What's Wrong With Alex Bregman?
Alex Bregman's Numbers are at a Career Low. But His Statcast Numbers Look the Same as His Career High. It's Still a Mystery Why Bregman is Struggling This Season.
He has led a charmed life. He announced his goal of being a professional baseball player in bar mitzvah speech, and achieved that goal. And succeeded to his wildest expectations, driving in the walk-off run in the pivotal Game 5 of the 2017 World Series and coming just a few votes short of Mike Trout in the MVP balloting in 2019.
Since then, Alex Bregman’s charmed baseball life has turned more pedestrian. He has been unable to sustain his MVP level performance from 2018 and 2019, though he was an above average major league regular in 2020 and 2021. In 2022, there was significant reasons to think that after off-season wrist surgery, Bregman would be an improved part of the Astros offense.
Career Low Numbers at the Plate
That expectation has not been met this season. Bregman is slashing .218/.337/373. Notably, that slash line is well below the numbers Bregman posted in his near MVP season of 2019; his .296/.423/.592 line produced a 1.015 OPS, over 300 points better than his current numbers.
But this year’s Bregman performance with the bat is not only lower than his performance in his 2019 peak. It’s also lower than every other season of his career. His .710 OPS is career low, though, thanks to the decline of offense across baseball, it is still an above average performance. Bregman’s OPS+ of 107 says that he’s 7% better than the average major league hitter. But that is also the lowest of his career, and well below the 140 OPS+ that the Steamer system projected for Bregman this season.
His 2022 Statcast Numbers Look Like His 2019 Statcast Numbers
So what’s wrong Bregman? Why has he declined so much since his near MVP season in 2019? It’s hard to answer that question, because there are more similarities between Bregman’s 2019 season and his 2022 season than one would expect looking at his stat line.
For example, his expected batting average by Statcast in 2019 was .263. This season it’s .263. His expected slugging in 2019 was .453, and it is slightly higher this season at .458. And his xWOBA this season is .361, slightly down from his .373 mark in 2019.
There are two conclusions to draw from this initial look at Bregman’s Statcast numbers.
Bregman hit in good luck in 2019. His actual slugging percentage (.592) was 139 points higher than it “should” have been. And he hit home runs on 18.6% of the fly balls he hit that season—an unsustainably high number (thank you Crawford Boxes).
Bregman has hit in bad luck in the 2022 season. He has a BABIP of .227 this season, well below the league BABIP of .288. He is hitting the ball just as hard as he did in 2019, but fewer balls are falling in.
If we judge Bregman off of his peak in 2019, we are bound to be disappointed, because he was able to get more production than he “should” have that season. And if look at some of his numbers in 2022, we see another set of unsustainable numbers. Over the long run, BABIP tends to regress toward the league average for almost every player,1 so we should expect Bregman’s numbers to improve based on more balls finding holes over the rest of the season.
Fewer Home Runs, but More Barrels?
But finding holes between the defense does not address one of Bregman’s big issues this season—his inability to hit the ball past the defense and into the stands. One should not expect Bregman to hit 41 home runs like he did in 2019, but he has hit only 7 this season in 64 games played, and is on pace to his only 17 home runs this season.
Since Bregman’s home runs are down, one would expect to see lower power numbers in the Statcast data. But that’s not always the case. For example, Bregman is doing a much better job of hitting barrels this season. Barrels is a Statcast measure for balls hit with the perfect combination of exit velocity and launch angle. Bregman his barrels on 4.8% of his swings in 2019, and on 7.3% here in 2022. His average exit velocity this season is 89.6, the highest of his career.
On the other hand, Bregman’s maximum exit velocity has declined this season to 106.0 MPH. In 2019, his max exit velo was 107.4 MPH, which was at the 53rd percentile among major league hitters. His max this season has declined to the 27th percentile. And while Bregman’s barrel rate is up, his rate of solid contact has declined from 9.8% in 2019 to 8.3% this season. In 2019, Bregman his a lot of balls solidly, even if they weren’t barrels. This season, he is hitting very few of those type of balls.
Too Many Pulled Fly Balls?
Another potential key difference between Bregman’s 2019 approach and the one he is using in 2022 is his proclivity to hit fly balls. His fly ball rate is up this season to 35.4% after being at 29.9% in 2019. That increase in fly balls has mostly come at the expense of line drives—Bregman is hitting line drives on 22.9% of his balls in play this season, down 4.0% from 2019.
At the Crawfish Boxes, Dan Martin recently argued that this adjustment by Bregman “could be characterized as an overcorrection. It would be a viable, if not optimal blueprint in past years, but not this year. Not with the physical makeup of the ball.”
Instead, Martin thinks that “getting back to his line-drive roots may be the adjustment that elevates Bregman’s production to levels he’s failed to reach in recent years.”
Another explanation for Bregman’s bad season is more technical. Based on his clubhouse discussions with Bregman, Chandler Rome wrote on Saturday that “[m]any of Bregman’s problems this season stem from timing: when he’s late, he doesn’t hit the inside part of the baseball and can’t get the backspin he desires. His misses often result in rollover ground balls to the left side and lazy fly balls to right field.”
Bregman’s Contact Rate is Low, Walk Rate is High
Bregman’s timing may be off, but based on his contact rates, it is only slightly off. He is able to make contact at a high rate when he swings. For example, when Bregman swings at a pitch in the strike zone, he makes contact 90.4% of the time (up from 90.0% in 2019). That’s much higher than the 82.0% rate of the average major leaguer. And with the high contact rate comes a low whiff rate. When Bregman swings, he misses only 14.6% of the offerings from opposing pitchers, well below the 24.6% major league average.
Bregman’s timing issues are not affecting his ability to make contact, just the place on the ball where he is making contact.
Bregman’s high contact rates also comes with good decisions on when to swing. He is swinging at pitches outside of the strike zone only 17.1% of his swings. Again, that’s well below the major league average of 28.3%. The high contact and low chase rate means that Bregman has maintained his outstanding strikeout rate (13.3%, 91st percentile in the MLB). And he continues to contribute by having a high walk rate—his 39 walks are 2nd in the American League. I think it’s a testament to Bregman’s focus and discipline as a hitter that he’s not expanding his strike zone despite his prolonged slump.
The Cause of the Slump Remains Elusive
Bregman’s numbers present a puzzle. His numbers are not that far off from what he did in 2019. He is making good swing decisions, making lots of contact, and hitting the ball with average amounts of exit velocity. There is some evidence that he is hitting in bad luck (and that his previous peaks were driven by good luck). And if it is just bad luck, that should turn around at some point.
But it’s not just bad luck. Bregman is hitting the ball less solidly, and pulling more fly balls that are dropping harmlessly into the left fielder’s mitt. Luck explains some, but not all of his decline.
But the rest of the decline is not due to some easily identifiable area where Bregman is underperforming. It seems to be a general failure. He certainly would do well to hit more line drives, but so could every hitter. And a hitter usually needs to pull a ball to hit a home run, which is of course the best thing a hitter can do in any plate appearance.
It seems the best thing for us to do as Astros fans is wait for Bregman to break out. He is too good of a hitter for this slump to continue, as frustrating as it has been.
For example, Bregman’s career BABIP is .286, right at the league average.