Ryan Mountcastle is a hitter who has always hit on his way up to the majors. He hits the ball hard, he puts it in play and he gets on base with his speed. Having a history of high BABIP seasons in the minors, Mountcastle repeated that history in 2020 with a sky high .398 BABIP. While we should expect him to keep hitting, we cannot expect this extraordinarily high BABIP to continue. In 2020, Mountcastle proved to be a free swinger, swinging above average inside and outside of the zone. Here's Mountcastle's 2020 swing profile and rankings (players with at least 100 PA's) along with league averages: Let's take a look at how he does with making contact: The young Oriole is over swinging with below average contact, but not too far below average. When he does make contact, he is in the 65th percentile in hard hit percentage. What about behind in the count vs. ahead in the count? What is most interesting here is when Mountcastle does fall behind in the count, he can hit. It seems odd that he has no hits while being ahead in the count, but maybe this just means he becomes more patient. The opposite of this happens when he falls behind. All of this leads one piece of advice: Take the first pitch more often. Mountcastle took the first pitch 75 times in 2020, 50 balls and 25 strikes, putting him ahead in the count 2/3rd of the time. He's shown, with a small sample of course, that he can swing the bat and get on base when he's behind, but it won't be long until pitchers take advantage of his low contact rates and get him chasing when he falls behind. The batter being ahead in the count is better for the batter. Better for the batter...better for the batter...better for the batter...sorry. It seems logical that if he's not one to struggle when behind, he can gamble with the first pitch, swinging less and giving him potentially more time at the plate. One last image from Baseball Savant will show us Mountcastle's run value in swing/take situations (click here for better viewing): We see here that Mountcastle is producing more runs by taking than he is by swinging, For the most part, Mountcastle is hitting singles and often times, infield singles (18.6%). 32 of 42 of Mountcastle's 2020 season hits were singles that left him standing on 1st base. A walk will also leave him standing on first base. The point is, if there are no baserunners, a single and a walk are arguably the same thing. With only 11 walks (all coming from being ahead in the count) and a walk rate of 7.9%, Mountcastle could benefit from a little more patience. If he were to take the first pitch more often, it would put him in control and likely, lead to him standing on first.
Though it may seem silly to write an entire article ending with advice like, "Don't swing as much", sometimes it helps to be told what you already know. Swinging less in 2021 will give Mountcastle more looks, more opportunities to get on base and reinforce to management that he is a concrete part of the future.
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Small sample sizes can be fun to look at, even if they have no real statistical significance. The 2020 season was short for MLB players and even shorter for minor league prospects. Dean Kremer was one of those players. He started 4 games, got a win, got a loss, accumulated a 4.38 ERA and threw 346 pitches. What does that tell you about his performance? Nothing. So what should we look at? One fun thing is to see what a pitcher did when they were feeling good, ahead in the count. Here is a look at all of Dean Kremer's pitches when ahead in the count in 2020.
Kremer went ahead in the count 71 times (20.5%). For comparison, Cy Young Award winner Trevor Bauer was ahead in the count 29.2% of the time in 2020. Kremer threw a curveball in 30 of those count situations or 42%. 5 times did he strike out batters with that curveball and all 5 of them were swinging strikes. Here's a look:
5 times is nice, but that doesn't tell us anything. Good pitchers can get hitters to chase the curveball, no doubt. The question then, is just how weird does his curveball look to batters? Yes, it has to look weird. It has to look so weird that the hitter is still thinking about how weird it looked when the next pitch is coming at them. Statcast's pitch movement measurements can help us non-player keyboard pluckers better understand weirdness. According to pitch movement measurements on FanGraphs, Kremer's vertical movement was -10.6. Again, for comparison, Bauer's curveball vertical movement was -13.0, which was third on the list of all MLB pitchers who pitched as little as 10 innings in 2020. That's a pretty damn good curveball from a young pitcher. Here's how that curveball movement compared across the league in 2020:
We can see from this list (anytime a pitcher finds themself on a list with Kershaw is good in my opinion) that Kremer is in good company. Somewhat troubling though is Kremer's usage where he ranks 2nd behind only Tyler Glassnow. So what can we recommend when a pitcher has an excellent looking curveball? Throw it more, Lance McCuller's Jr. style? Or through it less? It could be more like through it less in 2 strike counts and finish them off with more of this....
Using the 4-Seam/Cutter/Sinker more often after a swing and miss on the curveball has proven to be effective in a small amount of time for Kremer. Set them up with the curveball then finish them off with the fastball. The pie chart below shows pitch types on 2 strike counts. Kremer is trying to put hitters away with that curveball, maybe a little too much. He has showcased some real impressive movement with the curve, leaving hitters dismayed. If he tries to finish them off with the hard stuff while they're still trying to shake off the confusion of the curve, 2021 could be a great year for Kremer.
Baseball jobs are hard to come by. Interviewers ask, "Why do you want to work for an MLB team?"....I like baseball a lot and want to do more baseball. I may not work for an MLB baseball team, but....I like baseball a lot and still want to do more baseball. Here in this series, I'll focus on 1 major league team in each installment and I'll pretend I'm a baseball analyst. Not a GM, not the manager, not the third base coach, not a former player, a real, nerdy, non-player analyst, lurking in the basement office preparing some kind of weird analysis and hoping to latch on the person just a rung above me to present my analysis in hopes of it reaching the next rung. It can be fun to pretend!
In this series I'll try to:
As team's analytical departments continue to grow, so does the public access to baseball data. There aren't many secrets anymore. But, there's plenty to write about. Plenty to point out. Plenty of toys to pretend with. So, here goes. |
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January 2021
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