Skills: Story, Moreland & Wacha
Every day early this season, I’ve been combing through the league leaders (both good and bad) of key skills. By skills, I don’t mean home runs or batting average, but instead the underlying skills that produce those statistics. For example, instead of looking at strikeout rate, I like to look instead at swinging strike rate or contact rate to see whether players are making contact.
This early in the season with small sample sizes, skills are better indicators of adjustments or changes in the future value of players than the statistic that receives most of the focus in our game. With that in mind, here are some quick thoughts on players who are standing out because of a skill or two they’re currently displaying, whether good or bad.
Trevor Story
The skill that jumps out from Story’s profile is his contact rate, which has plummeted by 11.1% early in 2017 down to 61.8%. Story’s contact rate wasn’t great to begin with, so the decrease raises some major red flags (and is a primary reason for his 41.0% strikeout rate).
Story’s contact rate is 4th worst among qualified hitters thus far, only two spots better than Byron Buxton. His swinging strike rate is also 8th worst. One of the major culprits seems to be struggles against breaking and offspeed pitches low and away and I’d venture a guess that his hand injury from last season is still impacting his hitting (this is pure conjecture).
Hope still exists for Story, who is 4th in exit velocity since the first week of the season, but only if he can make more contact, which should lower his strikeout rate, and better contact, which should increase the number of hard hit fly balls and line drives he hits. Those are two skills that are much better to lead the league in.
Mitch Moreland
Quick: Who leads MLB in hard hit rate? If you’re reading this article, which you clearly are, the answer should be easy: Mitch Moreland (60.0%). That’s right, as of April 20, 2017, Mitch Moreland leads every hitter in baseball in a positive category.
In addition to hitting the ball hard, Moreland has also been more selective in his swings. The percentage of pitches outside the zone that he’s swinging at is down 4.2% and while his contact is also down, he’s driving the ball when he does make contact.
Moreland’s exit velocity is 10th in MLB at 93.6mph and his exit velocity on fly balls ranks 13th at 95.6mph. While he only has one home run so far this season, he’s at 4.1 xHR for the season according to xStats.org. In other words, he’s due.
Moreland will not be winning a batting title anytime soon (his .487 BABIP will be regressing considerably), but the power appears real and batting fifth in a Red Sox lineup with OBP studs in front of him should present plenty of opportunities to drive in runs. It’s not David Ortiz, but it’ll play.
Michael Wacha
Wacha had a tough 2016, posting his first ERA over 3.38. He did it in style, putting up a 5.09 ERA. Amazingly, Wacha is still only 25 years old despite the feeling he’s been around forever. In 2017, he looks to be back to his old ways and then some.
Wacha currently leads the league in exit velocity against at 82.6mph and is missing bats, which is a terrific combination of skills. In fact, Michael Wacha of 2017 is outperforming Best of Michael Wacha (not including his 64 inning debut in 2013) in both of these skill areas.
2017 Wacha vs. 2016 Wacha vs. Best of Wacha
Is Wacha reaching a new level?O-contact % | Z-contact % | SwStr % | Hard hit % | |
---|---|---|---|---|
2017 Wacha | 58.1% | 82.4% | 12.3% | 21.6% |
2016 Wacha | 72.0% | 88.1% | 8.1% | 30.0% |
Best of Wacha | 71.3% | 82.7% | 10.2% | 29.7% |
One possible reason for the improvement is his change up and increased velocity. Wacha’s changeup has a 30.6% swinging strike rate, 42.1% contact rate and batters have yet to get a hit on the 36 changeups they’ve seen from him. While Wacha’s velocity is up across the board–not surprising given some of the changes to velocity readings this spring–his chageup is up 3.4mph to 88.4mph.
Whatever the cause, Wacha’s skills point toward a return to solid ERAs and WHIPs with the addition of an elevated strikeout rate. Those are numbers all fantasy owners can get behind.