NEWSLETTER
The Seiya Suzuki slump is sufficiently long and deep that he’s now dropped below a 100 wRC+, meaning that, by that comprehensive statistic, his performance this year has been below average offensively. Not what you need from your big money slugging right fielder.
And while Suzuki sitting today is probably as much about whatever the neck issue is that was bugging him last week (so he played back-to-back games this weekend, and last night’s game wound up going late, so he sits for a day game today – not necessarily a benching), it’s not a bad time to sit him him down. In theory, anyway.
The particularly vexatious part, however, is that the slump traces back to the start of June (.163/.245/.209/29 wRC+) … during which time he is absolutely smoking the ball (average exit velo of 93.0 mph, which is quite good). His hard hit rate during this slump is over 50%, and is actually HIGHER than his season mark.
The primary batted ball issue has been that he’s putting it on the ground too much (50.0%), but even that’s not atrocious. Overall, it looks pretty clear to me that he hasn’t earned a paltry .226 BABIP during this stretch. There is clearly some bad luck here. Maybe even a lot of it, by the look of things.
When you go under the hood into the plate discipline stuff, you still don’t really see a guy who is causing his own problems – at least not all of them. His swinging strike rate is DOWN during this slump. He’s swinging at pitches out of the strike zone at the same rate as always. He’s swinging at more strikes, and making contact with them at the usual rate. The only thing that stands out is that his out-of-zone contact rate is up, but again, he barely ever swings at pitches out of the zone (22.3%), so it’s pretty hard to knock him for it (or for it to be “the explanation” here). Basically, the plate discipline stuff during this slump looks fine. Normal. Another indicator pointing to mostly bad luck.
But it’s not all rosy or luck-induced. The walk rate is a little down, the strikeout rate is a little up, and the barrel rate is a little down. Those are major components of a guy’s overall productivity, and although the negative differences during the slump are slight, it’s all three of them happening at once.
So there are definitely real performance issues during this slump. It’s just that, in terms of “deserved” outcomes, they have the look of something like a league average bat, rather than a guy whose performance has been 71% worse(!) than league average.
Hopefully, if Suzuki is dealing with any kind of lingering physical stuff, the coming All-Star break will allow him to rest up and have a much better second half. It seems like, if he just keeps doing what he’s doing, there will be plenty of positive regression coming.
