There are lots of the explanation why the Astros are off to a chilly begin in 2023 and, as of Thursday morning, are wanting up on the Angels and Rangers within the AL West standings. While their Pythagorean report suggests they’ve really performed higher than their report, their April offense has been a particularly unbalanced one. To a big extent, the AL’s fifth-place staff in runs scored has been pushed primarily by Yordan Alvarez and Kyle Tucker.

The Astros at the moment have three positions with an OPS underneath .600 for the season: catcher, first base, and designated hitter. Catcher as an offense sink was at all times anticipated; no person had a secret perception that Martín Maldonado had offensive efficiency as a part of his talent set. Designated hitter ought to enhance as soon as it has a smaller dose of David Hensley and Corey Julks on the place. That leaves first base, the house of José Abreu, the longtime White Sox slugger who was Houston’s greatest signing this winter. He has struggled within the first eighth of the season, hitting .266, however with so little secondary contribution that his OPS stands at a depressing .605. Given his age, three-year deal, and the need to get at the very least some offensive contribution from first base, how frightened ought to the Astros be about him?

The normal perception, at the very least amongst Astros followers, is that Abreu has traditionally been a sluggish starter, and that any concern will maintain itself, however I feel that’s too straightforward a “solution” to his early-season struggles. First off, the supposition that he has traditionally been a worse hitter in April is factually 100% correct. Among gamers within the wild-card period, he has one of many largest splits between April and rest-of-season OPS (OPS is definitely adequate for an examination corresponding to this). Since the beginning of the 1995 season, there are 300 gamers who've gathered at the very least 750 plate appearances in April; Abreu’s profession cut up — 90 factors of OPS — is giant sufficient to make the highest 20 and, except I’m miscounting, sufficient to rank him third amongst lively gamers:

Coldest April Hitters, 1995-2023

Offense is mostly lowest in April, so some type of shortfall is just not sudden. The 300 gamers on this class, as a bunch, had a .794 OPS in April and an .806 OPS the remainder of the yr. With 1 / 4 of 1,000,000 April plate appearances between them and a complete of practically two million plate appearances, a 12-point OPS is a major one, and Abreu’s historical past dwarfs this one.

So, he’s a foul participant in April, and all the pieces will simply work outself out? Not so quick.

While Abreu has struggled at occasions in April, that doesn’t essentially make it significant or predictive. Just how vital are month-to-month splits throughout the league as an entire? The historic OPS deviation between April and the remainder of the yr, other than the 12-point OPS acquire as an entire, seems to be usually distributed; within the Shapiro-Wilks check, we can't reject the null speculation that the distribution is regular on the 95% degree of significance, although we will on the 99% degree. In different phrases, the historic outcomes of April versus the remainder of the season for long-time main leaguers is just not distributed drastically totally different than from what you'll anticipate for those who knew beforehand that it was random. But simply because issues act like regular distributions doesn’t imply that they are random. Further investigation is required, moderately than simply shouting p-values at folks.

I made a decision to assemble a quite simple mannequin of predicting subsequent yr’s April OPS by solely figuring out a participant’s earlier seasonal OPS and their profession April OPS splits. Knowing the precise April end result was vital, however mildly so. The most correct mannequin of predicting subsequent yr’s April OPS consisted of round 95% final yr’s OPS and 5% the participant’s April/rest-of-season OPS splits. To put it in easier phrases: the truth that Abreu has underperformed the remainder of the season by 90 factors of OPS in April doesn’t imply that it’s predictive in a way that might lead us to conclude he’ll have a 90-point enchancment going ahead. The precise quantity finally ends up at about 22 factors, about 10 greater than the group as an entire.

A 22-point enchancment in OPS for Abreu wouldn’t be sufficient to make him a contributor this season — nor, for that matter, can be a 90-point enchancment. This doesn’t imply that Abreu is doomed to scrub out of the majors within the first yr of his new contract — simply that shouting “April” isn’t a panacea to his early-season points this yr. So we have now to take a look at extra conventional efficiency metrics.

There are some extremely regarding points in Abreu’s early-season profile this yr that weren’t current in different early begins. When he struggles, he nonetheless typically hits the ball extraordinarily exhausting. This yr, his exit velocity has averaged 86.6 mph with an general hard-hit charge of 36.7% — extraordinarily low numbers for him. He was awful final April, hitting .217/.308/.348, however he was nonetheless crushing pitches he related with, leading to a 94.6 mph common EV and a hard-hit charge of 59.6%. He additionally struggled in April 2021, hitting .213/.296/.394, however with a 92.1 mph EV and a 53.7% hard-hit charge — not fairly nearly as good as 2022, however worlds higher than the place these numbers at the moment stand. He received off to good begins in 2018 and ’19, in order that they’re not significantly useful, and he crushed the ball in August of 2020 (I didn't embrace any 2020 seasons within the April numbers, because the yr was simply too bizarre).

What troubles me isn’t simply that Abreu isn’t crushing pitches, however that they go hand-in-hand with worse plate self-discipline. Statcast has a 35.5% out-of-zone swing proportion for him in 2023, his highest determine since his early seasons with the White Sox. And it’s not only a byproduct of a extra aggressive strategy; his 61.8% in-zone swing proportion this yr can be the bottom of his profession if it endured for the remainder of 2023. He isn’t actually becoming into his frequent (however not yearly) sample of April struggles; he’s hitting the ball way more softly, swinging at extra unhealthy pitches and never swinging at extra good pitches.

Abreu’s return to a free-swinging strategy on the plate is one thing that developed late in 2022, not one thing that simply occurred. He had a superb first half, hitting .304/.387/.470 for an wRC+ of 147. He was one of many most disciplined White Sox hitters, too, with a 25.3% StatCast out-of-zone swing proportion, larger than solely Danny Mendick and Yasmani Grandal. In the second half, that mark jumped to 39.3%; second-half Abreu was 50% extra prone to swing at an out-of-zone pitch than first-half Abreu. His second-half numbers have been nonetheless a wholesome .305/.366/.414, however that represented a 77-point OPS dropoff from the primary half, although he was nonetheless hitting the ball very exhausting.

So what explains these numbers as an entire? Generally talking, they’re in line with an getting older hitter with declining bat velocity. Through 2020, Abreu did essentially the most harm in opposition to fastballs, however even with a wRC+ of 131 in 2021 and ’22 mixed, he was solely a mean hitter in opposition to fastballs. It appeared for a time he was compensating by being extra selective on the plate, as within the first half of final season. But with out that selectivity, he’s hitting worse pitches and may now not make up for it by the uncooked energy when he connects. That’s my speculation, at the very least.

None of because of this Abreu is doomed. ZiPS nonetheless expects a wRC+ of 126 for the remainder of the yr, and essentially the most pessimistic projection system — THE BAT on this case — nonetheless sees a wRC+ of 110. There’s no cause for Astros followers, the entrance workplace, or Abreu himself to hit the panic button and get the purple klaxon blaring. But there are very actual causes to fret about him. A change in strategy on the plate could also be essential moderately than merely anticipating all the pieces to proper itself with the calendar web page turns. Baseball is a sport of fixed changes, and the José Abreu of 2023 could now not be capable to succeed with the similar strategy of the José Abreu of 2014.

Content Source: blogs.fangraphs.com