Swings and Takes: Hearts and Shadows

As the season winds toward October this will be the last Swings and Takes column of the season. I want to thank all of you for reading this column in its inaugural season. Writing this column has made me think about the game in different ways than I did coming in, and I hope that you learned something along the way, as well. On to the column, where we are wrapping up with a special edition, as we are digging into one of the best hitters in the world who has not always been viewed that way throughout his career. Hitting, like hitting analysis, is hard and involves ups and downs, and this hitter has personified this throughout his career, even though at times he has made it look effortless and natural.

Guerrero Living Up To His Name

It is not easy being a prodigy, as the weight of expectations set by absurd performance at a young age can weigh heavily on the mind and soul. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. has experienced this as much as any baseball player to come before him, as his name alone would have been enough to elevate expectations, but his talent blew even those lofty familial expectations out of the water as a prospect. 

Predictably, he did not live up to these expectations right away. In his first two MLB seasons at ages 20-21 he combined for a 107 wRC+, driven largely by a proclivity to hammer the ball into the ground, with a combined 51.3 GB%. Then at age 22 in 2021 he put it all together, as he dropped his GB% to 44.8% en route to a .311/.401/.601 season, and 166 wRC+ that earned him 2^nd in the AL MVP voting behind our newest $700 million dollar man in LA. The path to long-term stardom seemed inevitable, as even if he needed to be a DH soon his bat looked like one of the surest bets in baseball. Alas, baseball is often not that easy, and Vlad, while still averaging a well-above average 125 wRC+ from 2022-2023, no longer looked a generational superstar, especially with a weaker 118 mark in 2023. 

That is the context Guerrero lived in heading into 2024, and he has done everything in his power to shift the narrative once again, as his .318/.393/.555 triple slash line and 166 wRC+ may take him back from non-tender whispers to once again in the $300 million contract discussion. He has not done it by elevating consistently like he did in 2021, as his 49.2 GB% is almost 5% higher than 2021 and well-above league average, but by exploring his Heart and avoiding the Shadow Realm.

Along with high expectations, one of the burdens that can rear its ugly head upon top hitting prospects once they reach the Major Leagues is that just because you can hit a pitch, doesn't mean you should. Vladito’s dad defied this piece of baseball wisdom as most of us remember, but others, such as Maikel Franco (with Keibert Ruiz currently on a similar path) saw once promising careers flame out in large part because of this issue. 

Junior is a very different hitter than his dad was, but there are some similarities. For one thing, he hits the cover off the ball, as he had the best max exit velocity, best thought of as power potential, in the league. As a 20-year-old he never dipped below 98^th percentile in this metric. His average exit velocity almost caught up to his max as a 21-year-old, at 93^rd percentile in the shortened 2020 season, and has not dipped below 91^st percentile since. A lot of words to say he hits the ball very hard and always has. Just look at this rocket he hit off Tyler Glasnow on April 27^th at 117.6 MPH:

Guerrero Jr. Double

 

Another similarity Vladito shares with his dad is that he's hard to strike out, as even with roughly average to slightly above league average whiff rates throughout his career, he's managed to post a career strikeout rate of 15.7%, which sandwiches him between Jose Altuve and Freddie Freeman over the time period encapsulating Guerrero’s career. 

While Dad got to his career 10.9% strikeout rate by refusing to let a hittable (or sometimes unhittable for mortals) pitch go by (he walked more than you might remember, with a career 8.1 BB%), Junior has done it a different way. He has vacillated between slightly below-average to slightly above-average in Chase% throughout his young career. He started out his career as a 20-year-old with a roughly average chase rate, became above-average in this regard from 2020-2021, then started expanding the zone a bit in his second “down” period from 2022-2023, with 39^th and 43^rd percentile chase rates in those seasons. That's one way to explain how Junior has gotten back to being close to MVP level again in 2024, as his chase rate is back to being 55^th percentile, but it is far from the only difference.

