Anatomy of an At-Bat: Revisiting Alex Bregman's Bizarre Home Run Against the Rockies

[matto1233]

Image courtesy of © Ron Chenoy-Imagn Images

I have written about this phenomenon before. Our brains are built to recognize patterns. Close your eyes and picture Nico Hoerner swinging at a pitch. In all likelihood, he is making contact with that pitch in your head, because almost every time he swings, he is making contact with that pitch. Except for when he doesn’t, and it leaves me very confused.

I had another one of these moments this past week while watching Chicago Cubs highlights. I didn’t get to watch any of Thursday’s win over the Rockies live because of my full-time job, however, I did get to watch the condensed game. I was happy to see that Alex Bregman hit a home run, even if something about the highlight seemed odd to me:

Bregman has found success over his career with a very flat bat path, or as it is known on Baseball Savant, swing path tilt. He typically hits home runs on pitches middle up. With a flat bat path and short swing, Bregman has an easier time getting to those pitches and driving them in the air to the pull side of the field for home runs. It’s incredibly rare to see him go down and get a ball that is that low and power it over the fence. That is usually reserved for hitters with a steeper bat path, like Mike Trout, for example. 

In fact, according to Baseball Savant, that pitch was the fourth-lowest pitch he has ever hit for a home run, and two of the three examples that were lower were from 2017. That long ball was very much something we haven’t seen very often, and certainly not in more recent memory. We can see that on this chart showing every home run of Bregman’s career.  That tiny little bottom right-most blue hex is where the home run against the Rockies was:

So, what does this mean going forward? The former Astro has been served a steady diet of breaking balls to this point in the season: 40.2 percent of his pitches seen have been some form of breaking ball. That is the highest mark of his career, and is up from 31.3 percent last season. 

This has come at the expense of fastballs. Only 50.4 percent of the pitches he has seen have been fastballs, which is down from 57.1 percent last season, and is also the lowest mark of his career. 

I assume you already know this, since you’re willingly reading an article about baseball, but just in case: When a pitcher throws a breaking ball, they typically want it to end up down in the zone. More breaking balls means more pitches down in the zone, and less pitches up and out over the plate where Bregman prefers them. 

Pitchers have profited from this strategy, as Bregman is slugging just .281 on breaking balls. Using the new swing timing data at Baseball Savant, we can see that he is way early on breaking balls more often than he was in 2024, when he slugged .479 on those pitches:

In 2024, which is in orange, he was on time much more often, which is that big peak in the middle. In 2026, which is in blue, we can see a large blue section that peaks out from behind the orange on the far right. That is bad. Those are the swings where Bregman is disastrously early. This is what that looks like:

The new Cub said as much himself, telling Patrick Mooney “I am out in front on soft and late on fastballs.” This would certainly back that up. 

Last week, our own Randy Holt did a deep dive on Bregman, and ultimately concluded he was being way too patient and needed to try to jump at pitches out over the plate more often. That, most certainly, is a solution to this problem. On Thursday, he simply decided to just go down and get the pitch that was thrown to him. If he wants to start doing that instead, that could also work.

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[We Got The Whole 9]

Basically the league is like, hey Cubs, bet you cant hit breaking balls, and the Cubs are like, ok fine but you have to eventually throw a fastball, and they come so infrequently from what they are used to, that they are rarely on time for them. And its amazing that we ever get thrown a fastball when the approach is this freaking effective, really. 

 

And it makes me wonder, are we the only team that has seen this dramatic shift in approach? You would think this approach would work at least nominally against any team. 

 

Bregman needs to figure out how to be effective at Wrigley. His road numbers are right in line with what we should expect. Its his performance at Wrigley that has really dragged his numbers down. 

 

Has Wrigley just been more friendly to LHB in general this year?

[Jason Ross]

17 hours ago, We Got The Whole 9 said:

Basically the league is like, hey Cubs, bet you cant hit breaking balls, and the Cubs are like, ok fine but you have to eventually throw a fastball, and they come so infrequently from what they are used to, that they are rarely on time for them. And its amazing that we ever get thrown a fastball when the approach is this freaking effective, really. 

 

And it makes me wonder, are we the only team that has seen this dramatic shift in approach? You would think this approach would work at least nominally against any team. 

 

Bregman needs to figure out how to be effective at Wrigley. His road numbers are right in line with what we should expect. Its his performance at Wrigley that has really dragged his numbers down. 

 

Has Wrigley just been more friendly to LHB in general this year?

I've seen people mention this talking point about the Cubs and breaking balls, but I think we need to clear some things up on it:

1. The league as a whole doesn't hit breaking balls. League average wOBA against breaking balls is .284 and xwOBA is .281
2. The Cubs have a .289 wOBA and a .291 xwOBA against breaking balls. This is above the league average and is 14th in baseball. They have a +5 RV on breaking balls.
3. The Cubs have seen the most breaking balls in baseball.

What is happening here is that people keep talking like the Cubs are especially bad at breaking balls which is not true. Instead, what you're seeing is that the Cubs are being fed an inordinate (as in the most in baseball) amount of breaking balls, and while they maintain a better than league average outcomes against them, even the best teams on breaking balls are bad and much worse against them than fastballs. 

This isn't a Cubs specific issue they have refused to address. Breaking balls and elite spin is just really, really hard to hit. For whatever reason the Cubs have seen more than anyone else in this regards. It isn't because they're so elite at fastballs (though they are good at them). I won't go out on a limb as to why beyond that as other teams are worse at breaking balls and have seen less. 

[We Got The Whole 9]

6 hours ago, Jason Ross said:

I've seen people mention this talking point about the Cubs and breaking balls, but I think we need to clear some things up on it:

1. The league as a whole doesn't hit breaking balls. League average wOBA against breaking balls is .284 and xwOBA is .281
2. The Cubs have a .289 wOBA and a .291 xwOBA against breaking balls. This is above the league average and is 14th in baseball. They have a +5 RV on breaking balls.
3. The Cubs have seen the most breaking balls in baseball.

What is happening here is that people keep talking like the Cubs are especially bad at breaking balls which is not true. Instead, what you're seeing is that the Cubs are being fed an inordinate (as in the most in baseball) amount of breaking balls, and while they maintain a better than league average outcomes against them, even the best teams on breaking balls are bad and much worse against them than fastballs. 

This isn't a Cubs specific issue they have refused to address. Breaking balls and elite spin is just really, really hard to hit. For whatever reason the Cubs have seen more than anyone else in this regards. It isn't because they're so elite at fastballs (though they are good at them). I won't go out on a limb as to why beyond that as other teams are worse at breaking balls and have seen less. 

You mentioned in an earlier post that they were good against them in April but once the league started feeding more of them they saw a sharp decline. They're certainly trending towards below league average/bad lately. Let's see where they end in a few months but I certainly don't see them do much damage to them lately. 

[Jason Ross]

12 minutes ago, We Got The Whole 9 said:

You mentioned in an earlier post that they were good against them in April but once the league started feeding more of them they saw a sharp decline. They're certainly trending towards below league average/bad lately. Let's see where they end in a few months but I certainly don't see them do much damage to them lately. 

I mentioned it at the end of May. Mike Petriello wrote an article about it on May 28th. 

In June they have a .350 wOBA against breaking balls. It's the 7th best number in baseball. They have also seen a big downturn in breaking balls this month, as well. Instead of historically many, they're down to around league average pitch% against.