Ian Happ Has Let One Part of His Game Revert to Its Former Self, and It's Working

[Matthew Trueblood]

The Cubs' left fielder is a switch-hitter who's constantly evolving, and his latest change from the right side of the dish is into a version of himself we've certainly seen before.

Image courtesy of © David Richard-Imagn Images

He's gone through many iterations and adjustments over his near-decade with the Cubs, and for Ian Happ, almost any adjustments have to happen twice. As he well understands, being a switch-hitter is a bit like being two different hitters altogether. So much has to be different in the way you attack the difficult task of being a productive hitter, based on whether you're batting left-handed or right-handed in that particular plate appearance. 

Over time, we've seen Happ gradually transform from a take-and-rake hitter with surprisingly high-end power but too many whiffs to a more complete and well-rounded one--although one without that ability to smash the ball to smithereens and go on hot streaks that make him one of the best hitters in baseball. He's traded some upside to dramatically raise his floor, and it's generally been a good tradeoff for him.

It's a bit more complicated, though, when you break things down based on the handedness of the opposing pitcher (and, therefore, the side from which he's hitting in a given plate appearance). When Happ began reinventing himself in the middle of 2021 and emerged in 2022 as a solid but much more contact-focused one, that transition proved much easier for the left-hitting version of him. His left-handed swing has some natural lift and better raw bat speed. His right-handed swing has never been quite as sweet, and when he rebuilt his game to put the ball in play more, he ended up hitting it on the ground far too often from the right side.

His approach is also a little more uneven against southpaws. He has a harder time organizing and enforcing his own strike zone. He's a bit less capable of covering the whole plate and defending it. The ball doesn't jump off his bat the same way it does from the left side.

To a very real extent, though, that's changing. He's rediscovering some power this year. Seven of his home runs this season have come from the right side--the most he's hit off lefties in MLB in any season. He's both hitting it harder when he lifts it, and lifting it more when he hits it hard. That's a good combination.

You can see his fight to make these improvements in the way he's modified his right-handed swing over time. Here he is in 2021, near the end of a season in which he came to grips with the need to make more contact and sacrifice some power to better tap into his on-base skills.

That's a jerky, disconnected swing, and it results in lousy contact. He did put the ball in play, but the real value of that batted ball was not much different from if he had whiffed. It's hard to maintain the fluidity and the violence required to hit for power from your less-frequent side, and in that video, you can see why.

Here's a clip from about a year ago, when Happ had come quite a way in his evolution as a right-handed batter. He'd become materially smoother, and he was looking to use the whole field from that side. We could call it progress. Happ did improve last year as a right-handed batter, as he overhauled his approach, returning to a more patient posture after a 2022 dedicated to slapping the ball around the diamond in swing mode.

Now, here he is this year. Of course, the video is selected to portray the changes he's made in a maximal way, but notice just how much violence there is here. That requires connection and intention. Happ is tearing into the ball against lefties this year. His increased home run total from the right side isn't a coincidence.

If you go all the way back with Happ, though, this swing might look a bit familiar. It's quite a bit more damage-oriented than the right-handed swings he's deployed the last few years... but it looks an awful lot like this.

That home run is from all the way back in 2018. See, Happ is getting to his righty power this year, by basically swinging for the fences the way he did when he first came into the league--but only from that side of the dish. He's given back his improved contact rates against lefties to start pummeling their mistakes, and it's basically worked. You wouldn't want to make a habit of whiffing on just over 30% of swings, as Happ is against lefties this year, but you can make up for it if you run into a ball and blast a home run in 5.3% of your plate appearances.

From the left side, Happ remains that balanced, new guy. He's not giving up on making more contact than he used to; that free-spirited trade of whiffs for power nearly ran him out of the league once. In anywhere from 20 to 30 percent of his trips to the plate, though--all the ones where he sees a lefty pitcher--he's ok with setting that aside and giving a nod to his old self. This year, that's worked out nicely for the Cubs, and for Happ. With him and his complicated switch-hitting profile, you never know whether that means it has major staying power.

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