Getting back to Junior’s battles with the Shadow Zone (previously referenced in a manner that 2000s kids would appreciate), Statcast, as we explored in the first edition of Swings and Takes, separates pitches into categories determined by how close they are to the center of the plate. pitches in the Heart are essentially right down the middle with some wiggle room, pitches in the Shadow are pitches that are borderline strikes or balls, Chase pitches are clearly out of the zone, and Waste pitches are nowhere close. Hitters are assigned run values based on their performance on pitches in each zone, and Vladito’s table is very interesting in this regard:

Guerrero Jr.’s Swing/Take Table

The two columns of most interest here are the Heart and Shadow columns, as Vlad Jr. has been historically consistent about not letting pitchers exploit him with Chase and Waste pitches, largely by not swinging at them. In his MVP runner up season in 2021, however, he started destroying pitches in the Heart, with a positive 24 run value, while making the Shadow Zone a Neutral Zone with a 0-run value. 

The next two seasons saw this progress erased, with a 20-run drop from 2021 in the Heart in both 2022-2023 and a 12-run drop from the Shadow in 2022 and 23 run drop in 2023. He has recaptured part of his 2021 form in this regard so far in 2024, going back up to a positive 15 run value on pitches in the Heart while only giving back 3 runs below neutral on pitches in the Shadow. To explain why focusing on the Shadow Zone for Vlad Jr. is so important let us look at his wOBA on BIPs by pitch zone over the last two seasons:

Guerrero Jr. wOBA on BIPs 2023-2024

As we can see in the chart, there are only three real areas that pitchers can get Vladdy to put a ball in play that are advantageous for them, down and away in the zone, down and away out of the zone, and up and in out of the zone. Now we will look at which pitches Guerrero has put in play percentage wise over the past two seasons:

 

Guerrero Jr. In Play Percentage by Zone 2023

Guerrero Jr. In Play Percentage by Zone 2024

These are small margins that add up, as Guerrero is putting less balls in play in the zone down and away below the zone this season, and more balls in play in the very center of the plate, where he does, by far, the most damage. There are small improvements in pitch selection here that are leading to big changes in results, as Vladito is chasing less, being more selective in the zone, and as a result has the highest LA Sweet-Spot% (a ball hit in the ideal range between 8 and 32 degrees) of his career at 35%, which lead to great results when you combine it with how hard Vladdy consistently hits the ball. 

Progress for a hitter like Guerrero Jr. is not always linear, as it is often a process of one step forward, 1 step back. The base components of an elite hitter have always been there: hitting the ball incredibly hard consistently, making contact consistently, and taking his walks. The finer points, such as plate discipline in and out of the zone, and corresponding ability to hit the ball at the right launch angles to maximize his power, are where Vladdy has been inconsistent, and what will decide how good he ultimately is, whether he is just an above-average hitter with poor supporting baserunning and fielding skills or an MVP candidate. For dynasty managers, even with his issues, he is still in the very upper echelon of young hitters, right with Soto, Henderson and Bobby Witt Jr., even with the inconsistencies, as the skills are still overwhelming, and he is one of the few guys who has the possibility of contending for first round value year in and year out.

 

Quick Hits

• Acknowledgement of the Brenton Doyle breakout season is long overdue for this column. He has transformed himself from arguably the worst hitter in all of baseball last season (45 wRC+) to an above-average hitter, even with the Coors adjustment (107 wRC+), contributing a 21/25 HR/SB season so far. He has managed to pull off the rare feat of massively improving his contact quality (75^th percentile xwOBA from 1^st, 76^th percentile xSLG from 9^th) while also significantly cutting his Whiff% (17^th percentile from 4^th percentile). In all aspects Doyle has completely changed his profile as a hitter, as he went from a hitter with bottom of the scale power and contact abilities to a hitter with passable contact skills, and well-above average power. Nothing Doyle is doing right now looks unsustainable, and 2025 expectations should be much closer to 2024 than 2023.
• Luis García Jr. has shown promise as a hitter throughout his entire young MLB career, always posting xBA marks at the 65^th percentile or better, but has taken his game to another level this season by getting the ball off the ground. García had historically been a worm burner, with his lowest full season GB% before this year sitting at 52.7%, but he has slashed that rate to 46.5% so far in 2024, allowing him to post a 93^rd percentile xBA and 82^nd percentile xSLG. García still has the Achilles’ heals of rarely walking (11^th percentile BB%) because of extremely high chase (9^th percentile Chase Rate) but the rest of his offensive profile allows for this if he keeps the ball off the ground. 

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