Seven games into a 162 game season rarely tells the full story. While a hot start can be encouraging, baseball is a game of constant adjustments and your start is rarely your finish. Whichever the case, you have to be encouraged by Jason Heyward’s start to 2017.
Coming into the rubber game of the Chicago Cubs and Los Angeles Dodgers series, Heyward is hitting .297 with a .367 on base percentage. These are encouraging numbers. Equally encouraging, Heyward has struck out only 4 times in 7 games, and projects for a career high in hits (185).
Now to pick it apart. Heyward has benefited from a couple of well placed dribblers in the St. Louis and Milwaukee series that snuck through holes on the right side. There was also a ball that was most likely an error, but ruled a hit that Jason benefited from. Assuming that the age old rule will apply, these will equal out by the end of the season. Taking three hits away, it would be a completely different start for Jason, and we might be singing a different tune. When we remove those three hits, Jason would be batting a miserable .185 in 2017.
The other questionable area is in power numbers. So far in 2017 Heyward is slugging .370 with a single extra base hit (triple in Milwaukee). While Jason had 7 home runs in 2016, he did have 27 doubles and a total of 35 extra base hits. Looking at the 2015 season, Jason had 50 extra base hits.
The lack of power is still a concern, or is it?
Travis Sawchik of FanGraphs took a closer look into the improvements in Jason Heyward this week. In the article he tracked a series of six Heyward at bats against Milwaukee on Saturday and Sunday. The findings are encouraging. In the six at bats, Jason had hit six consecutive balls with exit velocities over 96 MPH. This is good.
While this doesn’t tell the tale of an entire season, this is certainly encouraging for a player that averaged 87.4 MPH exit velocity in 2016. Travis continued to show, 38% of all Heyward hits were considered “hard” contact. This certainly adds to the narrative of his swing being improved, which is evidenced by his average 90.54 MPH exit velocity in 2017.
So there’s an increase in exit velocity, but a decrease in extra base hits. Why is this?
Mostly launch angle.
Jason’s launch angle continues to be an issue for him. As Michael Petit wrote for BP Wrigleyville (circa 2016) on Jason’s 30 hardest hit balls in 2016. In 2016, he had an exit angle of 4.6 degrees. In 2015, where he was undeniably better, he averaged 7.6 exit angle on balls that left his bat at over 90 MPH.
Looking forward to 2017, Jason is averaging 13.88 launch angle (all hits). Typically, a ball launched at around 25-40 degrees, assuming an exit velocity over 96 MPH, result in home runs. The hardest hit balls off Jason’s bat typically have a lower exit velocity, resulting in crisp linedrives that fly through the infield. Those balls rarely have enough loft to be dangerous, let alone be home runs, and skip towards an awaiting outfielder.
Perhaps hits like this will become few and far between? While it isn’t a bad thing for a player to have a low launch angle, it is just typically more well known in slap hitters, not middle of the order guys. Maybe that is just what Jason will be best at. A guy that can hit the ball hard, but a singles/doubles type and not someone that will drive the ball out consistently.
Or maybe Jason will just have to pick the times to drive a ball. Which I feel is more so the case.
As we saw in that Milwaukee series, Jason drove balls that were middle away.
Whereas balls middle in Jason wad still getting over on, driving the ball into the ground.
If Jason makes a concentrated effort to drive to the middle of the field, he is getting the necessary loft to be more dangerous. Perhaps this is due to Jason still becoming familiar with his swing, in games, or maybe his power in this swing is driving through the ball to the middle of the field? With some in-game mechanics yet to be figured out, Jason is actually rolling over inside pitches, perhaps a result of his swing being a bit long and mechanical.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Tons of left-handers have had great careers driving balls the other way, while fending off pitches inside. Perhaps with the many timing mechanisms in Heyward’s swing, he will just be more prone to hitting groundballs on inside pitches.
Either way, the results are encouraging and I’d have the expectation for him to continue these results. Will these improvements allow Jason to get one more hit in every three games? If he does, he becomes a .300 hitter. If Jason continues his early production, he finishes with 185 hits. In 600 at bats, that’s a .308 average.
I’m certain we’ll all be ok with that.
