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 this point 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 necessary, he was operating a 60.3% groundball fee on Might 10, however has run a 53.3% groundball fee 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 at all times been the distinction between being a very good hitter and being among the best in baseball. When his groundball fee 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 mixture of two metrics: quick swings and squared up swings. The official definitions are right here, however in the event you swing onerous and also you barrel the ball up, you’ll find yourself with a blast. That’s a very good factor, as a result of to this point this season, blasts have a wOBA of .731, and a barrel fee 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 become dwelling runs. Of the 260 gamers who’ve hit not less than 25 blasts this season, that 5.0% dwelling run fee 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 grime virtually fully obscured by dots, is Díaz’s spray chart on blasts. On the precise, with dwelling runs sprinkled liberally on high, is Henderson’s.
In the case 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 necessary, 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 not less than 20 groundball blasts, that’s absolutely the lowest. Consequently, Díaz’s .207 wOBA on groundball blasts is means beneath the league common of .377.
Whereas these numbers are new and engaging, I might guess that I haven’t but instructed you something that you just couldn’t have intuited for your self: Díaz hits the ball onerous, 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 go away his launch angle points behind, as a result of the bat monitoring numbers present us one thing that’s much more attention-grabbing. I’m not as sure easy methods to interpret it, however I believe it’s price sharing all the identical.
Amongst certified gamers, Díaz’s 18.6% blast-per-swing fee is tied for fifth. Right here’s the highest 10 in blasts per swing amongst certified batters, however check out the column on the precise. That’s quick swing fee, the share of swings the place the bat velocity reaches 75 mph. One in all these items just isn’t just like the others.
2024 Blast Masters
SOURCE: Baseball Savant
There’s Díaz’s at no. 5, however take a look at his quick swing fee in comparison with everyone 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 onerous very often in the event you examine him to the league as an entire, however for somebody who crushes the ball as usually as he does, his quick swing fee is positively miniscule. Let’s return to our high 10 listing and add one other column, blasts-per-fast-swing fee. We’re simply dividing the primary column by the second column, however now it exhibits us how usually batters sq. up the ball after they swing onerous. I don’t assume the info behind these numbers are excellent, however they’re positively adequate to present us an impression of what’s happening.
2024 Blast Masters Redux
| Participant | Blast/Swing | Quick Swing% | Blast/Quick Swing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Yandy Díaz | 18.6% | 31.8% | 58.5% |
| Carlos Correa | 18.6% | 48.9% | 38.0% |
| William Contreras | 17.8% | 50.5% | 35.2% |
| Vladimir Guerrero Jr. | 18.2% | 52.6% | 34.6% |
| Juan Soto | 20.0% | 59.9% | 33.4% |
| Shohei Ohtani | 19.0% | 57.3% | 33.2% |
| Yordan Alvarez | 18.0% | 56.6% | 31.8% |
| Gunnar Henderson | 17.7% | 61.5% | 28.8% |
| Aaron Choose | 19.9% | 72.9% | 27.3% |
| Giancarlo Stanton | 18.9% | 98.1% | 19.3% |
SOURCE: Baseball Savant
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 onerous, he doesn’t miss. That’s additionally true of him extra usually. Amongst certified gamers, his 12.4% whiff fee is second solely to the one and solely Luis Arraez. Díaz is much more of an outlier on this graph.
Figuring out what we find out about bat velocity — that tough swings lead to louder contact however extra misses, whereas softer swings lead to softer contact however a greater probability of squaring the ball up — my first thought was that possibly Díaz has this complete factor found out. When he sees a pitch that he can actually crush, he swings out of his footwear, and when he doesn’t, he does his finest Arraez impression, throttling down and discovering a solution to put the barrel on the ball. However that’s not what’s taking place. Utilizing the info from the bat monitoring leaderboard, I went forward and reverse engineered Díaz’s contact fee on swings that aren’t quick swings. (As soon as once more, I don’t assume these numbers are excellent, however they’re adequate to present us an total impression.) When Díaz swings onerous, 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 a little bit bit above common.
Like I mentioned earlier, I’m not optimistic of what’s happening. I positively don’t assume it’s a coincidence that Díaz is operating a contact fee that’s a full 15 share factors above his profession fee in the identical season that his exit velocity, hard-hit fee, fly ball fee, and pull fee have all taken a tumble. He’s elevated his contact fee by letting the ball get deeper and by swinging at pitches which can 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 outdoors. Nevertheless, if we return to our dividing line of Might 10, we will 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 satisfy the ball farther out entrance, his quick swing fee has gone from 27% earlier than that date to 35% after it.
Díaz has some of the attention-grabbing ability units in all of baseball. He’s able to hitting the ball as onerous 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 aside from the grime in entrance of dwelling plate, he’s among the best hitters on the earth. I want we may examine all these bat monitoring numbers to those he ran final season. It might be fascinating to see if he was nonetheless such an outlier when it comes to quick swing fee whereas he was performing like a extra conventional energy hitter. For now, it’s only a enjoyable reality, however hopefully we’ll be taught extra in regards to the relationships between these expertise as soon as we’ve greater than half a season of information.
