The BABIP gods are a most fickle bunch. They come and go as they please, gracing the bats of some while abandoning others altogether. Take Chris Johnson, for example. Aided by a .394 BABIP (roughly 10% greater than his career average), Johnson finished second to Michael Cuddyer in pursuit of the 2013 NL batting title. This season, however, Johnson’s batting average has dropped 58 points following a BABIP regression. Losing a portion of his hits has certainly hurt Johnson’s offensive production — this season, Johnson has produced runs at a rate 19% below league average.

BABIP is not entirely driven by luck, however. In fact, each hitter’s batted ball profile influences their BABIP. Generally speaking, players who hit more line drives and ground balls carry a higher BABIP than fly ball hitters. While it seems reasonable for Derek Jeter and Joe Mauer to carry career BABIPs in the neighborhood of .350, expecting Adam Dunn to sustain a similar BABIP would be folly.

Now, to Chris Iannetta. Sporting a career fly ball rate of 42.8%, the Angels’ backstop is a true fly ball hitter. Iannetta’s 2014 batted ball profile bears a striking resemblance to that of his 2013 campaign. Observe the table below:

Table 1: Batted Ball Profiles for Chris Iannetta, 2013 & 2014

Very similar. Although a hitter’s BABIP is not solely dependent on his batted ball profile, we might reasonably expect Iannetta’s 2014 BABIP to reside in the neighborhood of his 2013 mark. Well ladies and gentlemen, at the time of this writing, Chris Iannetta carries a 2014 BABIP of .330, a mark 16.6% above his career average of .283!

A peculiar development indeed. Let’s take a step back and examine Iannetta’s run production in a broader context:

Table 2: Offensive Production for Chris Iannetta, 2013 & 2014

The BABIP gods have certainly smiled on Iannetta this season. Despite the same ability to hit for power and a minor dip in plate discipline, Iannetta’s BABIP spike has fueled a 16% increase in run production. Among catchers with a minimum of 350 plate appearances, Iannetta’s wRC+ currently ranks him the sixth-best hitting catcher in the league. Iannetta’s newfound singles are certainly helping the Angels’ cause.

Because of random variation and luck, it is hardly rare for a hitter to experience a jump in BABIP. What is truly remarkable, however, is that Iannetta’s BABIP has jumped 15% above his career average while he has produced fly balls at a rate 20% greater than league average. To experience such a spike in BABIP while hitting a high percentage of fly balls seems quite rare. But how rare?

In order to better appreciate the peculiarity of Iannetta’s season and look for possible comparisons, I searched the past five seasons for players who experienced a BABIP jump 15% greater than career average while producing fly balls at a rate 20% above league average. Consider the table below:

Table 3: From 2009-2013, Player Seasons with a BABIP 15% Greater than Career Average, Fly Ball Rate 20% Greater than League Average (Minimum 400 PA)

That’s a motley crew. At first glance, one commonality emerges. Unsurprisingly, each hitter experienced significant BABIP regression the year after their jump. The BABIP gods hit some harder than others. Adam Dunn seems like an unfair comparison for what might happen to Iannetta — his remarkably terrible 2011 was fueled by more than BABIP regression. Similarly, Nick Swisher, Mark Reynolds and 2011 Colby Rasmus each saw fairly significant erosion in their power numbers. Swisher retained a good portion his productivity by dramatically increasing his BB%, but I don’t think that’s a fair expectation for Iannetta.

Perhaps the best example of what might happen to Iannetta is 2013-14 Colby Rasmus. In the midst of a BABIP regression, Rasmus has maintained his power numbers and plate discipline. Nonetheless, he’s currently producing runs at a rate 27% lower than last year. Those extra outs sure do add up.

Ultimately, if Iannetta can sustain his ISO and BB%, he should remain valuable for the Angels. Although Iannetta is on the wrong side of the aging curve, a mild BABIP regression with minor skill erosion would forecast a wRC+ somewhere in the neighborhood of 105-115. The Angels will certainly take that from their catcher.

Interestingly enough, the only hitter besides Iannetta to fit the parameters of a BABIP 15% greater than career average and fly ball rate 20% greater than league average this season is Devin Mesoraco. Mesoraco, however, is currently enjoying a well-documented swing renaissance, rendering his career BABIP rate generally unreliable for the purposes of this study. Going forward, Mesoraco is much more likely to sustain his present success than Iannetta.

It’s well documented that Yasiel Puig has been having a rough second half to the season. FanGraphs’ own Jeff Sullivan covered Puig’s troubles in a great piece here, and other articles like this one, and this one, and this one, continue to pop up. Further, a recent dugout altercation with veteran Matt Kemp have only made the media scrutiny on baseball’s most volatile player tighter. Jeff discussed Puig’s inability to do anything but roll over inside pitches of late, and his failure to lift fastballs as well. Let’s keep that information in the back of our mind for a second and look at Puig’s L/R splits for 2013 and 2014.

