We live in a visual world. Infographics, macros and memes have replaced long-form articles and the written word. With that in mind, I’m trying something a little new.
My player analysis articles often look at a range of player skills to provide a fairly comprehensive analysis. The following article uses a few of my favorite visual player analysis tools to highlight a key issue for three players: Matt Holliday, Matt Carpenter and Corey Kluber. I’ll call it fun with pictures.
Fun with Pictures
Matt Holliday
Holliday has had a strong start to his Yankees career. Expectations had fallen because of last year’s struggles and he has rebounded in many respects. All of this has happened despite a huge drop in contact for Holliday that has left him with a career-worst 27.5% strikeout rate.
Sometimes pictures can convey the magnitude of a skill drop better than saying his contract rate has dropped 10.1%. The good news for Holliday’s fantasy owners: An increase in line drives between 10° and 19° and a 24% HR/FB rate have helped keep his batting average from falling off a cliff.
Fantasy owners should expect a decent amount of regression in batting average, if the contact issues continue. His increased HR/FB reflects a near doubling of the percentage of hard hit fly balls he has pulled (hard hit pulled fly balls have a 63.3% HR/FB). Expect some but not a lot of regression in home runs (12 HR on 11.0 xHR), since the jump in HR/FB probably represents a conscious approach by a veteran hitter to take advantage of Yankee Stadium’s short porch.
Note: Pic courtesy of Fangraphs wonderful “Graphs” functionality from player pages.
Matt Carpenter
Matt Carpenter has fallen short of expectations in 2017. Last season he had one of the strongest batted ball profiles in major league baseball. He hit line drives (26.2%) and fly balls (43.2%) at a rate well above league average and he hit those fly balls hard (51.3%). While he had good stats, Carpenter’s profile and skills had many people (myself included) dreaming of greatness.
Then the launch angles changed. The picture above shows Carpenter’s launch angle charts (courtesy of Baseball Savant) for 2016 and 2017. Carpenter has exchanged line drives (21.6% in 2017) for fly balls (49.6%), but not just any fly balls. Carpenter has increased the rate of balls hit above 40° by about 8% (batted balls above 40° have a 0.028 BABIP & ISO) while his hard drives and fly balls between 19° and 39° (key home run and extra base hit launch angles) have dropped by 2.6%.
Those batted balls show up as the huge gray area at the top of Carpenter’s 2017 launch angle profile. Very little red exists above 35° let alone 40°. Compare the 2017 profile to 2016, where flashes of gray exist at higher launch angles, but the solid red block sits between 10° and 25°, great launch angles for high BABIP and power outcomes. Players do damage between those launch angles, while they might as well strike out above 40°.
Note: Since beginning my analysis of Carpenter, he has hit two home runs in three days. He may have rediscovered the good launch angles.
Corey Kluber
Velocity readings for pitchers have been a big story early in the season, particularly with Statcast replacing Pitchf/x as the pitch tracker of choice for major league baseball. One pitcher who has not seen a jump in their velocity with the switch in systems: Corey Kluber. Since the beginning of the season, he has lost a tick on his hard stuff from 2016 (chart courtesy of Brooks Baseball).
While Kluber continues to pile up the strikeouts, batters have hit him hard in 2017, as his hard hit rate has jumped 14% all the way up to 41.6%. Fantasy owners had hoped that his recent stint on the disabled list might have provided the rest he needed to recalibrate, but his velocity remained down in his first start back last week.
Kluber did change his pitch selection in his first start back, however, throwing 42% sliders (some tracking systems classify it as a curveball and other classify it as both). We don’t know whether the change reflects an approach specifically designed for an opponent or a longer-term adjustment to the decrease in velocity and effectiveness of his fastballs, but Kluber threw the highest percentage of breaking balls in an outing since the beginning of 2016 against the A’s.
Fantasy owners should monitor his starts closely to see whether he can limit hard contact like he has in previous seasons.
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