I was also curious why exactly Heyward's BABIP was so shitty so i looked into it tonight. I'll save you the thesis I was going to write. It effectively comes down to this. He is hitting 1-17 on balls in the infield and 8-20 on balls in the outfield. The 1-17 isn't really that shocking. He maybe should have 1 more hit vs what you'd expect but teams generally are terrible there. And obviously 8-20 on balls to the outfield is fantastic but also what you'd expect. The reason his BABIP is shit is effectively he's hit 4 infield flyballs. His typical career ratio would be roughly 2. Infield flyballs tend to be pitches you just miss and get under. And for what it's worth the difference between a good year for Heyward as a hitter(his .268 BA pre cubs) is ~2.5 hits.
I don't want to super hype up Heyward because we're early here and when you're talking about literally 2-3 outcomes being the difference between him being a terrible hitter and him being what he was at his peak, there's a lot of uncertainty there. But what I will say is this, if he indeed has found a way to tap into more flyballs I'm pretty excited. Last year he had 201 PAs end in the infield and 168 in the outfield or roughly a 54.5/45.5 split and that's roughly the career split he has. This year that's basically reversed thus far at 44.7/55.2. That's a huge deal because MLB hitters last year hit .080/.080/.083 on balls in the infield vs .556/.547/.972 on balls to the outfield and at least thus far we're talking about Heyward having a 10% swing in the direction you want to see. And to expound on that a bit more, the average wRC+ for players with a groundball rate under 42% was 117 among qualified players. If you further narrow that list to players with a groundball rate under 42% and a walk rate 10% or higher the average wRC+ is 127. Heyward's GB rate is 38.5% and his walk rate is 11.1%.
Regardless, I'm not telling people to buy my hype just yet. But I would say keep an open mind because the stats thus far show a different Heyward than we've ever seen. Basically what he's missing right now is a handful of line drives. And I'm not talking about just pulling them out of his ass here. His 2018 line drive rate is 10.3% compared to 19.9% last year. If you were to pull 9-10% from his fly ball rate and put it into line drives you're effectively talking about the 2017 rates Rizzo put up. Even their hard contact is fairly similar(34.2% for Heyward vs 34.4% for Rizzo).
That's why I'm pretty interested in 2018 Heyward right now. Obviously you can move numbers around to make people look better but I truly think Heyward is closer than people realiize to going on a tear. If he finds those missing line drives he could easily get his batting average to .270 which is his career rate. And the difference between his current batting average and his OBP is 102 points. But wait there's more... this increased fly ball rate probably would lead to more HRs/XBH. Speaking conservatively here, if he finds those missing line drives I think you're looking at 2017 Mookie Betts who hit .264/.344/.459 with 24 HRs. I know how crazy that sounds but Heyward legitimately is only missing a couple pieces here statistically.
Appreciate the breakdown here and we obviously hope youre right..
But
This is now the 3rd year were waiting for him to figure it out ..
Sure last year his numbers were better but he still sucked to where he only got 400 AB because he sat against LHers , his OBP was .326 , he just doesnt look right up there..
The cubs paid for a guy who the previous 4 years was stealing 20 bases and hitting HRs in teens ..
More importantly his averages were
.269 .254 .271 .293 with OBP in the
.350s. the OBP was one of the main reason they signed him ..
If you recall opening day 2015 lineup, he batted 2nd behind Fowler.. the plan was to have guys with high OBP at top of order, i believe Zobrist hit 3rd that year.
I get having a bad year but this guy is pretty much having his 3rd bad year in a row when you consider what he was doing the previous years..
The advanced stat you show saying IF he just hits a few more balls to the outfield over the infield he might have a better outcome is great and all but we also have to look at this the majority of his balls hit into the outfield are basically popups and easy flyballs that have no chance to drop in safely..
Yes he had some hard hit balls in beginning of year but for the most part he has little power in his swings.
The majority of his hits are grounballs up the middle like the 7 hopper he got the other night, balls he swung late on and falls in in LF, and ones that just falls in front of the outfielders ..
I get what youre showing and hoping for but i and alot others just dont have that confidence in him to in his 3rd year of struggling now, figure it out completely and be what he was before he came here..
That stance he has now in that back corner of box.. dont know where he got that idea from but i can see pitchers start pounding away on that outside part and if he makes contact and rolls over, it going to be soft and more groundballs and popups
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G935A using Tapatalk