Notice the drastic drop in Puig’s performance against left-handed pitching. Now both samples are limited in terms of plate appearances, but I don’t think you can attribute this drop in performance entirely to luck. First, see the difference in how right-handed and left-handed pitchers have attacked Puig by location in 2014.

Left-handed pitchers have made a significantly more concerted effort to pitch Puig inside, the same area that Jeff acutely pointed out Puig has been struggling. However, this isn’t much different than the way left-handers pitched Puig a year ago. See below for 2013 chart:

What has changed though is Puig’s ability to hit left-handed change-ups, and off-speed pitches in general. In 2013, Puig swung and missed at a lot of change-ups (28% whiff rate), but when he did make contact he did damage (.539 SLG in 26 AB’s where he put a change-up in play). In 2014 though, Puig has cut down on the misses (20% whiff rate), but also lost his ability to impact the baseball against the pitch (no extra base hits vs. lhp change-ups). A similar trend, but not as exaggerated one, can be found if you look at Puig vs. breaking pitches.

This isn’t a secret either. In last night’s contest, during his at bats against the Cubs lefty Tsuyoshi Wada, 4 of the 7 pitches Puig saw were change-ups. Wada did let one creep over the plate in his second at bat and Puig was able to hit a grounder through the left side.

But let’s go back to the examples in Jeff’s article. In the at bats where Puig is successful he gets to the ball out front and is able to get extension through his swing. Yet, in the examples where Puig is unsuccessful he rolls over the ball, is late, hits the ball deeper in accordance to his body, and cannot get the same extension. Granted both of the examples are against righties, but it illustrates the greater point of how Puig’s timing right now is off against fastballs (particularly fastballs on his hands and up).

And the problem with being late against the fastball is the rest of the game starts to speed up. To try and account for his deficiency, Puig has likely started to to cheat (start his swing earlier), leaving him more vulnerable to off-speed pitches away. And if you’re a lefty with a good change-up, you have a serious advantage versus Puig right now.

The question you might be asking yourself is why can’t righties take advantage of the same flaw. Well, since August 1, they have to an extent, and against right-handed four-seam fastballs Puig is a mere 5 for 35.

However, against off-speed pitches it’s a different story. For his career Puig recognizes and hits breaking balls considerably better than change-ups. Against sliders and curveballs, he’s batted .327 and .298 respectively, compared to a lowly .219 against change-ups.

And given that Puig is right-handed he’s a lot less likely to see change-ups from right-handed pitchers. Per Max Marchi’s data, pitchers are more than twice as likely to throw change-ups to opposite-side hitters than same-side hitters. This holds true for Puig, who in 2014, has seen 16% of pitches from left-handers be change-ups, compared to only 7% of pitches from right-handers. So while the advantage is still there for righties, it’s less likely they’ll get to it, or can do so within the limits of their arsenal.

What’ll be interesting to see is if a team will actually bring a lefty out of the bullpen to face Puig in the postseason. If it happens, one likely scenario would be Marco Gonzales of St. Louis (if he makes the playoff roster), whose profile suggests him being Puig’s kryptonite. He throws over 30% change-ups against right-handers and 51% of his fastball to righties have been located inside.

Another poor match-up would be if the Dodgers face the Nationals and Gio Gonzalez is on the mound. Gonzalez has upped his change-up usage against right-handers to 23% in 2014, and has limited hitters to a .230 average against the pitch with a 23% whiff rate.

I also think it’s important to watch how Puig handles inside fastballs the remainder of the season. It’s conceivable the adrenaline of a playoff series could help him regain his timing against the pitch and get him back in sync. Like any hitter his swing is constantly adjusting, and it could start clicking for the Cuban slugger at any point in time. The Dodgers are hoping it clicks soon, or else they’ll be stuck searching elsewhere for offensive production when October rolls around.

Data courtesy of FanGraphs and Brooks Baseball

Featured Image courtesy of USA Today

The Mets took a chance last year and inked Curtis Granderson, age 33, to a four-year contract worth $60 million. Granderson was just coming off an injury plagued season with the Yankees in which he fractured his right forearm, and then the pinky in his left hand, sidelining him for over 100 games. In 2013 he posted a slash line of .229/.317/.409. Prior to his 2013 season, Granderson finished 4th in MVP voting in 2011, and was an All-Star in 2011 and 2012, finishing with more than 40 HR and 100 RBI’s.

