Zigging When Everyone Else Zags

The story of the 2017 MLB season is the launch angle. Batters have discovered that swinging hard, and upwards, yields a few more strikeouts and a lot more home runs.

And so we have record numbers of both.

The result? Forty MLB batters sport SLG percentages of .500 or better, double the number two years ago. Nineteen sluggers blasted 30+ homers in 2015. We've got 35 this year with 28 or more and three weeks left in the season.

Twenty-plus home run hitters this season include such luminaries as:

Javier Baez,
Nick Castellanos,
Didi Gregorious (pictured left),
Marwin Gonzalez,
Scooter Gennett,
Brett Gardner,
Tim Beckham,
Ryon Healy,
Francisco Lindor
Yonder Alonso,
Travis Shaw.
Not to mention a host of rookies.


The 30+ club includes Steven Souza and Justin Smoak.

This is a collection of middle infielders, speed merchants, fourth outfielders and guys who never hit 20 homers in their entire Minor League careers. 

And bucking this trend are two veteran sluggers having among the best seasons of their careers.

First. let's take Colorado Rockies' cornerman Mark Reynolds. If ever a player was designed for Denver, it's this big fly wind machine. Reynolds has been a three true outcomes hitter his whole career, hitting 30+ home runs in his full seasons while fanning more than 200 times.

As his batting average dipped into Mendoza territory 2013-2015, Reynolds' batting prowess slipped below average, a bad place for a fielder whose best position is DH. In Denver, it stood to reason that all the fly balling would pay off.

Au contraire, mon ami.  With the Rockies, Reynolds has reduced his flyball tendencies by 20% and hit 11% more ground balls, just as the league has switched tactics. The result: he has goosed his batting average by 60 points while adding back a few walks.

Make no mistake, Mark Reynolds is still a slugger. His slammed his 29th today, a grand slam that kept the Rockies three games ahead in the NL Wild Card race. He's just less of an all-or-nothing hitter.

Vottomatic
Joey Votto never had to worry about all that. One of the game's most intellectual and effective hitters, Votto has five times led the NL in OBP, with a .427 lifetime mark. Votto possesses Hall of Fame-caliber power, average and plate discipline, but evidently decided this year that swinging too hard was robbing him of results. His OPS sank all the way down to .985 last season.

So in 2017, Votto has cut down on his swing, particularly with two strikes. It's bizarre to watch a 6'2", 220-pound slugger grip the bat mid-tape, particularly in this all-or-nothing era, but the results speak for themselves: he's reduced his strikeout rate nearly in half.  Better yet, it doesn't appear Joey is any less Vottomatic, as his 34 homers attest.

Going against the grain has probably saved Mark Reynolds' starting job and kept Joey Votto in the MVP discussion. It will be interesting to see how many batters take a page from either of their books next year.

Who Has Invaded Mark Reynolds' Body?

For years, the Sheriff of Swattingham was also the Constable of Whiffshire. Mark Reynolds could be counted on to fan 200 times, swat 30+ homers and get within handshake distance of Mario Mendoza's batting average. 

The total package averaged out to a mediocre, if dangerous, hitter. Combined with weak defense at third, first and the outfield, Reynolds had become a below average player and has been losing playing time since 2012.

The big Virginian has meandered to Colorado, his seventh team at age 32, where they're plugging any body they can find into a last place roster. The thin air would seem to be the last place you'd want a guy who doesn't make a lot of contact.

Which is what Reynolds may have said to himself. And so, through a quarter of a season, he's been someone else.

To date, Reynolds is channeling -- I don't know, Rod Carew? He's slapping singles all over the yard, eschewing the long ball and holding his own at the cold corner. 

In 129 plate appearances so far, Reynolds has struck out just 36 times -- a mere trifle by the standards of a guy who fanned on 641 times in three seasons. He's hitting .330 -- 100 points above his lifetime mark -- with only two dingers. 

Playing less than fulltime, Reynolds is having his best season since '09 when he pounded 44 homers and swiped 24 bases. If necessity is the mother of invention, the necessity of extending a career that appeared to be waning has been the mother of Mark Reynold's reinvention.

A Tale of Two Sluggers

It was the best of starts. It was the worst of starts. Two all-or-nothing sluggers are providing their teams with a bit of all and a bit of nothing, and the contrast is instructive.

Mark Reynolds is now donning Indian garb, swinging his Three True Outcomes stick in Cleveland.  Reynolds is the owner of three 204+ strikeout seasons, four 74+ walk seasons and three 32+ home run seasons. 

He's following in the gigantic footsteps of 285-pound Adam Dunn, he of 409 lifetime home runs, 2055 whiffs and 1173 free passes. The Big Donkey is coming off a season in which he batted just .204 but gave the White Sox 105 walks and 41 home runs.

For both these players, it's really all about batting average. Even amassing big piles of walks and long balls, they're not real valuable without a few other hits sprinkled in. Dunn's hitting was 12% above average last year; add in his utter lack of baserunning or defensive value and he was pretty close to replacement level despite leaving the yard 41 times. With Reynolds, it's the same equation with a little more defensive and baserunning prowess, but fewer jogs to first.

