Mike Moustakas Is Reverting Back to Mike Moustakasness

Coming into this season, the major league career of Mike Moustakas had been underwhelming. Underwhelming is probably kind, really. After being the second overall pick in the 2007 draft (behind David Price), Moustakas progressed through the minor leagues with consistently above average seasons. Before reaching the major leagues in the middle of the 2011 season, Moustakas had a minor league batting line of .282/.327/.503. From 2008 to 2011, Moustakas was ranked 18^th, 13^th, 80^th, and 9^th on the Baseball America Top 100 Prospects list.

Then he reached the Major Leagues. In his first three-and-a-half seasons with the Royals, Moustakas proved to be a below-average major league hitter, starting with an 84 wRC+ in 89 games during his rookie year, followed by 90, 77, and 76 wRC+ seasons from 2012 to 2014. Over this stretch, Moustakas hit .236/.290/.379, good for a .293 wOBA and 82 wRC+. His wRC+ placed him 177^th out of 186 hitters with 1500 or more plate appearances. From 2011 to 2014, Moustakas had been a worse hitter than Ruben Tejada, Jeff Francouer, and Kurt Suzuki, among others.

This season has been a whole new world for Moustakas. He is currently hitting .328/.379/.478 and has a 141 wRC+. After being below average for the first four years of his career, he is now hitting at a well above average rate.

So what has changed?

The first glaring thing to notice is Moustakas’ .350 BABIP. In his first four seasons, Moustakas had a BABIP of .260. This sky-high BABIP for Moustakas explains much of his success this season. He isn’t hitting for any more power than he did before. His rate of doubles, triples, and home runs in 2015 are right in line with his rate of extra base hits previously. He’s also walking less often than he had in the past (and striking out less often). The difference in Mike Moustakas from 2011-2014 and Mike Moustakas in 2015 is a big increase in the number of singles and a decrease in strikeouts. The chart below shows Moustakas’ 2011-2014 numbers pro-rated to his current 284 plate appearances (as of June 25). As you can see by the columns highlighted in yellow, the “new” Mike Moustakas has 21 more singles and 15 fewer strikeouts than the “old” Mike Moustakas would have.

I took his current stats and adjusted his .350 BABIP down to his pre-2015 career mark of .260, with all of his “eliminated” hits being singles, and his batting line drops to .251/.306/.401. This shows just how much BABIP is influencing Mike Moustakas’ breakout season. That .251/.306/.401 line is better than his pre-2015 career mark of .236/.290/.379, but it’s not that much better. It would only be a slight improvement and nothing like what he is actually doing this year.

So, Moustakas’ BABIP is the main reason for his success this season. Looking at his walk and strikeout rates, we find that he’s walking slightly less often than he had previously (5.4% this year compared to 6.4% from 2011-14). His strikeout rate is also down, from 16.7% coming into this season to 11.1% so far this year. Perhaps he is focusing more on making contact than he had in the past. This would fit in with what looks to be a philosophy of the franchise. The Royals have struck out less often this year than any team in baseball. Since 2010, the Royals have been the hardest team to strike out in four seasons (including 2015) and near the top of the list in strikeout avoidance in the other two seasons. For his part, Moustakas has steadily dropped his strikeout rate from 20.2% in 2012 down to this year’s 11.1%.

Early in the year, Jeff Sullivan wrote about Moustakas’ first opposite field home run . . . ever. He pointed out that Moustakas was hitting the ball to the opposite field during spring training much more often than he ever had. The Kansas City Star had an article in February about Moustakas working on hitting to the opposite field to combat the infield shift, which he had seen more of in 2014 than in previous seasons. In May, an article at Grantland continued with this theme, pointing out that Moustakas was leading the league in opposite field hits at the time and had dropped down a couple bunts against the shift in April. With this in mind, perhaps Moustakas’ .350 BABIP in 2015 is due to his newfound ability to hit to the opposite field?

With almost three months of the season in the books, we can look at some batted ball data. When it comes to hitting the ball to the opposite field, Moustakas is going the other way much more often than he had in the past.

Moustakas has hit the ball the other way 31.4% of the time in 2015, compared to 21.7% of the time in the four previous seasons. He’s hit the ball to center just about as often as ever, so all of that opposite field contact has meant fewer balls hit to his pull field. As for soft, medium, and hard hit percentage, his profile hasn’t changed much; just a slight increase in hard hit percentage.

Along with more balls being hit the other way, Moustakas has hit more balls on the ground. You’d expect a big guy like Moustakas to hit the ball in the air with power, which he did better than he ever had during the post-season last year when he hit five home runs in 55 plate appearances. Instead, this season Moustakas is hitting the ball on the ground more often. So far, it’s working.

Considering that Moustakas is hitting better than he ever has, perhaps he’s figured something out and this is the new Mike Moustakas, a guy who hits the ball on the ground and to the opposite field more often than he ever did and the result is a shiny .350 BABIP.

Except it doesn’t look like this is the case when you take a closer look. Moustakas may have been a new man during spring training and in the first part of the year but he’s looking more like his old self recently.

Using monthly splits means slicing up data into arbitrary points, I know, but it’s not hard to see a reverting to old form when looking at Moustakas’ monthly opposite field percentage numbers. He hit the ball the other way 39% of the time in April, around 31% of the time in May and 23% of the time in June so far. His directional hitting numbers in June are all fairly close to his pre-2015 numbers. It looks like Moustakas was doing something different early in the year but that is no longer the case.

The interesting thing is that he’s continued to be productive and continued to post a high BABIP (.377 in April, .301 in May, .373 in June). He’s also hit the ball hard more frequently in June (36.2%) than he had in April (26.8%) and May (24.0%) and he’s continued to hit more ground balls than he had in previous seasons.

I don’t know how to find data on how often teams are shifting against Moustakas and if that information is broken down by month. The Grantland article referenced above pointed out that he had been shifted against 70.7% of the time in 2014 and just under 60% of the time in 2015 (the article was posted on May 5) and suggested that his ability to hit to the opposite field in April may have resulted in teams shifting less often. If this is true, then his reversion back to pulling the ball in June could be Moustakas adjusting to the adjustments of the opposing defense. It could be that Moustakas began the year facing a shifted defense a high percentage of the time and responded by hitting to the opposite field (39% of the time in April). Then teams may have gone away from the shift against Moustakas sometime in May and Moustakas has responded by pulling the ball more often (going opposite field just 23% of the time in June). This is speculation, of course, since I don’t know the shifting patterns of defenses facing Moustakas.

On the other hand, it could be that the BABIP-Gods are smiling down upon him so far this year and all of this batted ball talk is meaningless. Personally, I’m tempted to lean this direction. Moustakas is currently 18^th out of 161 qualified hitters in BABIP. Of this group of hitters, Moustakas is 81^st in line drive percentage, 88^th in infield hit percentage, and 100^th in hard-hit percentage. He’s also hit infield flies at a very high rate (16.5% IFFB%), with just 10 hitters popping out more often than Moustakas. There are just too many indicators suggesting he won’t continue to have a .350 BABIP, especially if he’s no longer taking advantage of shifted defenses by hitting the ball to the opposite field like he did early in the season.

For their part, ZiPS and Steamer see improvement but not earth-shattering improvement. For the rest of the season, they project a .289 and .280 BABIP, respectively, with wOBAs of .322 and .324, making him a slightly above-average hitter going forward (104 wRC+ and 106 wRC+). That’s not as bad as the old Mike Moustakas but it’s not all that new-and-improved either.