Seiya Suzuki's Sights Are Set Too Low

[Matthew Trueblood]

Image courtesy of © Katie Stratman-Imagn Images

The Chicago Cubs need something more than an offensive spark. Here and there, over the last month and change, they have found a spark, with Dansby Swanson, Ian Happ and Nico Hoerner passing in and out of hot streaks that have helped the team push across just enough runs to win some games and lock up a playoff spot. However, the heart-of-the-order hammer they need to consistently outslug teams has remained stubbornly absent. Kyle Tucker hasn't been able to fill that role (on any more than a brief, fleeting basis) since he suffered a finger injury at the start of June. Pete Crow-Armstrong is reaping what his approach has been sowing all along. Michael Busch has hit into bad luck for weeks. And Seiya Suzuki is, simply, seeing the wrong side of the ball.

In the first half, Suzuki was the beneficiary and the benefactor of the team's offense. With Tucker and Crow-Armstrong often sandwiching him in the batting order, teams rarely had the chance to pitch to Suzuki with the bases clear, and he became adept at punishing hurlers who tried to attack him within the strike zone.

Suzuki made some swing adjustments this year, especially focusing on going and getting the ball farther in front of his body. That helped him cover more of the strike zone with an authoritative stroke and generate more hard contact. Even with those tweaks on board, though, he's a high-ball hitter. That's always been true of him. His swing is fast, and it's fairly flat. He finds the ball with the barrel best when he's able to get his arms extended, rotate with his front shoulder, and sweep the bat fairly level through the hitting zone. Thus, he does best when he can see the ball up and maintain his bat speed through contact. When he has to make a late adjustment, it's usually a dip of the bat to reach a ball that's lower than he expected. The result is rarely impressive.

In the first half, even as he sought to cover the bottom half of the zone a bit better than he had in the past, he was doing all of the above well. His earlier swing decisions led to more balls pulled in the air, and although he was giving up a bit of the ability to make contact and draw walks that he'd shown in the past, he more than made up for it with superb power output. In fact, that continued straight through into the early stages of the second half. 

Trouble began in the first week of August, or so. Suzuki hit his last home run on August 6. Through that game, he was batting .251/.318/.513, with 127 strikeouts, 45 walks and 55 extra-base hits in 478 plate appearances. Since then, he's hitting a paltry .213/.342/.254. In 149 trips to the plate, he's drawn an admirable 24 walks and only punched out 32 times, but he's also only mustered five extra-base hits—all of them doubles. It's an extraordinary (and, obviously, unacceptable) power outage from the team's best first-half power threat. Given that, you'd expect to see some significant differences in his key swing metrics. Those expectations, though, would be confounded.

Segment	Bat Speed (mph)	Swing Length (ft)	Swing Tilt	Attack Angle	Attack Direction	Contact Pt. (in)
Through 8/6	74	7.2	31°	7°	2° Pull	34.2
Since	74	7.2	32°	7°	2° Pull	33.9

You couldn't ask for much more consistency. Most hitters are pretty consistent in most of these regards, but it's not uncommon to see someone's swing speed vary widely within a season. In the cases of players who go through big changes in outcomes, you'll often see a concomitant shift in their attack angle or direction, which tell us a lot about timing. Suzuki is practically a clone from one sample to the other, but his production has gone from terrific to non-existent. His average exit velocity through August 6 was 92.6 miles per hour; it's plunged to 89.1 mph since then. 

As you might guess, his approach has changed a bit. In the first sample, he swung competitively at 59.7% of pitches within the zone, which is very patient, already. In the second, that rate is down to 57.0%, which walks over to the line between patience and passivity and does a lethal little tapdance on it. Even more tellingly, though, we can focus in on pitches low in the zone and near the top of it.

Segment	Swing Rate - Pitches Up	Swing Rate - Pitches Down
Through 8/6	63	43.3
Since	60.7	48.8

Aha. Now, we're onto something. See, when he's seeing the ball right, Suzuki swings more when the ball is elevated, and he's more willing to lay off the ball at the bottom of the zone—even if it's in the zone. He's made some adjustments to that approach over the years, to better handle the way big-league pitchers attack him and the way umpires call the zone when he takes his natural tack, but in broad strokes, it's still true. Crucially. this year, he got especially good at telling when the ball was going to stay up a bit. Here's an example of that very thing. As it happens, this is that last home run he hit, off the Reds' Andrew Abbott.

If this is a bit sharper of a downer, Abbott probably gets Suzuki out, but note the way he's able to whip the bat through the zone. His hands get away from his body early, and as he recognizes the pitch, they're already in position to facilitate a flat flick through the ball.

Compare that swing to this one, on a very similar breaking ball from the Pirates' Evan Sisk, last week.

This is a great illustration of how hard hitting is, isn't it? You can't get two pitches that are much more alike, and you can't put much more similar swings on them. Yet, one ball streaked out of the park with a vapor trail, and the other (while well-struck) became a lazy fly ball. To understand why, let's look at one more swing, featuring a bit more of an exaggerated example of what's changed.

Suzuki is having a harder time anticipating the movement of pitches down in the zone lately. He's also, relatedly, having a harder time laying off them. He has great hand-eye coordination, so the well-honed, altered swing he's still putting on the ball is making late adjustments and generating contact, but he's not hitting it nearly as squarely. Maybe that has to do with a change in how pitchers are attacking him; maybe it's a matter of the grind doing its annual work and making it harder to maintain excellent discipline or plate vision. Either way, Suzuki is getting much less exit velocity out of the same swing speed, a product of more slightly misread pitches on which he's dipping late and catching the ball wrong.

The good news, here, is that Suzuki is still generally on time in the box, and that his swing is physically intact. He needs to change something in his in-the-moment preparation, to see or anticipate the pitch better and catch it flush more consistently. That's no easy tweak, as the nearness of the first miss above shows. Hitting requires a high-speed precision that can sometimes feel superhuman. However, the change needed here is minute, and Suzuki might well be on the cusp of breaking out of this funk at just the right time, in a very big way.

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[Development DL]

Wow , as you said , I still underestimate the minute chain of events , that has to occur for a successful result .   Hitting a baseball is no joke .  Thank you for the diligence and clarity , In your explanations.