With one-tenth of the season in the books, Reynolds is getting it done for the Tribe, collecting seven homers and an 1.128 OPS. Dunn is coming undone: three homers and a .454 OPS. One other detail is worth noting:

Mark Reynolds .298/391/.737, 8BB/15K, 7HR
Adam Dunn .108/.159/.295  3BB/26K, 3HR

Dunn is fanning in nearly half his plate appearances, which leaves little opportunity to be productive. Reynolds is making more contact, which leads to more of everything good.

This bodes very poorly for the White Sox, who are paying Dunn for his prodigious Big Fly tendencies accompanied by tolerable batting averages in the .230s. Since he arrived on the South Side in 2011, he's averaged .179/.307/.374, 28 homers, 95 BB and 219 K per 150 games. Not only is Chicago not getting its $15 million worth, it's not getting roster spot value. And the small sample size excuse doesn't work here because it's 289 games of data.

It's very early in 2013 and sluggers are notoriously streaky, so there's hope for Adam Dunn. The tables have turned and now Mark Reynolds is Dunn's guide. But he'll have to dig back to 2010 to turn things around.

The Curious Case of Mark Reynolds

The Arizona Diamondbacks signed their enigmatic third baseman, Mark Reynolds, to a new three-year, $14.5 million contract, with an $11 million option in 2013. If they are paying for uniqueness, they have their man. If they’re paying for quality, it could be a roller-coaster ride.

Reynolds is a 27-year-old baseball-launching device, personally responsible for a measurable portion of the Gulf Stream when he swings. If you know of him, it’s likely because of his record 223 strikeouts last year.

Reynolds had an All-Star caliber year in ‘09, batting .260 with 44 home runs. He was worth 4-5 wins relative to a replacement-level cornerman. As long as he bats .260, he can keep his OBP at .350, a reasonable escort to a formidable .550 SLG. The problem is, when you whiff in 39% of your at-bats, that’s a tall order.

Last year, Reynolds batted .423 on balls he put into play (BABIP) in order to achieve that overall batting average of .260. The average batsman posts a BABIP around .300-.320. Perhaps Mark Reynolds, because of his gargantuan cuts, is smacking the ball harder on those occasions when he makes contact and is therefore more likely to produce a high BABIP. But .423 doesn’t sound sustainable. It sounds like torrid hitting, masked by a high strikeout rate.

Let’s say instead, that Reynolds strikes out, walks, and homers at the same rate in 2010 as in 2009, but only hits an unusual .390 on balls in play. Lo and behold, he’s a .239/.328/.483 hitter with six fewer home runs. Not bad if you’re goal is to collect a major league paycheck, but not far from a backup role.

For what it's worth, the major projection systems expect very much what I've outlined, pegging him at roughly .245/.335/.490. There's a word for a career trend line like this one: uh-oh.

The Snakes feel like they have nailed down a key puzzle piece as he enters his prime, and maybe they have. However, if Reynolds can’t keep hitting at last year’s pace, we may have already seen his peak, and the $11 million option will be a real knee-slapper. 

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Blowin' In the Wind

About a year ago I addressed Mark Reynolds' future, pointing out how hard it is for a wind turbine like him to be a productive hitter. In a nutshell, a guy who strikes out 200 times a year has eliminated a third of his opportunities to create a positive result. That means he has to be wildly productive in those remaining plate appearances.

This year, that's exactly what he's doing. So far in 2009, the Diamondbacks third baseman has stepped to the plate 487 times. He's whiffed on 158 occasions, about a third of the time and on pace to break his own K record of 204 set last year.

In the remaining 335 plate appearances, Reynolds has walked 59 times and been hit by four pitches, leaving 268 at bats. For Reynolds to achieve even a mediocre .250 batting average, he has to hit .396 in those non-strikeout situations. (This is a statistic that is regularly kept these days -- BABIP -- batting average on balls in play.)

In 2009 Reynolds has passed that exam with flying colors. He is hitting a whacky .451 on balls in play. Moreover, 37 of those 122 hits have been home runs. When he makes contact, Mark Reynolds has a one in seven chance of banging one out. That's pretty historic, even given the dinger-friendly contours of the BoB.

For the year, Reynolds' line is .285/.376/.603, a level that would put him in the MVP discussion on an alien planet that contained no Albert Pujols. Of course, the big question is whether an otherworldly .451 BABIP is sustainable. The answer is no. And yes.

Ordinarily, when you see that a player is hitting .451 on balls in play, you are staring into a crystal ball flashing "regression alert!" Most hitters live around the .333 mark, and anything far outside that is a reflection of luck more than skill. But Mark Reynolds is not any player. Obviously, he is swinging for the fences every time he bats. The two consequences of this approach are that he fans at a record-breaking rate and he crushes the ball when he does make contact. Hitting the ball hard is the formula for getting hits.

Reynolds' first two seasons presage these results. He hit .430 and .395 on balls in play in '07 and '08, walking and homering at lower rates. His approach has been consistent and he's improved a little. That, his age (26) and his build (athletic, not stocky) are good signs for his future. Mark Reynolds can be a very good hitter for much of the next decade even while stirring up the breeze.
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