So what can we expect from Curtis Granderson for the rest of his career with the Mets? Is there hope that he will be the big clutch hitter the Mets desperately need and come close to his 2011 and 2012 seasons with the Yankees? Or will his name be forever remembered by Mets fans in the same category as Jason Bay and Chris Young, forged in the hall of ineptitude? Here is a look at Curtis Granderson’s numbers after 2010 when Granderson turned 29 and started his stint with the Yankees. Here is a look at some of his numbers from 2010-2012, before his injury-riddled 2013 campaign:

It is important to note that he is playing the majority of his games at notoriously hitter-friendly Yankees Stadium. Using a measure of the effect of Yankee Stadium called park index, it can found that Yankee Stadium has about a +3% increase on a left-hander’s average, and a +53% on a hitter’s home run total. Granderson hit 56 total homers at Yankee Stadium from 2010-2012. After the Mets reconfigured their outfield, their left-handed batters hit on average +2% more home runs. If we adjust Curtis Granderson’s home run total to playing at CitiField for these years, his adjusted home run total is somewhere between 26-27 per year.

This still is a great total, and I think any Met fan would welcome a 25+ home run season from Granderson with open arms. Right now there are 10 games left in the season and Granderson has 18 home runs. He could sit around 20 this season which would not be terrible unless we remember his atrocious .218/.320./.374 slash line. We also have to consider the unfortunate factor of Granderson’s age to this equation. Granderson has a little bit of a strange aging curve because of his incredible seasons at age 30 and 31. I decided to look at how similar players performed at ages 32, 33, 34, and 35 (no player that has a top-ten similarity score has played a season at age 36 yet). The similarity scores were calculated based on Baseball-Reference’s similarity scores equation.

All of my worst fears came true and I started having flashbacks of one of the all-time worst Mets busts as I saw the name that popped up at number 1 — Jason Bay. Here is what other similar players did at age 32, 33, 34, and 35 (I omitted information if a player played less than 70 games aside from Granderson’s season at age 32.):

This does not paint a good picture of what we hope to expect from Granderson. For a player signed to the amount of money as Granderson, I would like to see an OPS around or above .800. There are only two out of ten players — Phil Nevin and Jayson Werth, that hit decently at the advanced ages of 34 and 35 (Werth is hitting pretty well with over 80 RBI’s with an OPS above .800, Nevin hit decently with a 0.76 OPS and 22 home runs at age 35). Six out of ten players ended their careers following a tremendous decline before getting to age 34 (I included Jason Bay whose career was arguably over before age 31, a year after signing with the Mets), Edwin Encarnacion is too young to make any conclusions about, and it is looking like Jose Bautista will play well, or at least decently at ages 34 and 35.

Even though most similar players did not have good seasons, or even reach seasons at ages 34, 35, and 36, similar players like Jayson Werth, Phil Nevin, and Jose Bautista give us a glimmer of hope. Similar players in no way give us a definitive look at a player’s future, so there is also always the possibility Granderson carves himself a much different path than any of the players on this list. To determine what might be causing Granderson’s decline, I’m going to look through Granderson’s batted ball statistics along with walk rate and strikeout rate:

The most glaring discrepancy between Granderson’s time with the Mets and Yankees is his HR/FB rate. His BABIP has gone down a little, but it is not that far removed from his numbers from 2010-2012. BABIP is a good statistic to look at to determine if a player is having a relatively unlucky season by comparing it to that player’s normal BABIP. It looks like he might have been a little lucky getting hits in 2011. Other than that, BABIP does not tell the story of what has happened to Granderson in 2014.

My initial thought from watching Granderson play daily was that he is striking out at a much higher rate. In fact, his K% is lower than it was in 2011 and 2012, and on par with what it was in 2010. And here is where we come to his HR/FB. Although Granderson is hitting about the same FB%, the percent of his fly balls that are going out of the park is dismally low compared to how it was when he was hitting 40+ home runs at Yankee Stadium. Although this could partially be age-related, it could be easily argued that a huge component of this is also the change in ballpark where Granderson plays. It is hard to determine if Granderson could possibly change his approach somehow to adjust to CitiField’s landscape when he is going to be 34 years old next year. The future is looking bleak for Mets fans unless Granderson can figure out how to turn things around next season.

Rockies outfielder Corey Dickerson is quietly having an excellent season at the plate. Believe it or not, the 25-year-old is hitting an impressive .315/.371/.577, which even after adjusting for the effects of Coors Field, is still good for a 144 wRC+ — 13th highest among players with at least 400 plate appearances. Dickerson’s batted pretty sparingly against lefties, which has certainly played a role in his gaudy stat line, but platoon or no platoon, a .405 wOBA is certainly nothing to sneeze at.

