I was curious why Will Middlebrooks went from budding superstar in 2012, to a 3B version of Jonny Gomes in 2013, to a washout in 2013. What happened in 2012 that resulted in a breakout campaign? Were pitchers just not pitching him right? Did he have better eyesight? I mean, what the hell. In 2012 he hit .288/.325/.509 with 15 HRs in 286 late appearances. Those are great numbers, especially for a 23 year old. In a game where power is scarce, 30HR+ power is precious. Even when he was bad in 2013, he hit 17 home runs in 348 plate appearances, and hit .273/.328/.455 against left-handed pitching. Combined with above average defense, that is a great half a platoon, especially for $500,000.
And now in 2014 he seemingly has lost everything. That 30 HR power is gone. He doesn’t even have 15 HR power anymore. Through 175 plate appearances he has gone deep twice. The once lefty masher is now helpless against LHP: .196/.260/.261. To put that in perspective, Jackie Bradley, Jr. has better numbers against lefties.
I wanted to put some information out there to hopefully spark some discussion of why WMB has turned into a pumpkin. There is a
ton to unpack here and this is a monster of a post, so bear with me.
Some initial digging found that he hit RHP well in 2012: .282/.312/.486. In 2013, his ability to get hits off RHP faded quickly: .206/.244/.412. However, he still kept his power stroke, with an ISO of .206, which was very similar to his 2012 ISO of .204. In 2013, he lost the ability to do both: .178/.248/.264. That is an ISO of .086. His BABIP over the last three years tracks his ability to hit RHP too. It was a great .335 in 2012, and then has been constant at .263 each of the last two seasons.
I then wanted to look at his plate discipline stats to see quickly if his reputation as a hacker has gotten worse:
[tablegrid= Will Middlebrooks 2012-2014 ]
PA | BB% | K% | BB/K | ISO | BABIP |
2012 | 267 | 4.5 | 24.5 | 0.190 | 0.221 | 0.335 |
2013 | 348 | 5.3 | 26.2 | 0.200 | 0.198 | 0.263 |
2014 | 175 | 6.2 | 30.3 | 0.210 | 0.087 | 0.263 |
[/tablegrid]
Oddly enough, his walk rate has increased each of the past three years. A big negative on Middlebrooks was that he never walks, so the improvement is indicative of a better eye. He has made identifiable adjustments to his approach and should be commended for that. However, with more walks have come more strikeouts. Now he is striking out 30% of the time. If he qualified in PAs, that would make him worst as a third baseman, and 4th worst batter in all of baseball (in terms of K%), only behind Chris Davis, Chris Carter, and Adam Dunn (and tied with BJ Upton).
Next, I looked at his Pitch f/x zone stats:
[tablegrid= Will Middlebrooks PitchFx Zone Stats ]
O-Swing% | Z-Swing% | Swing% | O-Contact% | Z-Contact% | Contact% | Zone% |
2012 | 27.1 | 63.0 | 44.0 | 57.2 | 85.1 | 76.0 | 47.1 |
2013 | 30.4 | 62.5 | 46.2 | 55.6 | 84.0 | 74.5 | 49.3 |
2014 | 25.8 | 57.2 | 41.4 | 49.0 | 86.7 | 74.8 | 49.5 |
[/tablegrid]
I was surprised to see here that his O-Swing% is the
lowest of his career and nearly 4% lower than the league average. So, he’s not striking out by expanding the zone. Even pitchers are throwing him more strikes than in 2012 (and a smidge more than 2013). The big difference is than when he does swing outside the zone, he doesn’t make contact. His O-Contact% is 14.1% below league average and would be 8th worse in the league if he qualified in PAs. Even more perplexing is that he makes contact in the zone, sitting at about league average. Looking at the chart, he actually has a relatively patient approach. He doesn’t swing a lot, doesn’t expand the zone, and makes league average contact when the ball is put in the zone. The two issues I see is that he when he does swing at pitches outside the zone, he doesn’t make contact, and when he makes contact, the ball isn’t hit very well. Which leads to the batted ball chart:
[tablegrid= Will Middlebrooks Batted Ball ]
LD% | GB% | FB% | IFB% | HR/FB |
2012 | 21.5 | 43.5 | 35.0 | 7.1 | 21.4 |
2013 | 20.2 | 40.7 | 39.1 | 5.1 | 17.2 |
2014 | 22.7 | 40.3 | 37.0 | 20.5 | 4.5 |
[/tablegrid]
His LD rate is actually up this year, but nothing else stands out except for his infield pop up numbers, which have skyrocketed. One in five flyballs are infield pop-ups, which just reaffirms that he’s making poor contact. And unlike last year, those flyballs that he his hitting aren’t leaving the park. I think he’s been a bit unlucky, seeing that his line drive rate has stayed constant, but his BABIP and BA haven’t improved.
I looked at the BrooksBaseball pitch type groups (hard, breaking, offspeed) to see if any one group is giving him trouble this year to try and isolate the issue. The answer is clear: Hard pitches
2012
2013
2014
The collapse of his power against the fastball is striking, which probably explains the lower BABIP. Oddly enough when he makes contact on off speed pitches, he actually is hitting them well this year, however, he swings and misses at about 40% of off speed pitches (which makes me believe he's a mistake hitter on off speed pitches). I'm not really sure what can explain what happened to his ability to hit the fastball. But this season to me is the most troubling out of his last two. He was bad last year, but at least he hit lefties and hit for power. He can't do either this year, which makes him a largely useless player.
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But really, we have the profile of a hitter who has a decent plate approach, yet makes poor contact when he swings the bat. I know his vision has been a hot button issue, but he has also made mechanical adjustments
In July 2013 he made a batting stance adjustment while in AAA. He went from an open stance to a closed stance. The stated reason for the change was his inability to reach the outside pitch because he felt that when he stepped into the pitch he was still favoring the left side of the field (his spray charts don’t indicate this, but whatever). He felt that closing his stance made his stride parallel, which would result in using the middle of the field more.
Below are 4 gifts that illustrate the batting stance shift:
2012
Early 2013
Late 2013
2014
[SIZE=12pt]And here is a gif of his ISO in heat map charts (courtesy of BrooksBaseball)[/SIZE]
You can see that he didn’t really have problems driving the outside pitch at all. He’s always had issues with down and away (highlighted by Rev and myself
here), but middle away is a sweet spot for him, open or closed stance. However, this year it is clear that he has lost all ability to hit the outside pitch. So the closed stance to hit outside pitch move has not worked as planned. It actually seemed like this shift has resulted in him losing ability to generate power from inside pitches. You do see an uptick in power to up and away, but that change has disappeared in 2014, so not sure if that was a sustainable improvement.
One last thing I noticed was how he was generating fly balls. Here is another gif heat map of fly balls per balls in play from 2012 to 2014. There is a clear trend – he used to be able to generate fly balls on low pitches, and now he can’t, only generating consistent fly balls on balls up and in, which probably explains the really high pop up rate.
There is a lot here to unpack, and like I said above, I just wanted to present some of the data for discussion. I'm not sure if corrective vision or contacts will change anything. But the 2014 version of WMB is so vastly inferior to the already questionable 2013 version that I'm not sure there is a whole lot worth salvaging here.