Anthony Rizzo Has Changed, Man

For the last three years, Anthony Rizzo has been one of the most consistent hitters in baseball. His wRC+ from 2014-2016: 155, 145, 145. His wOBA: .397, .384, .391. He consistently draws a walk in about 11% of his plate appearances and strikes out in less than 20% of his plate appearances. So far this year? It has been a much slower start, as he’s slashing .231/.371/.448. Though the OBP and SLG aren’t bad, the batting average is tougher to stomach. He’s been just above average with a wRC+ of 114, hardly the numbers the Cubs were expecting from their perennial All-Star. Still, there’s some explanation for all this. For comparison’s sake, we will only be looking at 2016 and 2017. Here’s some charts from Brooks Baseball:

There isn’t an obvious change in approach. He’s swinging at about the same amount of pitches and really is staying inside the zone. In 2017 it seems like he’s swinging more at the low and in pitches but otherwise, same approach. The stats from Baseball Info Solutions and PITCHf/x back this up. He’s in line with his career swing% by both metrics; the difference is in the contact he’s making. By Baseball Info, his O-Contact% is 71.1% up from 68.1%. PITCHf/x also has him at 71.1% up from 66.1%.

This makes me think the quality of the contact is the issue. Here are two videos showing at bats in 2017 and 2016. The focus here is what Rizzo is doing with outside pitches. First 2016, then 2017:

https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/videos?video_id=730449083

https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/videos?video_id=1383639883

In 2016, Rizzo lets that outside pitch get deep to poke it to left field. The 2017 version is early and rolls it over into a shift. Baseball Savant has limited video for 2017 but I’ve seen the same thing and the numbers back it up. Here are two charts showing his exit velocities, 2016 is on the bottom, 2017 is on the top.

It would be easy to say Rizzo needs to do a better job going the other way with the outside pitch, but that’s the main difference I’m seeing this year. Overall, Rizzo’s hard contact is down to 30.4% from last year’s 34.3%, and from his career rate. His pull rate is also the highest in his career, at 53%, vs. 43.9%. Rizzo has been pulling a decent amount of grounders, specifically at a rate of 68.1% with about 78.2% being characterized as soft or medium contact, higher than in 2016. Rizzo faces a shift quite a bit, so pulling grounders isn’t going to help him. He’s hitting line drives at the lowest rate since he was first called up, and down to 15% from his career 20% rate. Take a look at the spray charts below. The first chart is 2017 and the second is 2016. It’s the classic small sample vs. large sample but you can definitely see that Rizzo is not using all fields like he has in the past.

 

 

This what confounds me. Despite all this, he still is producing better than average, because his walk rate and strikeout rate are the best rates of his career. So just imagine if his BABIP currently wasn’t .212? I don’t want to say that’s going to raise for sure, but I believe it will get closer to his career rate of .285. This is probably a long-winded way of saying small sample size, so here’s one last thing. This has happened with Rizzo before. In 2016 he had a similar start in March through May, but turned it on for the rest of the year.

Still, this isn’t a simple “It’s been 50 games and he’s been unlucky” that would imply that he’s the same player doing the same things but getting different results. The concern I have is that Rizzo’s doing things differently this year. He’s not using all fields, and he’s hurting his performance by trying to pull pitches and generating weaker contact (his EV is down this year). Using all fields might lead to more line drives and would drive his batting average up to his career norms. Maybe he’s putting pressure on himself after last year’s championship? He’s had success before and I believe he can get back to where he was.