Vlad the Omniscient

Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is a drive of nature. He’s probably the greatest hitters in baseball, and in a really apparent approach: he scalds the baseball to all fields and hits a bunch of dwelling runs. Last 12 months was a down 12 months, and he nonetheless left the yard 32 instances. He perennially data a number of the hardest-hit batted balls within the recreation. When you consider a prototypical first baseman, Guerrero’s mixture of energy and hit software might be what you’re picturing.

One of the spectacular components of Guerrero’s profession has been his means to restrict strikeouts whereas nonetheless attending to his energy. See, low strikeout charges aren’t an inherently great point. If you don’t strike out fairly often however don’t do any harm once you put the ball in play, you’re probably not making a superb commerce. Adam Frazier is an efficient instance of this kind of hitter. He struck out simply 12.1% of the time final 12 months, however posted an 81 wRC+ anyway as a result of when he did make contact, it was typically weak. You can in all probability conjure an image of this kind of hitter in your favourite group. You love that they by no means give away an at-bat, however hate that they by no means take issues into their very own palms and park one within the seats or smack one off the ability alley wall.

Guerrero doesn’t undergo from that downside. He struck out simply 16.4% of the time in 2022, however when he made contact, he wasn’t Fraziering it up on the market. Let’s get that in numbers: in his profession, Frazier is batting .317 with a .456 slugging share when he ends a plate look with a batted ball, good for a .327 wOBA. Guerrero is hitting .351 with a .616 slugging share, which works out to a .403 wOBA. One of these items will not be like the opposite. That’s why low strikeout charges are nice statistical markers for energy hitters and but broadly uninteresting within the inhabitants as an entire. What you do with these further balls in play issues a ton, as Michael Baumann lined yesterday, and with way more Pitbull references than I may even assume up.

Now that now we have that lined, I’ve obtained excellent news: Guerrero is barely placing out this season. You assume Frazier’s 12.1% mark final 12 months was good? It’s nonetheless early, however Guerrero is placing out simply 11.5% of the time in 2023. He’s additionally crushing the ball identical to at all times. He’s sporting a career-high hard-hit fee, and his barrel fee is the second-best of his profession, behind solely 2021, the very best season of his profession to this point. In different phrases, he’s obtained the “but what happens when he makes contact” a part of the equation lined.

It’s too early within the season to pay a ton of consideration to precisely what outcomes a participant has earned for his or her batted balls, nevertheless it’s not too early to take a look at the broad form of them and draw some conclusions. If you’re hitting the ball on the bottom a ton and never hitting it laborious once you do put it within the air, that’s dangerous. If you’re making loud aerial contact, that’s good. As you may count on from these hard-hit and barrel fee statistics I quoted up above, Guerrero is on the appropriate facet of all of those numbers. He’s within the ninety fifth percentile for hard-hit fee, the seventy fifth for barrel fee, and the 92nd for common exit velocity.

Statcast’s measure of luck-adjusted manufacturing, xwOBA, considers solely how laborious and at what launch angle you hit a batted ball to assign anticipated outcomes. It’s a great way of taking a look at early-season batting traces, as long as you deal with it with some cheap degree of suspicion. For instance, a participant subsisting on flares that simply clear the infield and land in entrance of the outfield in all probability gained’t preserve doing that endlessly. When it involves hard-hit baseballs, nonetheless, xwOBA does a superb job of trying previous the noise (Was the ball hit proper at a fielder? Was the wind notably tough that day?) and telling you ways good somebody’s contact has been.

Guerrero’s has been, in a phrase, wonderful. His xwOBA on contact this 12 months stands at a glowing .450, the second-best mark of his profession – you guessed it, behind solely 2021. That would’ve been a top-15 fee in baseball final 12 months, and it’s an 92nd-percentile mark this 12 months even with loads of gamers placing up small-sample scorching streaks. In different phrases, the ability is as promised: loud and frequent.

Combine that with Guerrero’s newfound lack of strikeouts, and he’s actually onto one thing. He’s hitting .364/.449/.470 to this point this 12 months – and xwOBA thinks he’s underneath-performing his uncooked batted ball metrics considerably, by a whopping 40 factors of wOBA, the distinction between Aaron Judge‘s 2022 (awe-inspiring, generationally great) and Paul Goldschmidt’s (wonderful, not Aaron Judge). That’s how you find yourself with solely three homers (he hit one other Tuesday evening) whereas placing the ball in play steadily and with energy.

That brings up the important thing query for me: how has Guerrero reduce down on his strikeouts? Not each discount in strikeouts sticks. Sometimes, you strike out much less by chasing dangerous pitches much less steadily. Sometimes, you do it by making extra contact. Sometimes, although, you do it as a result of pitchers throw their nastiest slider with one strike slightly than two, or as a result of they merely can’t execute on key pitches for a day. In the long term, these breaks of the sport even out, however we’re not in the long term; groups have performed simply over two weeks price of video games.

There’s even one other complication to think about: generally making extra contact isn’t a superb factor. The extra contact you make when chasing dangerous pitches, the less strikeouts you’ll accrue, however the extra weakly hit batted balls you’ll put in play. That’s notably true in the event you chase pitches that aren’t proper on the fringes of the zone. In 2022, when batters swung at and made contact with pitches within the “chase” zone – assume pitches that might by no means be referred to as strikes however nonetheless draw swings pretty usually – they hit .278 with a .345 slugging share.

