Is Ian Happ in a Power Outage Driven By Too Much Patience?

[RandallPnkFloyd]

With the return of Seiya Suzuki this weekend, the Chicago Cubs' outfield appears to be back to full strength--that is, except for the lingering difficulties into which one of them just seems to be sinking deeper.

Image courtesy of © Kamil Krzaczynski-USA TODAY Sports

I wrote last month about my inability to determine the quality of Ian Happ as a professional baseball player. That struggle resided mainly on the offensive side, where Happ has proven to be varying levels of fine throughout his career. Early this season, his plate discipline was translating to strong on-base numbers and catalyzing a highly effective Chicago Cubs lineup. It left me excited about the 2024 outlook, with him atop the group.

The subsequent weeks have not provided me with any clarity. If anything, the picture of his quality – specifically as an offensive entity – has only become murkier. Hilariously, Happ hasn’t led off a game since that piece. He’s hit second and sixth, but has spent the majority of that time in the three hole. That’s run his place in the order this year to six different spots, with only clean-up, eighth, and ninth avoiding him thus far. 

There are some contextual reasons for that. Injuries to Cody Bellinger and Seiya Suzuki have forced Craig Counsell to reshuffle the lineup. Nico Hoerner’s hot stretch also jumped him from predominantly batting seventh to hanging at the leadoff spot. Nevertheless, Happ’s profile remains enigmatic, likely perpetuating further moves around the lineup.

What's befuddling is this: his power is just completely gone. Happ’s .078 ISO ranks 152nd out of 165 qualifying position players. It’s hard to generate pop when you’re spending exactly half your time on the ground--which Happ is, with a 50.0 GB%. That puts him in the top 30 among that same group. 

Interestingly, Happ’s struggled even more to gain power traction hitting lefty. That's the side from which he’s had more success throughout his career. His career ISO left-handed is at .216 ISO, versus .146 hitting righty. In a more general sense, he possesses a 121 wRC+ left-handed, versus a 94 mark from the other side. His ISO this year is at .148 as a righty and just .059 left-handed. It’s probably important to note that homers mean more in the ISO formula, and Happ’s lone home run came hitting right-handed. But as concerning as the overall power output might be, the left-handed aspect really stands out.

At this point, it doesn’t appear that Happ is doing anything mechanically that’s leading to his woes. Instead, it looks like offspeed stuff is utterly neutralizing his power, which usually signals timing trouble. 

Historically, Happ has struggled to generate quality contact against that pitch type: 

Opposing pitchers seem to be at least mildly aware of this. He's seeing more offspeed stuff than ever before:

While his overall swing percentage against the pitch has dipped (41.8 percent this year against 45-ish percent in 2023), the outcomes remain a problem. He’s whiffing at that pitch with the highest frequency of any of the three groups (36.2 percent). Most alarming, however, is when he does make contact with it. It's all on the ground:

It’s pretty astounding that he has a .326 BABIP to date, given these issues. Both Counsell and Happ noted as much – cited in Sahadev Sharma’s recent notes at The Athletic – in discussing his recent issues. A timing issue certainly tracks with some of the trends, but also puts the onus largely on Happ, alone, to work his way out of it. Pitchers won't stop slinging slop up there until he shows he can lay off it even more consistently or start doing something with it.

There are still positives to Happ’s game; the most notable is the patient approach. His 4.3 pitches per plate appearance is a career-best mark. His walk rate is eighth among qualified hitters. He’s 83rd percentile in chase rate. But he’s also not using that discipline to drive any real production. He’s still whiffing at too many pitches (38th percentile) and striking out far too much (27.5%). Part of the latter figure is working deep counts, but we simply have not seen enough balls in play to justify Happ hitting toward the front of this lineup.

It seems fairly clear what’s plaguing Happ. He’s struggling with a timing issue. Is it possible that his patience is driving that issue? I don’t have anything to prove that, but it is certainly possible to be too patient. The awareness is a positive first step, though. If opposing pitchers continue to work offspeed against Happ, though, those adjustments are going to have to come quickly if he’s going to start to provide value for a Cubs lineup that sorely needs it.

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[CubinNY]

I think he will pull out of it at some point. 

[Bertz]

One thing we as baseball fans should always always always be mindful of is that power is streaky.  If a guy hits 26 homeruns in a year, it's not going to be 1 a week every week.  It's going to be a couple weeks with 3-5 each and a lot more weeks with zero.  In fact some months are only going to be 0 or 1.

With Happ, the contact and exit velo numbers are down a little bit, while the groundball numbers are up a medium amount.  I tend to think his issues are injury, and that if Bellinger and Seiya hadn't already been hurt he'd have started a short IL trip around the Marlins series.  But also I feel like the underlying issues are minor enough that you could still handwave it away as early season weirdness.  I definitely don't see anything in his profile that rises to the level of alarming.  So this article is well written and well measured but the handwringing on Twitter about Hapo is wildly out of scale with the extent of the actual problem.