Cubs Video
Opinions will be mixed on Jed Hoyer’s trade deadline activity, or rather, lack thereof. To be clear, I wasn’t a fan of it. Not to mention, it looks even worse now after Michael Soroka got placed in the injured list after just two innings in a Cubs uniform, and after Andrew Kittredge took the loss in last Tuesday’s game, giving up four earned runs and recording just one out.
None of that is great. If we’re being entirely honest with ourselves, though, the pitching hasn’t been the issue of late. In the six games since the trade deadline passed, the Cubs have given up zero, four, three, three, five, and one runs. Their team ERA is 2.67, and that’s third in baseball in that timeframe. Yet the team is only 3-3. The pitching hasn’t been the issue.
The offense is rocking a dastardly 72 wRC+, an all-encompassing offensive statistic where 100 is considered average, since the start of August, meaning they are 28 percent below league average. That’s 25th in baseball, according to FanGraphs. These struggles start with Kyle Tucker, inarguably the team’s best hitter, who has a wRC+ of just 8 in those six games. But his struggles go back much further than that:
|
Month |
wRC+ |
HR |
|
March/April |
157 |
7 |
|
May |
146 |
5 |
|
June |
174 |
5 |
|
July/August |
91 |
1 |
Prior to this blip in July and August, you’d struggle to find a more consistent performer than Tucker. Thanks to his keen eye at the plate, he has such a high floor as a hitter. That hasn’t changed one bit. The slugger had a 14.3 percent walk rate prior to July. He’s actually raised it to 18 percent in the time since.
Suffice to say, there’s very little that is different from an approach standpoint. He swung at 18.8 percent of pitches outside of the strike zone during the first three months of the season, and that is down to 15.2 percent since. When it comes to his patience at the plate, Tucker is very much the same player that he has ever been.
Much has been made about Tucker’s finger injury sustained on June 1 against the Reds. I’m not sure that I entirely buy that as the reason for his cold stretch. As evidenced in the table above, he went on to have his best month of the season, by wRC+, in June, immediately after the injury. He didn’t really start struggling until July.
I would think an injury like that would be evident when you look at a player’s swing speed. Prior to his finger injury, an average Kyle Tucker swing was clocked at 72.1 mph, per Baseball Savant. His average swing has been 72 mph since then. I’m ruling out the finger injury.
The one home run on that chart above is what really sticks out to me. Right or wrong, I’ve always felt that power is something that stays relatively consistent. Batting average might come and go month to month, or even season to season, based on some of the breaks that you’re getting. But a home run is a home run. There’s not a lot of luck required in hitting the ball over the fence (barring a very windy day at the Friendly Confines).
Balls hit over the fence are typically hit in the air and to the pull side of the field. Tucker’s fly ball rate was a healthy 48.7 percent prior to July. In his more recent rough stretch, it has plummeted to 39.7 percent. Even worse, 32.8 percent of his fly balls were hit to the pull side early on this season. From July onward, only 22.6 percent of his fly balls are pulled. Now, 48.4 percent of his fly balls are hit to center field, the largest part of the ballpark. You probably won’t hit many home runs that way.
While Tucker is as complete of a hitter as they come, he’s always done most of his slugging against fastballs. This is typical. Fastballs are straight and easier to hit. That’s baseball 101. Since the start of July, though, Tucker’s performance against fastballs has completely fallen off of a cliff.
|
Month |
Batting Average |
Slugging Percentage |
|
March-June |
.309 |
.556 |
|
July-August |
.148 |
.222 |
Performing this poorly against fastballs, and suddenly hitting a lot less balls to the pull side, suggests a timing issue, at least to me. My hypothesis was that if we looked at a spray chart of Tucker’s from July onward, isolated only to fastballs put in play, we’d see a decent chunk of fly outs to deep center field. You be the judge:
I don’t know about you, but I see a grouping of five or so balls there that would have been home runs had they been hit to another part of the ballpark. It’s not always this simple. Hitters fly out to the warning track sometimes! But, when a good majority of a hitter's best struck baseballs against fastballs are going to center field (heck, almost to the opposite field), my assumption is you’re having some sort of issue timing the baseball, especially with so few being hit to the pull side.
In short, I think that this is good news for the Cubs. A timing issue is fixable. A finger injury is, too, but that requires time, which the Cubs don’t currently have since the Milwaukee Brewers will apparently not lose a baseball game for the rest of the season. Also, since Kyle Tucker might only be a Chicago Cub for a couple more months, it's better if this is a problem he can turn around in short order. Hopefully, he can get back to crushing fastballs so we can all remember his time here a bit more fondly. Or, the Cubs can just extend him. How about both?
Recommended Comments
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now