While Dickerson’s out-of-the-blue breakout is interesting, the approach he’s used to get there is what makes him truly unusual. Since debuting last season, he’s swung at 62% of pitches inside the strike zone and 42% of pitches outside of it, making him about 1.5 times (62%/42%) as likely to swing at a strike than a ball. This is the lowest such ratio of any player with at least 600 PA’s these last two years. Dickerson’s not a free swinger, per se — his overall swing rate of 51% is 38th out of 251 players with at least 600 PA’s — but he just doesn’t discriminate based on whether or not a pitch is in the strike zone. Here’s a look at the hitters with the lowest Z-Swing%/O-Swing% these last two seasons:

Dickerson’s contact rates tell a similar story. Just like his overall swing rate, Dickerson’s contact rate of 81% isn’t all that interesting. Here, he checks in at 151 out of 251. But also like his swing rate, it doesn’t change very much depending on a pitch’s location. He’s put wood on 83% of pitches he’s offered at in the zone, compared to 74% outside of it, making him 1.1 times as likely to connect on a pitch within the zone — fourth lowest out of 251.

Multiplying these two metrics (Contact% x Swing%) gives us Dickerson’s contact rate over all pitches seen, regardless of that pitch’s location. Lets call this AllContact% to distinguish it from the traditional Contact%. This number shows just how much of an outlier he really is. For the average major league hitter, a pitch thrown in the strike zone results in contact 2.9 times as often as one outside of it, but for Dickerson, a pitch in the zone is less than 1.7 times as likely. Even if we set the bar as low as 70 plate appearances to include 577 players, this is still the lowest in baseball since the start of 2013.

And unsurprisingly, he also the all-time leader since 2007 (the earliest year with PITCHf/x data). Dickerson had the lowest among all players with 100 PA’s here, but I set the threshold to 600 PA’s to avoid having leader board filled with obscure players like Jesus Feliciano and Jordan Brown. In case you were wondering, Vladimir Guerrero checked in at 2.13.

Dickerson’s indifference to a pitch’s location means its probably only a matter of time before pitchers just stop throwing the ball in the strike zone, especially if he keeps slugging well above .500. So far this year, opposing pitchers have thrown Dickerson a strike just over 45% of the time. This is lower than the league average of 49%, but isn’t exceptionally low, especially for a free-swinging power hitter. Guys like Jose Abreu, Carlos Gomez, and Pablo Sandoval see strikes around 42% of the time, so pitchers could almost certainly get away with throwing Dickerson a few more balls. Sure, he’s shown that he’s able to hit those pitches, but even for a player like Dickerson, chasing after bad pitches is still a recipe for lots of swings and misses. His 74% O-Contact% is well above the league average of 63%, yet still lower than the overall Contact% of 80%.

Dickerson’s one-size-fits-all approach to swinging has worked well so far, but it remains to be seen what will happen when pitchers start exploiting it by throwing more balls out of the zone. Maybe he’ll be unfazed and keep on raking. Maybe he’ll turn into a strikeout machine, who needs to refine his approach to even stay in the big leagues. Either way, Corey Dickerson’s a fascinating player, who’s unlike any we’ve seen in recent years, and it’ll be interesting to see if he’s able to keep succeeding going forward.

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.

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.

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?

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?

At the start of the 2013 season, Brett Gardner adopted a new, more aggressive approach at the plate in the hopes of barreling more hittable pitches. Up to that point, the slap-hitting outfielder had been one of the most patient hitters in baseball. Gardner sat out most of 2012 due to injury, but swung at just 32.7% of all pitches seen between 2010 and 2011, the fewest of any player with at least 300 plate appearances. Last year, his swing rate jumped to 40.1%, with most of his new-found aggressiveness focused on pitches located within the strike zone. While his zone swing rate rose by 13 percentage points from 2010 to 2013, his rate for pitches out of the zone only increased by seven.

The change seemed to pay off. Gardner posted a career high .143 ISO last season — much better than his career mark of .103 — on his way to a very respectable 108 wRC+. He’s carried that success over to this season as well. With 16 homers, he’s doubled his total from last season — which was already a career high — and with a 119 wRC+, he’s developed into one of the better-hitting outfielders in all of baseball.

But unlike last season, he’s no longer sporting a swing percentage north of 40%. Instead, it’s fallen back to 36.6%, just a tad higher than his 35% mark from 2011. So if Gardner’s back to his old ways of watching two thirds of all pitches go by, how has he managed to keep hitting for power? The answer has everything to do with plate discipline. Gardner’s continued to take advantage of hittable pitches, but has also gotten much better at laying off pitches outside of the strike zone. First lets look at how often he’s swung at pitches inside of the strike zone.

