Monitoring Yandy Díaz’s Bat | FanGraphs Baseball

This can be a bounce-back season for Yandy Díaz, and never in a great way. After two straight seasons with a wRC+ above 145, the Rays first baseman is at 106 to date in 2024. When Jay Jaffe checked in on him on June 13, Díaz had simply climbed out of a gap. Via Might 10, Díaz was operating a wRC+ of simply 77 with a 90.9 mph common exit velocity. Since that date, he’s been at 128, and his exit velocity has jumped all the best way to 93.7 mph. Much more essential, he was operating a 60.3% groundball charge on Might 10, however has run a 53.3% groundball charge after that time. For the season, that also leaves him at 56.4%, highest amongst all certified gamers, however for Díaz, that handful of share factors has all the time been the distinction between being a great hitter and being among the best in baseball. When his groundball charge is up, his wRC+ is down, and vice versa. The connection is obvious to see:

MLB’s new bat monitoring information put the difficulty in stark aid. Blasts are a mix of two metrics: quick swings and squared up swings. The official definitions are right here, however if you happen to swing arduous and also you barrel the ball up, you’ll find yourself with a blast. That’s a great factor, as a result of to date this season, blasts have a wOBA of .731, and a barrel charge of 27.7%. For Díaz, nonetheless, these numbers are .423 and 16.0%. He’s tied with Gunnar Henderson for fourth in baseball with 100 blasts, however simply 5 of these blasts have became residence runs. Of the 260 gamers who’ve hit at the very least 25 blasts this season, that 5.0% residence run charge places him in 248th place. Why? why. He has a launch angle of 1 on his blasts, tied for 259th out of 260. On the left, with the infield dust nearly fully obscured by dots, is Díaz’s spray chart on blasts. On the appropriate, with residence runs sprinkled liberally on high, is Henderson’s.

On the subject of blasts on the bottom, Díaz is out in first place with a wholesome lead. Sixty of hits blasts have been groundballs. Henderson is in second with 48. Simply as essential, Díaz will get even much less manufacturing than you’d anticipate out of these balls as a result of he actually buries them within the floor. He has a -11 launch angle on these groundball blasts. Of the 84 gamers who’ve hit at the very least 20 groundball blasts, that’s absolutely the lowest. In consequence, Díaz’s .207 wOBA on groundball blasts is method beneath the league common of .377.

Whereas these numbers are new and interesting, I might guess that I haven’t but advised you something that you simply couldn’t have intuited for your self: Díaz hits the ball arduous, and when he can elevate it he’s nice, however that doesn’t occur all that usually. From this level on, I’m going to depart his launch angle points behind, as a result of the bat monitoring numbers present us one thing that’s much more fascinating. I’m not as sure find out how to interpret it, however I feel it’s price sharing all the identical.

Amongst certified gamers, Díaz’s 18.6% blast-per-swing charge is tied for fifth. Right here’s the highest 10 in blasts per swing amongst certified batters, however check out the column on the appropriate. That’s quick swing charge, the share of swings the place the bat velocity reaches 75 mph. One among this stuff shouldn’t be just like the others.

There’s Díaz’s at no. 5, however have a look at his quick swing charge in comparison with all people else’s. It’s miles behind theirs. Solely two persons are inside 20 share factors of Díaz! Right here’s what that appears like in a scatter plot.

Díaz swings arduous very often if you happen to evaluate him to the league as an entire, however for somebody who crushes the ball as usually as he does, his quick swing charge is positively miniscule. Let’s return to our high 10 record and add one other column, blasts-per-fast-swing charge. We’re simply dividing the primary column by the second column, however now it reveals us how usually batters sq. up the ball once they swing arduous. I don’t suppose the information behind these numbers are good, however they’re undoubtedly adequate to present us an impression of what’s occurring.

Apart from Díaz and Stanton, all of the batters right here sq. up their quick swings roughly a 3rd of the time. Stanton, who’s constitutionally incapable of swinging at something lower than hyper velocity, is at 19.3%. Díaz is at 58.5%. Fairly merely, when Díaz swings arduous, he doesn’t miss. That’s additionally true of him extra usually. Amongst certified gamers, his 12.4% whiff charge is second solely to the one and solely Luis Arraez. Díaz is much more of an outlier on this graph.

Understanding what we find out about bat velocity — that arduous swings lead to louder contact however extra misses, whereas softer swings lead to softer contact however a greater likelihood of squaring the ball up — my first thought was that possibly Díaz has this entire factor discovered. When he sees a pitch that he can actually crush, he swings out of his footwear, and when he doesn’t, he does his greatest Arraez impression, throttling down and discovering a approach to put the barrel on the ball. However that’s not what’s occurring. Utilizing the information from the bat monitoring leaderboard, I went forward and reverse engineered Díaz’s contact charge on swings that aren’t quick swings. (As soon as once more, I don’t suppose these numbers are good, however they’re adequate to present us an general impression.) When Díaz swings arduous, he squares up the ball 58.5% of the time, however on swings beneath 75 mph, he squares up the ball simply 21.3% of the time. That’s not dangerous, but it surely’s solely somewhat bit above common.

Like I stated earlier, I’m not constructive of what’s occurring. I undoubtedly don’t suppose it’s a coincidence that Díaz is operating a contact charge that’s a full 15 share factors above his profession charge in the identical season that his exit velocity, hard-hit charge, fly ball charge, and pull charge have all taken a tumble. He’s elevated his contact charge by letting the ball get deeper and by swinging at pitches which might be more durable to elevate and more durable to tug.

He’s seeing much more sinkers, and the pitches he’s swinging at are decrease and farther exterior. Nonetheless, if we return to our dividing line of Might 10, we are able to see that Díaz has modified his method. He’s swinging at extra inside pitches, and since the bat is normally shifting sooner on inside pitches due to the need to fulfill the ball farther out entrance, his quick swing charge has gone from 27% earlier than that date to 35% after it.

Díaz has some of the fascinating talent units in all of baseball. He’s able to hitting the ball as arduous as nearly anybody within the recreation, whereas making contact extra usually than everybody aside from actually Luis Arraez. That’s simply not normally how issues work. Any time he manages to direct that energy someplace apart from the dust in entrance of residence plate, he’s among the best hitters on the planet. I want we may evaluate all these bat monitoring numbers to those he ran final season. It could be fascinating to see if he was nonetheless such an outlier by way of quick swing charge whereas he was performing like a extra conventional energy hitter. For now, it’s only a enjoyable truth, however hopefully we’ll be taught extra in regards to the relationships between these abilities as soon as we now have greater than half a season of knowledge.