That’s not what Guerrero is doing, although. Break the plate down into 4 zones – assault zones in Baseball Savant parlance – and the image turns into clear. First, let’s have a look at how usually he swings at pitches in every zone:

Doesn’t appear like there’s a lot to see right here. Fewer swings over the guts of the plate isn’t excellent, clearly, however that’s a tiny distinction that may disappear with two pitches he looks like swinging at tomorrow. Contact-wise, he’s not filling up the scoreboard by making contact with poor pitches. Instead, he’s connecting within the zone extra steadily and lacking simply as usually on pitches the place he wouldn’t have the ability to do a lot with them anyway:

That’s nice information. It does increase the query of how he’s strolling extra and placing out much less, although. The key to his good selections to this point lies in his mastery of the shadow zone, which sounds way more sinister than it truly is. The shadow zone is the fringes of the plate and the world simply exterior of that; “pitchers’ pitches,” in different phrases. When a pitcher hits their spot, it’s laborious to counter, as a result of these pitches are sometimes referred to as strikes, generate a good variety of whiffs, and don’t give up laborious contact even when hitters do join.

All you are able to do, as a hitter, is attempt to decrease the harm. Guerrero has accomplished simply that. When pitchers throw him a shadow zone pitch that clips the strike zone, he’s swinging extra usually than final 12 months; he swung 64% of the time final 12 months and is swinging 70% of the time this 12 months. When pitches simply miss, he’s swinging approach much less steadily. Last 12 months, he swung at 47% of these. This 12 months, it’s all the way down to 34.5%. To simplify issues, that’s excellent.

The shadow zone, as I discussed, is a pitcher’s greatest buddy and a hitter’s worst nightmare. Take a foul pitcher, grant him the power to solely hit the corners, and he’d be a superb pitcher straight away. Stated mathematically, pitchers saved 1.6 runs per 100 pitches within the shadow zone relative to league common throughout all pitches. If you assume 150 pitches per 9 innings, that’s 2.4 runs per 9 innings. That’s a tough estimate, however significantly: pitches that hug the boundaries of the strike zone on both facet are actually, actually good.

Last 12 months, Vlad noticed 1,092 pitches within the shadow zone. He was 10.9 runs under common on these pitches. On each different pitch mixed, he was 28.8 runs above common over 1,504 pitches. In different phrases, he was a foul hitter (-1 runs per 100 pitches) within the shadow zone and an elite one (+1.9 runs per 100 pitches) in every single place else. That’s how hitting works. It’s simply downright laborious to cope with well-placed pitches; it’s a lot simpler to take clear balls and hammer clear strikes.

This season remains to be in its infancy, however uh, he’s seen 119 pitches within the shadow zone, and he’s produced outcomes 1.6 runs above league common (throughout all pitches) in opposition to them. He’s taking those which can be juuuuust barely balls and swinging on the ones which can be strikes. That must be almost inconceivable. Only 15 out of 247 hitters who noticed not less than 500 shadow zone pitches produced outcomes higher than the general league common on them. Only 4 – Freddie Freeman, Goldschmidt, Joc Pederson, and Michael Harris II – had been one run above common per 100 pitches.

Put one other approach, this talent is sort of a hitting cheat code. Everyone is nice on pitches proper down the center, or pitches that bounce six inches in entrance of the plate. Fine, perhaps David Fletcher and Javier Báez would disagree, however nearly everyone seems to be nice in opposition to them. Guerrero is very nice in opposition to them, what along with his prodigious energy and nice contact abilities. Pitchers lose on these pitches and make it up within the shadows.

Only, not in opposition to Vlad. He’s going full on Neo in The Matrix, watching the pitches in sluggish movement and passing on the dangerous ones whereas swinging on the good ones. He’s additionally making extra contact when he swings at pitches over the guts of the plate. What are you presupposed to do in the event you’re a pitcher?

The amusing reply is “nothing.” What are you presupposed to do in case your good pitches don’t work in your favor and your dangerous pitches get despatched to Bedford Park, which Google informs me is the Toronto neighborhood of alternative for households with young children? You ought to in all probability make use of the technique that Preacher Roe memorably claimed to make use of in opposition to Stan Musial – “throw him four wide ones and then try to pick him off first base.”

More realistically, what they should do is wait. The odds that Guerrero can preserve displaying monk-like self-discipline on pitches which can be lacking the strike zone by fractions of an inch are vanishingly low. Few hitters in baseball are able to doing that and fewer nonetheless immediately develop the talent after years within the league. Even if he’s higher at it – and that appears each probably and terrifying for opposing pitchers – he can’t preserve being this good.

On the opposite hand, he in all probability gained’t proceed to hit for as little energy as he has so far. As we lined earlier, he’s been completely crushing the ball to this point this 12 months, however he solely has a handful of extra-base hits to indicate for all that loud contact. That’s not going to maintain occurring; the laborious contact goes to begin to both depart the yard or discover outfield gaps. Guerrero was already a terrifying hitter; if he’s beginning to flip the locations the place he’s presupposed to be the weakest into strengths, it could be a protracted 12 months for Blue Jays opponents. Well, it’s already going to be lengthy – they’ve obtained some hitters, perhaps you’ve heard – however Guerrero may make it even longer.

All statistics on this article are as of Monday, April 17.