Since adopting his more aggressive approach two springs ago, Gardner’s behavior on pitches in the zone hasn’t changed much. Maybe he’s gotten a little less aggressive over the past couple of years, but for the most part, his swing rates have been pretty consistent. It’s probably safe to say that Gardner’s a guy who swings at about 50-55% of pitches in the strike zone. We see a different story, however, when it comes to pitches outside of the zone.

At least initially, Gardner’s swing rate on balls out of the zone also spiked. He seemingly became more aggressive on all pitches, without discriminating based on location. But that’s changed over the past couple of seasons, as he’s swung at fewer and fewer pitches out of the zone. His O-Swing% dipped below 18% in both July and August — down from around 25% in early 2013 — putting him on par with what he was doing back in 2010 and 2011. Today, Gardner’s been nearly three times more likely to swing at a strike than a ball, up from two times as likely in April of 2013.

Gardner’s improved plate discipline is nothing new. Although his change in approach puts a kink in the trend, Gardner’s been getting better at deciding whether or not to swing since his first days in the big leagues, and probably even longer. Even before he re-evaluated his approach before the 2013 season, he was already starting to transition from a “guy who doesn’t swing at anything” to a “guy who doesn’t swing at balls”.

Coming up through the minors, Gardner didn’t impress many scouts with his tools, and barely even made his college team as a walk-on. Sure, he’s always had plus-plus speed, but that only gets you so far when you’re an outfielder with little power to speak of. Rather than relying on his pure hitting skills, Gardner makes it work with his zen-like plate discipline. By swinging at so few balls out of the zone, Gardner practically forces pitchers to leave the occasional pitch over the heart of the plate, and has just enough pop in his bat to make them pay for it. But most importantly, he’s learned how to take advantage of those mistake pitches, while simultaneously laying off of the bad ones.

Statistics courtesy of FanGraphs.

There’s no doubting that Kevin Gausman is a talented pitcher.  He features a fastball in the mid to upper 90’s, a split-change to fluster lefties with, and a slider with good depth to attack righties.

He even looks the part too, with a 6’3’’, 190 lb. frame, an athletic delivery, and an incredibly fast arm.  And therefore, it was for good reason that the Baltimore Orioles made him the 4^th selection of the 2012 Amateur Draft and he’s risen quickly to the big leagues.

However, Gausman’s career up to this point, at the major league level, has seen its fair share of ups and downs.  He struggled in a brief 47.1 IP in 2013 and in 2014 has hovered around mediocrity.  His ERA is alright at 3.83, but a mere 6.82 K/9 and 3.27 BB/9 is likely not what Baltimore was hoping to see from their former elite pitching prospect.

Heading into the postseason, Baltimore can expect solid performances from Chris Tillman, Bud Norris, and Wei-Yin Chen, but Gausman could be there biggest X Factor.  His stuff gives him a chance to dominate a playoff game and serve as a stopper down the stretch, but he’ll need to be more than a one-dimensional pitcher to get there.

By one-dimensional I’m referring to Gausman’s strong tendency to pitch only down and to his arm-side. See his FanGraphs pitcher heatmaps below vs. lefties and righties.

Notice, despite batter handedness, Gausman’s pitch location tendencies stay the same, as he works down-and-away from left-handers and down-and-in to right-handers.

Some of this is by probably by design. With Gausman and the Orioles trying to expose holes underneath righties hands and staying away from the lefty power zone of down-and-in.

However, a large reason for this tendency is Gausman’s inability to consistently pitch to his glove side.

In the video linked here, watch how Gausman reaches on the back side of his arm action. This reach makes it more difficult for him to command his pitches by limiting his ability to stay tall on his back side, keep a loose arm, and maintain balance.

Second, watch how he steps across his body.  By having a “crossfire delivery”, in order for Gausman to get a pitch to his glove-side, he must over-rotate and power his arm across the rest of his frame.

Gausman has the arm speed to do this, but the process of doing so, inhibits his ability to command pitches to that side of the plate, and he often misses in the strike-zone where hitters can do damage.

A great example of this was during the third inning of Gausman’s start Saturday afternoon versus Tampa Bay.

With 1 out and Ben Zobrist on 3^rd, Gausman tried to beat David DeJesus with a fastball low-and-in.  But Gausman’s fastball was never able to get to the inside part of the plate, and the left-handed DeJesus roped a single.

Now with 1^st and 3^rd, Gausman faced Evan Longoria and after throwing two split-change-ups down, he tried to beat the right-hander away with a fastball. Once again, Gausman couldn’t get the pitch to his glove side and Longoria smoked the ball to center for a sac fly.

