I’ve obtained excellent news for you, Padres followers. Manny Machado is hitting the ball as laborious as almost anybody in baseball*. Critically! Check out this leaderboard:
Highest Common Exit Velocity*, 2024
Yeah! There’s our man, fourth within the majors, completely pummeling the ball. No Aaron Decide on this record. No Juan Soto or Shohei Ohtani or Gunnar Henderson. Machado’s outdoing all of them. By no means thoughts that pesky asterisk up above. He’s completely mounted. Although talking of, what is that asterisk about?
*: Exit velocity on groundballs solely
Oh. Huh. I suppose that’s why the record is lacking all these nice hitters, and as a substitute has dudes barely hanging on or getting demoted to Triple-A. Thunderous energy doesn’t imply a lot when you’re hitting the ball straight into the infield grass. That explains this complicated development:
Manny Machado, Contact Metrics By 12 months
| 12 months | Avg EV | Prime 50% EV | Air EV | Floor EV | GB% | ISO |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 90.2 | 102.7 | 91.4 | 88.2 | 37.2% | .277 |
| 2021 | 93.1 | 104.9 | 94.2 | 91.5 | 39.0% | .211 |
| 2022 | 91.5 | 102.6 | 92.1 | 90.5 | 37.8% | .234 |
| 2023 | 91.0 | 102.4 | 92.2 | 89.2 | 40.2% | .204 |
| 2024 | 92.4 | 103.1 | 92.3 | 92.5 | 47.9% | .130 |
For those who simply checked out his common exit velocity, you’d assume Machado was surging this 12 months. Even when you appeared on the common of the highest half of his contact, it’s higher than the final two years. However he’s not hitting the ball any tougher when he elevates, and he’s elevating lower than ever. The consequence? Fewer homers and doubles, and a decrease ISO.
Possibly you’ve seen this chart earlier than, however it’s price repeating after we’re speaking about this. Including velocity to grounders doesn’t do a lot to have an effect on manufacturing on these grounders. Right here’s wOBA bucketed by exit velocity, league-wide, for the reason that shift ban in 2023, break up between floor and air contact:
In different phrases, hitting the ball tougher on the bottom simply doesn’t pay that a lot. Hit a grounder at 90 mph, and also you’re a .204 wOBA. Ramp it as much as 100 mph, and also you’re solely as much as .314. For reference, the typical wOBA on contact on this time-frame is .368. Taking it from 90 to 100 solely goes from horrible to dangerous.
In the meantime, smashing your elevated contact is juicy. At 90 mph, the league has produced a .198 mark, primarily an identical to grounders. At 100 mph, that balloons to a .571 mark. That’s simply in need of Aaron Decide’s league-best .579 wOBA on contact this 12 months. Including energy is nice – so long as you will get the ball within the air.
Are you able to get good outcomes by hitting grounders at really ludicrous speeds? Positively. At 105 mph and above, grounders did higher than the typical ball in play. However at 105 mph and above, elevated contact is way extra worthwhile. Charts like this are the explanation hitters are attempting to place the ball within the air extra.
Machado has performed just about his complete profession with a fly ball strategy. It matches his sport completely. He’s able to demolishing the ball, however he’s typically completely satisfied to raise and pull at lower than a really maxed-out swing as a result of that turns his energy into homers so simply. He has an excellent sense of the strike zone and common bat-to-ball abilities. Combine that every one collectively, and also you get Machado’s profession line – extra walks than common, fewer strikeouts than common, and a batted ball combine heavy on pulled dwelling runs.
That covers what’s gone flawed. A greater query: Why has it gone flawed? There are 4 methods this may go. There’s the innocuous rationalization. Machado began the season damage, and he’s again now, so all the pieces will probably be higher. Properly, all the pieces will probably be higher assuming his current damage is only a minor one.
