I’ve obtained excellent news for you, Padres followers. Manny Machado is hitting the ball as onerous as almost anybody in baseball*. Severely! Check out this leaderboard:
Highest Common Exit Velocity*, 2024
Yeah! There’s our man, fourth within the majors, completely pummeling the ball. No Aaron Choose on this listing. 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 listing is lacking all these nice hitters, and as an alternative has dudes barely hanging on or getting demoted to Triple-A. Thunderous energy doesn’t imply a lot if you happen to’re hitting the ball straight into the infield grass. That explains this complicated development:
Manny Machado, Contact Metrics By Yr
| Yr | Avg EV | High 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 |
In case you simply checked out his common exit velocity, you’d assume Machado was surging this 12 months. Even if you happen to 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 more durable when he elevates, and he’s elevating lower than ever. The consequence? Fewer homers and doubles, and a decrease ISO.
Perhaps you’ve seen this chart earlier than, but it surely’s value repeating once 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, because the shift ban in 2023, break up between floor and air contact:
In different phrases, hitting the ball more durable 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 equivalent to grounders. At 100 mph, that balloons to a .571 mark. That’s simply wanting Aaron Choose’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 helpful. Charts like this are the rationale hitters are attempting to place the ball within the air extra.
Machado has performed just about his entire profession with a fly ball strategy. It matches his sport completely. He’s able to demolishing the ball, however he’s usually comfortable to carry and pull at lower than a very 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 expertise. Combine that each 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 residence runs.
That covers what’s gone mistaken. A greater query: Why has it gone mistaken? There are 4 methods this may go. There’s the innocuous rationalization. Machado began the season harm, and he’s again now, so all the things will probably be higher. Nicely, all the things will probably be higher assuming his latest 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 incessantly since Might 15, and prospering whereas doing so. Is that this a scorching streak or a return to kind? They’re indistinguishable till we get extra proof.
One other chance: That is simply age-related decline. I’m skeptical of this one. It simply doesn’t actually match with the out there proof. Machado remains to be swinging impressively onerous. His eye on the plate hasn’t declined. Take a look at these air contact numbers and high 50% EV numbers; nothing about this season appears totally different from the earlier ones. If that is growing old, then we must always all be so fortunate.
A 3rd possibility is there’s been a change in strategy. Perhaps Machado is concentrating on pitches that he places on the bottom extra incessantly, or possibly he’s modified his swing to prioritize floor contact. I’m not an professional on this, however I watched quite a lot of video of Machado whereas writing this text, and I’ve to inform you, I don’t see a lot in the best way of modifications. Right here’s a pulled grounder from 2023:
And from 2024:
I attempted to work out comparable digital camera angles and pitch areas, and the swings look equivalent 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 taking part in baseball and going through totally different opposing pitchers. If he’s made a change in his strategy, it’s one so minute that it seems to be like random noise.
That leaves one final possibility: Nothing important has modified, and we’re simply wanting on the slings and arrows of outrageous variance. Truthfully, that appears fairly affordable 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 if you happen to’re pattern-matching, his final 10 video games seem like a return to kind anyway. Match this story with our first attainable rationalization – Machado’s early-season damage was stopping him from utilizing his regular strategy – and we now have a compelling story. Perhaps the perfect projection for him on a going-forward foundation is that he’ll proceed to be Manny Machado, similar to at all times, regardless of the bizarre statistical line he’s accrued up to now this 12 months.
That stated, I’m prepared to vary 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 fee is a brand new Statcast metric that measures whether or not a hitter imparted almost all the potential power of his swing to the ball – no less than 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 combination. 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 incessantly after they carry. Machado is doing it extra incessantly 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 downside with this knowledge: 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 onerous to know precisely what this implies. Perhaps Machado’s squared-up charges had been even worse final 12 months. Perhaps he succeeds regardless of that generically scary sounding batted ball distribution as a result of he does different issues nicely. Perhaps this type of factor varies enormously from one 12 months to the following, and even from one month to the following.
I apologize for the way wishy-washy this all sounds. That’s a part of the downside of analyzing partial seasons of latest knowledge 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 common. I’ll be keeping track 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 knowledge, of any kind, to see what’s happening.