Left-handed hitting James Loney came to bat next and immediately lined the first pitch fastball down-and-away to left field for a single.  The ease at which Loney stroked Gausman’s mid to upper 90’s fastball on the low, outside corner to left indicates he likely was cheating on a fastball there.  And judging from Gausman’s heatmaps and the previous two sequences, there was little reason for Loney to believe Gausman was going pitch him anywhere else.

This was a particularly unfortunate series of at-bats for Gausman and there are going to be times he can better locate to his glove-side. He’s a good enough athlete to overcome his delivery and arm action for periods of time, but consistent command to his glove-side is going to be difficult to achieve.

A simple question to ask at this point is why can’t Gausman make the mechanical adjustments to fix these issues?

Yet, changing a pitcher’s arm action and delivery at this stage of his career is extremely difficult. Gausman has likely been pitching this way his entire life and any changes now would probably result in a major setback first before progress could be made (and if progress could be made is even debatable).

This delivery and arm action is what Gausman is comfortable with and it’s worked well enough to make him a successful professional pitcher. Most major league pitchers do not have perfect mechanics, but rather are athletic enough to make up for mechanical flaws.  Gausman fits into this category.

However, there is an adjustment Gausman could make without changing his mechanics, and that’s better utilizing the top part of the strike zone, even if he stays arm-side. Let’s return to the heatmaps shown above once again. Take a look at the red on the bottom part of the zone and blue on the top.

Kevin Gausman has elite fastball velocity and life. His four-seam fastball has averaged 95.9 mph in 2014, which would put him 3^rd amongst starting pitchers if he qualified.  Compare his FanGraphs heatmaps to those of Yordano Ventura and Nathan Eovaldi, the starting pitchers with the most similar average fastball velocities to Gausman.

More-so Ventura than Eovaldi, but see the increased use of the upper part of the strike-zone, as well as the more diverse use of the entire plate. Ventura has been rewarded accordingly as per Brooks Baseball, hitters are only batting .196 against pitches he’s thrown in the top third of the zone in 2014.

At the very least an increased use of the upper third of the strike-zone will give Gausman another dimension to his arsenal. Hitters, like James Loney, won’t be able to cheat to get to certain pitches in specific locations.

Gausman has the dynamic stuff to be a front-line starter, it’s just about expanding the ways he can deploy his weapons and becoming more consistent in his ability to command them.

The Orioles are hoping he can improve at a rapid rate, as he could be the key to their potential success in late September and October.

Stats courtesy of FanGraphs and Brooks Baseball

Brandon Moss has wielded an immensely potent bat since joining the Athletics’ lineup in June of 2012. Between 2012 and 2013, he hit a remarkable 146 wRC+, and clubbed a homer once every 15.7 PA’s, placing him third in baseball behind Chris Davis and Miguel Cabrera over that span. Moss kept up the hot hitting to start the 2014 season, as well. The 30-year-old 1B/OF/DH posted a 162 wRC+ in the season’s first two months, further establishing himself as a key cog in one of baseball’s most potent lineups.

But Brandon Moss hasn’t been himself lately. Since his last home run on July 24th, he’s only managed three extra-base hits, resulting in a laughable .168/.317/.198 batting line. Moss’s slump has also coincided with a change in his hitting approach. Moss appears to have gotten a bit more passive at the plate, swinging at way fewer pitches both inside and outside of the strike zone. This new-found passivity took a turn for the extreme once the calendar turned to August, when his O-Swing% and Z-Swing% fell to 27% and 65%, respectively — both around six percentage points lower than his career norms.

Moss’s decision to lay off more pitches has unsurprisingly lead to a spike in both his walk and strikeout numbers, but it’s also resulted in his power completely flat-lining. Moss has basically been Adam Dunn without the power these last couple of months. That’s a pretty terrible hitter, and is part of the reason why the A’s went out and got the real Adam Dunn to help their sputtering offense.

The new swing profile is something that’s recently changed, making it the obvious culprit for Moss’s drop-off in production, but we shouldn’t immediately rule out the possibility that pitchers have changed the way they’re approaching him. It could just be that he’s swinging at fewer pitches because he’s getting fewer pitches to hit. That doesn’t seem to be the case, though, as Moss’s zone breakdown from August looks nearly identical to what it was over the season’s first four months. For whatever reason, Moss just isn’t swinging as often as he used to.

It’s not entirely clear what’s spurred Moss’ sudden reluctance to swing the bat, but all indications are that it’s done a number on his offensive performance. Unlike the Brandon Moss that — up until recently — could be counted on for a wRC+ north of 130, this latest iteration seems to be letting a few too many hittable pitches float down the heart of the plate. And based on what’s transpired over the last month or two, Moss’s best bet is probably to re-discover the more aggressive approach that’s worked so well for him in the past.