There’s some promising proof on this entrance, although it’s too early to inform for positive. He’s been elevating extra often since Might 15, and prospering whereas doing so. Is that this a scorching streak or a return to type? They’re indistinguishable till we get extra proof.
One other risk: That is simply age-related decline. I’m skeptical of this one. It simply doesn’t actually match with the obtainable proof. Machado continues to be swinging impressively laborious. His eye on the plate hasn’t declined. Have a look at these air contact numbers and high 50% EV numbers; nothing about this season appears completely different from the earlier ones. If that is getting older, then we should always all be so fortunate.
A 3rd possibility is there’s been a change in strategy. Possibly Machado is concentrating on pitches that he places on the bottom extra often, or possibly he’s modified his swing to prioritize floor contact. I’m not an professional on this, however I watched loads of video of Machado whereas writing this text, and I’ve to let you know, I don’t see a lot in the way in which of modifications. Right here’s a pulled grounder from 2023:
And from 2024:
I attempted to work out related digital camera angles and pitch places, and the swings look an identical to me. Location-wise, he’s swinging barely extra at pitches down within the zone and barely extra at sinkers – these two results are strongly correlated, in spite of everything. However these results are tiny in comparison with the variance that comes with enjoying baseball and going through completely different opposing pitchers. If he’s made a change in his strategy, it’s one so minute that it seems like random noise.
That leaves one final possibility: Nothing vital has modified, and we’re simply trying on the slings and arrows of outrageous variance. Actually, that appears fairly cheap to me! Right here’s a graph of Machado’s 10-game rolling groundball charges over the previous 5 years:
He’s had quick stretches like this earlier than. Two of them in the identical 12 months is undoubtedly dangerous, however I don’t see a lot development there, and when you’re pattern-matching, his final 10 video games seem like a return to type anyway. Match this story with our first potential rationalization – Machado’s early-season damage was stopping him from utilizing his regular strategy – and now we have a compelling story. Possibly one of the best projection for him on a going-forward foundation is that he’ll proceed to be Manny Machado, identical to all the time, regardless of the bizarre statistical line he’s accrued to date this 12 months.
That stated, I’m keen to alter my opinion if Machado continues to pummel the ball on the bottom, and I’ve some potential worrisome proof to that finish. Machado has squared up 54.4% of his grounders this 12 months, and solely 47.4% of his elevated contact. Squared-up charge is a brand new Statcast metric that measures whether or not a hitter imparted almost the entire potential pressure of his swing to the ball – at the least 80% of its theoretical most exit velocity, to be exact. In different phrases, he’s more proficient at transferring his most energy on grounders than line drives and fly balls.
That’s the other of the sample that hitters exhibit in mixture. League-wide, 50.4% of grounders have been squared up this 12 months, whereas 61% of aerial contact has been. In different phrases, most hitters are catching the ball flush extra often after they raise. Machado is doing it extra often when he hits the ball downwards. That’s a worrisome signal, to say the least; it’s simply easy logic that you just’d desire the league’s sample to Machado’s.
The one drawback with this information: I’ve no clue what Machado’s splits appeared like final 12 months. It’s one factor to say that his technique sounds dangerous. It does sound dangerous! However with out context, it’s laborious to know precisely what this implies. Possibly Machado’s squared-up charges had been even worse final 12 months. Possibly he succeeds regardless of that generically scary sounding batted ball distribution as a result of he does different issues nicely. Possibly this sort of factor varies enormously from one 12 months to the subsequent, and even from one month to the subsequent.
I apologize for the way wishy-washy this all sounds. That’s a part of the disadvantage of analyzing partial seasons of recent information sources. I really don’t know whether or not Machado’s grounder-heavy 2024 is a part of an overhauled swing, a brand new limitation of his sport, or simply enterprise as traditional. I’ll be maintaining a tally of whether or not he begins connecting extra solidly when he places the ball within the air – however greater than something, I’ll be waiting for extra information, of any sort, to see what’s occurring.
