Billy Butler In: The Good, The Slightly Above Average, And The Ugly

For the past two years or so, Kansas City has been torn about breakfast… Billy “Big Country Breakfast” Butler that is. During this past offseason there were many rumors that the Royals were going to trade him and it seemed inevitable upon entering talks with then free agent Carlos Beltran. Billy Butler is part of the home-grown youth movement in Kansas City with Alex Gordon, and later followed by Salvy Perez, Mike Moustakas, Eric Hosmer, and company. From 2009 through 2013, Billy Butler has offensively been above average, and even great! However, after failing to meet expectations last year, and in some opinion already being in decline at the age of 28, Billy came out and struggled mightily to start the 2014 season.

But he has turned it around somewhat, and with the Royals making headlines this August, Big Country played a big part. So I wanted to look at what he did differently comparing his April dud, to his career average, and to his being a stud again in August. We will measure his overall offensive prowess with WRC+, which in this study would be 50 in March/April, 118 for his career average, and 126 in August. So let’s look at the more telling processing stats.

Split	BB%	K%	BB/K	BABIP	GB/FB	LD%	GB%	FB%	HR/FB
April	8.3%	18.3%	0.45	0.275	2.82	18.8%	60.0%	21.3%	0.0%
Career Average	8.9%	14.4%	0.62	0.325	1.51	19.9%	48.3%	31.9%	11.1%
August	5.8%	13.2%	0.44	0.308	1.35	23.2%	44.2%	32.6%	12.9%

 

One of the first things to pop out at you is the BB/K ratio. While under his career margin (and by a decent margin too), his BB/K rate is nearly the exact same in April and August. A lot of times credit for a hitter’s success is given to an increase in the BB% and decrease in the K%, but here Butler cuts down on both, therefore increasing the amount of balls he puts into play bringing us to BABIP. Both his April and August are way below his career norms. Perhaps dealing with a little unluckiness? Or just weak contact? Fact is even with his BABIP down and his home run rate relatively consistent he can still create above average production.

Now comes the most telling rate, which is the type of balls that he hits. As someone who is an AL DH, Billy Butler is not only expected to hit, but to slug. That big goose egg for HR’s in April is just an absolute killer, and the culprit is the GB%. It is no wonder why a big, SLOW (we all know about his base running and uncanny attraction to double plays), gap to gap power hitter has one of the worst months of his career considering his GB% is up almost 12% and his FB% is down nearly 10%. Billy Butler will never be Aoki. He has to get the ball in the air. He lives on hitting doubles into the deep gaps at Kauffman Stadium and with ratios such as those it is no surprise he puts up a WRC+ of 50.

When your BB/K ratio is so nearly identical but yet you put up such drastically different numbers, not to mention the fluctuations in his BABIP, it has to come back to his swing mechanics and getting to a consistently good contact position where he can drive the ball.

 

Split	O-Swing%	Z-Swing%	Swing%	O-Contact%	Z-Contact%	Contact%	Zone%	F-Strike %	SwStr%
April	30.0%	58.6%	43.7%	77.4%	92.9%	87.4%	48.0%	57.8%	5.5%
Career Average	28.0%	63.0%	44.3%	69.4%	90.0%	83.1%	46.7%	56.0%	7.2%
August	37.8%	62.1%	49.5%	70.1%	91.5%	83.1%	48.2%	71.9%	8.5%

Billy’s discipline at the plate has been waning. But the month he really lacked discipline is the same month he did so well in: August. In April he was within his career norms for all of his discipline stats except O-Contact%. Overall he was swinging less and missing less. And that is where the problem may lie! It is not so much that he was struggling with pitch selection, because clearly he was even worse with discipline in August, but the fact that he didn’t miss when he swung.

In a sense Butler was too good at making contact! With his swinging percentage up along with increasingly bad pitch selection, the higher his swinging strike percentage, the better! And perhaps with his swing percentage, his first pitch strike percentage, and his O-Swing percentage all up, he has changed to a more aggressive approach? Again all of this can lead back to the assumption of Butler making poor contact in April. Which leads to the question of what has he done differently, if anything, with his swing?

Split	Fastball %	Slider %	Cutter %	Curveball %	Changeup %	Splitfinger %
April	52.5%	19.5%	8.5%	10.3%	8.8%	0.5%
Career Average	56.3%	18.1%	5.6%	8.6%	9.9%	1.0%
August	50.4%	22.9%	8.3%	9.5%	8.5%	0.7%

 

 

Split	Fastball %	wFB/c	wSL/c	wCT/c	wCB/c	wCH/c	wSF/c
April	52.5%	-2.45	-0.92	0.56	1.96	0.86	-11.47
Career Average	56.3%	1.09	-0.81	0.16	0.29	0.16	-1.45
August	50.4%	2	1.89	-1.74	-5.1	-2.11	25.04

 

Now the main reason I bring these stats up is that I am a huge believer in fastball hunting. These charts may not be the most reliable in telling of pitch selection, but they do tell you if he has been seeing certain pitches better and the rates at which he has been seeing pitches.  So I wanted to look closely at his fastball rate in particular just to see if there was anything funky going on. And what was so funky is that in August he was crushing it! The more fastballs you see the better chance you have to hit well. While I am not sure of the exact quantity of fastballs he faced, for the most part he has been seeing the same consistent rate of different pitches he always has and he definitely has done one of his better jobs of taking advantage of the fastballs he has seen. Can a correlation be made between his April failures and August success against fastballs to a possible new approach and/or adjustment in his swing mechanics? Or just unlucky, bad contact?

After searching through the KC Star (hometown newspaper) as well as other media report outlets, I have not been able to find much of anything indicating adjustments being made. There was some talk of just his timing being off, but other than that there are not many clues. I wish I knew how to make video clips of swings and find a couple angles of Billy Butler’s swing in April compared to his swing in August and dissect them both. I would like to see what, if anything, is different. If we could see his timing and especially his bat path, I believe we can tell a lot about what he is doing wrong or right. If anyone can provide those, or teach how to make them, please do and send to me!

However, going off of what I have seen here, everything to me points back to weak contact consistently being made. Whether due to timing or mechanics, I am not sure. Normally I would say this is due to poor pitch selection, but as I showed above, he had even worst discipline and pitch selection in August than April and still put up very stellar numbers. To be clear hard contact is not good enough for a player of Billy Butler’s style. He NEEDS to get air under his pitch. Now they say that this is a game of adjustments. I would love to know what, if any, adjustments Billy “Big Country Breakfast” Butler has made. After all, could it really have just been a string of bad luck?