Statistics courtesy of FanGraphs; Zone breakdowns courtesy of Baseball Savant.

Coming into this season, the Boston Red Sox had high hopes. Obviously, they were coming off a World Series title, and they had every reason to expect that they could contend again. Jarrod Saltalamacchia was gone, but he could be replaced by A.J. Pierzynski; the drop-off there wouldn’t be too large. Ryan Dempster was gone, but the Red Sox’s rotation of Jon Lester, John Lackey, Clay Buchholz, Jake Peavy, and Felix Doubront was what they had gone with during last year’s stretch run anyways. Jacoby Ellsbury was gone, but Jackie Bradley Jr. (and Grady Sizemore!) should have been able to play well enough to make his departure bearable. And Stephen Drew was gone, but uber-prospect Xander Bogaerts was ready to take over the Red Sox’s shortstop position and dominate the league.

Needless to say, none of those really worked out like the Red Sox and their fans had hoped or planned. Boston currently resides in the AL East cellar, all but certain to go from first to worst just the year after they had done the very opposite. And perhaps no individual part of that failure this season has been a bigger disappointment than Bogaerts. Instead of being the hitter he was supposed to be, he has struggled mightily at the plate, to the tune of a .223/.293/.333 slash line — good for a 74 wRC+ (as of September 1) and a major contributor to his negative WAR.

Where do we start in trying to assess the reasons for Bogaerts’s struggles? Well, time-wise, we can place a pretty neat cutoff point at June 4: That is when Bogaerts started to slump (I think I cursed him). For the first two months of the season, actually, Xander was quite good: he had a 140 wRC+ through April and May, and that figure would have been higher if not for a mini-slump that came towards the very beginning of the season. He was drawing walks roughly 11% of the time (above average) and striking out at a clip a shade below 22% (not much below average). And then came June. It started out OK — he went 4-for-13 in his first 3 June games. But after that, for the rest of the month, he recorded a mere 9 hits and 3 walks in 88 plate appearances. July was better, but not good: Bogaerts managed just a .228/.253/.342 line, and now through most of August he has been even worse than he was the previous two months, with a paltry .123/.195/.164 triple slash.

His wRC+, by month:

Yeesh. Not the way you want to be trending. So what happened? Well, the easy answer is to point to BABIP:

This looks right, right? His best month by wRC+ was his best month by BABIP. His worst month by wRC+ was his worst month by BABIP. And the same can be said for every month in between. But that, of course, doesn’t tell the whole story. Why is his BABIP from the first two months so much higher? What can he do to fix it? Will he fix it? Can he? Let’s explore.

A .364 BABIP like Bogaerts had in April is unsustainable. The .421 BABIP he had the following month is way too high for even the best players to keep up. So naturally, we would expect some regression from him. But his batted ball profile did suggest a decent BABIP – high line drive rate and low popup rate. The only thing overly suspect was his 17.1% infield hit rate in June. Nothing there would suggest such an outrageously high BABIP for the first two months, but nothing would suggest the low BABIPs that were to come later either. So something must have changed. What was it?

It wasn’t Bogaerts’s average flyball distance; that stayed more or less intact. But he did start hitting many fewer line drives…

…and started striking out more, which didn’t affect his BABIP directly but did have an impact on his overall hitting (somewhat astonishingly and coincidentally, his K% has been the exact same – to one decimal – each of the past 3 months):

And in the same vein, he walked much less, which helped contribute to his very low wRC+ as well:

So while it may be easy to ascribe Bogaerts’s recent struggles to his abnormally low BABIPs, there is more to the story. He simply isn’t hitting anywhere near as well as he did earlier in the season. I can think of a few potential reasons for this:

1. Pitchers are pitching to him differently, and he will have to adjust

2. He is in a prolonged slump, and will snap out of it eventually

3. He isn’t actually that good, and his first few months were just very lucky

4. He was playing third base

I think we can ignore the last two. Bogaerts, after all, was ranked a top-5 prospect coming into the season by almost anyone worth listening to, and he has hit very well in the majors before; he’s almost certainly not actually bad at hitting. As for the last one — that was a theory many people floated out when Bogaerts stopped hitting well at almost the exact same time as Stephen Drew returned and kicked Bogaerts over to third. The argument was that since short was Bogaerts’s natural position, and he felt most comfortable there and could focus on his hitting, he would do better when playing there.

