothesis, either for 2017 or for his career. I haven’t looked at all at the Rays’ pitching side of the equation. I’ve only looked at three players, none of whom were even on the Rays in 2014 and only one of whom was on the team in 2016.
I think you are onto something with the Rays’ philosophy but is it possible they’re not looking at the overall outcomes of hitters who whiff a lot high in the zone?
It makes sense they believe Souza could be a sell high candidate as his HR/FB increased from 18.5% to 25.6% while his GB% increased from 40.9% to 44.6%; these diverging trends are bit baffling and could regress back in 2018.
When looking at Statcast wOBA against 4-seamers in zones 1/2/3/11/12, however, Dickerson still posts a respectable 0.329 vs 0.269 for Souza and 0.216 for Morrison. While Dickerson did lose some loft in 2017, he’s always been a low 20% strikeout guy (whiff rate increased slightly from 14.9% to 15.4%). The high number of swinging strikes high in the zone could be more indicative of his swing profile than an exploitable trend that’s worth giving up on 1.2 projWAR.
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/statcast_search?hfPT=FF%7C&hfAB=&hfBBT=&hfPR=&hfZ=1%7C2%7C3%7C11%7C12%7C&stadium=&hfBBL=&hfNewZones=&hfGT=R%7C&hfC=&hfSea=2017%7C&hfSit=&player_type=batter&hfOuts=&opponent=&pitcher_throws=&batter_stands=&hfSA=&game_date_gt=&game_date_lt=&team=&position=&hfRO=&home_road=&hfFlag=&metric_1=&hfInn=&min_pitches=0&min_results=0&group_by=name&sort_col=woba&player_event_sort=h_launch_speed&sort_order=desc&min_abs=30#results
Not sure this holds up for the Rays move to go Gomez over Souza.
– Carlos Gomez had 79 whiffs on 1,595 Four-seam fastballs (4.95%)
– Steven Souza had 121 whiffs on 2,498 Four-seam fastballs (4.84%)
Souza did see a higher percentage of FA than Gomez (36% v. 33%), but the difference in total whiffs seems to come almost entirely from 191 additional PA’s.
IGNORE THIS. The Pitch% was for all pitches, not just for Four-seam fastballs. My bad.
Will the Rays score more runs this year because they ditched their bad fastball hitters????