Tracking 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 thus far in 2024. When Jay Jaffe checked in on him on June 13, Díaz had simply climbed out of a gap. Via Could 10, Díaz was working 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 way in which to 93.7 mph. Much more vital, he was working a 60.3% groundball fee on Could 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 all the time been the distinction between being an excellent hitter and being among the best in baseball. When his groundball fee is up, his wRC+ is down, and vice versa. The connection is apparent to see:

MLB’s new bat monitoring information put the difficulty in stark reduction. 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 exhausting and also you barrel the ball up, you’ll find yourself with a blast. That’s an excellent factor, as a result of thus far this season, blasts have a wOBA of .731, and a barrel fee of 27.7%. For Díaz, nevertheless, 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 house runs. Of the 260 gamers who’ve hit not less than 25 blasts this season, that 5.0% house run fee places him in 248th place. Why? You understand why. He has a launch angle of 1 on his blasts, tied for 259th out of 260. On the left, with the infield dust virtually fully obscured by dots, is Díaz’s spray chart on blasts. On the proper, with house runs sprinkled liberally on prime, is Henderson’s.

With regards to 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 vital, 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. In consequence, Díaz’s .207 wOBA on groundball blasts is approach under the league common of .377.

Whereas these numbers are new and interesting, I’d guess that I haven’t but advised you something that you just couldn’t have intuited for your self: Díaz hits the ball exhausting, and when he can carry it he’s nice, however that doesn’t occur all that always. 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 fascinating. I’m not as sure 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 proper. That’s quick swing fee, the share of swings the place the bat velocity reaches 75 mph. Certainly one of these items will not be just like the others.

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 exhausting very often in the event you evaluate him to the league as a complete, however for somebody who crushes the ball as typically as he does, his quick swing fee is positively miniscule. Let’s return to our prime 10 checklist and add one other column, blasts-per-fast-swing fee. We’re simply dividing the primary column by the second column, however now it reveals us how typically batters sq. up the ball once they swing exhausting. I don’t suppose the info behind these numbers are excellent, however they’re positively adequate to offer us an impression of what’s occurring.

Aside 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 exhausting, 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.

Understanding what we learn 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 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 finest Arraez impression, throttling down and discovering a option to put the barrel on the ball. However that’s not what’s occurring. 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 suppose these numbers are excellent, however they’re adequate to offer us an general impression.) When Díaz swings exhausting, he squares up the ball 58.5% of the time, however on swings under 75 mph, he squares up the ball simply 21.3% of the time. That’s not unhealthy, however it’s solely somewhat bit above common.

Like I mentioned earlier, I’m not constructive of what’s occurring. I positively don’t suppose it’s a coincidence that Díaz is working 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 are tougher to carry and tougher to drag.

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 Could 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 quicker 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 fascinating talent units in all of baseball. He’s able to hitting the ball as exhausting as nearly anybody within the recreation, whereas making contact extra typically than everybody apart from actually Luis Arraez. That’s simply not normally how issues work. Any time he manages to direct that energy someplace aside from the dust in entrance of house plate, he’s among the best hitters on this planet. I want we might 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 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 study extra concerning the relationships between these abilities as soon as we’ve got greater than half a season of knowledge.