And that theory holds some water: this season, his wRC+ as a third baseman is 37 (in 180 PA), and as a shortstop it is 95 (in 312). That is too large of a difference to dismiss offhandedly. But here’s the problem: when Drew was traded, and Bogaerts returned to shortstop, he continued to hit poorly. In fact, throughout the entire month of August, Bogaerts played shortstop, and he had a -3 wRC+. I am going to say that that theory, while compelling, doesn’t really explain Bogaerts’s struggles at all. He’d tell you that himself.

So what does? Pitchers pitching him differently? Yes, to an extent. Here is how Bogaerts has done all season long against certain pitches:

And here is how he has been pitched:

The pitches in that gif are ordered by how many runs above average Bogaerts has been against them, descending. You can see that from June 4 (the date of the start of Bogaerts’s extended slump) on, he has seen many fewer fastballs and many more sinkers and sliders than before. That could be the cause of his BABIP, strikeout, and general hitting struggles since he excels against fastballs and cannot hit sliders or sinkers (sliders more so).

But there’s only one issue: the problem isn’t that Bogaerts is getting fewer pitches he can hit, it’s that he’s not hitting the pitches he used to. Here’s Bogaerts against four-seam fastballs (from Brooks Baseball; BIP means balls in play):

He’s cut down a bit on his swings and misses, but everything else looks bad. He’s drastically decreased his line drive rate and drastically increased his popup rate. His groundball rate has gone down a bit, which can be good or bad (in this case I don’t think it’s had a huge effect on anything), and his flyball rate has gone up a lot — which could be good, but Bogaerts is averaging a mere 266.75 feet on his fly balls — 230th out of 284 qualified hitters. So how has this changed his results? Again, Bogaerts against fastballs:

Wow. That is quite the drop in production. League average wOBA against four-seamers this year is .416 (which makes you question why they are thrown so much, but that’s a different article) and so Bogaerts’s wRC+ relative to other fastballs went from a 113 to a 61 in those two timeframes (park-unadjusted).

And look where Bogaerts is hitting balls, too. The following charts aren’t only fastballs — it’s all balls put in play by him. In the beginning of the year, he was sending line drives to all fields, getting grounders through the infield, and pulling balls deep. In the second part, you see lots of shallow line drives and fly balls — in fact, in the three months covered in the second half of the gif, there are all of TWO ground balls that make it through the infield, and only one opposite-field line drive that makes it to the outfield. There are more popups, too, and the fly balls seem to be shallower generally.

Now, some of the things you’re seeing here could be a result of teams shifting on him more as the year goes on, which is why no ground balls are getting to the outfield. But more likely it is Bogaerts making weaker contact and allowing fielders to get to his ground balls; in addition, he isn’t hitting many ground balls up the middle, where you’re more likely to get hits.

Take a look at the gif above. What you’re seeing is the same thing as the last one, only with the at bat result instead of the batted ball type. In the first part of the year, you see Bogaerts getting lots of hits to all parts of the outfields, including deep balls that end up in home runs or doubles. Then, many more balls end up in the infield and most of his hits are shallow balls to the outfield.

This doesn’t look good, especially since it’s been going on for so long. I’m no expert in swing mechanics, so I can’t tell you why Bogaerts has suddenly stopped hitting everything, fastballs especially. My guess is that it’s just a long, long slump that is happening because he’s only 21 years old. I don’t think this means that we should give up on him. He has already proven that he can hit, albeit in a very small sample.

Take a look at the list of all the players who had a wRC+ below 100 in a year where they were listed as top-10 prospects by Baseball America (since 1997):

There are a lot of really good players on that list. Bogaerts is one of the worst there in terms of wRC+ that year, but he’s also younger and higher-ranked than most. That doesn’t concern me. What concerns me is that almost all of the ones on that list from the past few years haven’t succeeded: all of the ones that have are from 2009 or earlier. This is consistent with semi-recent findings by Jeff Zimmerman that the aging curve is changing: hitters don’t improve with age anymore. Further research by Brian Henry shows that players who start in the big leagues at 21 tend to stay steady with their production for a while, then decline at around 30. This does not bode well for the young Red Sox shortstop.

But who knows? If I had to guess, I would say that Bogaerts regains his stroke and starts driving the ball more. He’s too good of a hitter to be so bad against fastballs. After all, he is only 21 years old. Plus… I mean, look at that swing. Number two prospects go far. All the prospects on the list above ranked first or second had some degree of success in the majors, with the exception of Rocco Baldelli, who was good until injuries ruined his career. (Brandon Wood didn’t have enough plate appearances to qualify for the list.) If he was playing a little over his head in April and May, he’s been playing well below his feet for the past three months, and those kinds of things tend to right themselves in time.

Note: This was written before Bogaerts played today, Monday 9/1. He went 1 for 4 with a double and two strikeouts.