Eric Hosmer’s Lost Season

Jamie Squire/Getty Images

By Matt Hunter | @MHunterYGY

After shining in his rookie debut to the tune of a .293/.334/.465 line, Eric Hosmer of the Kansas City Royals has experienced what many well-informed and attentive fans may call a “sophomore slump” - referring, of course, to a poor second performance following a strong first. Indeed, Hosmer’s second performance has been exceedingly disappointing to both fans of the Kansas City Royals and fantasy owners who may have expected an improvement from last year, not a regression.

Let’s take a look at the positives first, for I am a “glass half full” kind of guy (especially when that glass contains a certain alcoholic malted beverage). Conveniently for me, Hosmer has accrued close to the same number of plate appearances this year and last, making for easy comparisons. Here’s one such comparison: last year, Hosmer stole 11 bases and got caught five times, while this year, he has stolen 14 bases and been caught only once. This isn’t a huge improvement, not is it particularly important, but at least Hosmer has improved at least one aspect of his game.

Another comparison: Hosmer is walking 9.1% of the time this year compared to only 6.0% of the times last year. Now, this is a much more substantial and important improvement than the above and indicates an improved plate approach for Hosmer. Indeed, if we take a look at his plate discipline this year, we see that he is only swinging at 31.6% of pitches outside of the strike zone, compared to 36.3% last year. He is doing this without also swinging less at pitches inside the strike zone. This indicates to me that Hosmer’s eye, or at the very least his patience, has improved this year…a very positive sign for a young player.

Unfortunately, that’s about the extent of the positives for Hosmer. Nearly every other part of his game has either become worse or equally as poor as last year. Let’s start with the least-bad decline – Hosmer’s contact. In his plate discipline numbers, Hosmer’s contact rate on pitches outside of the zone is slightly down from last year, while his contact rate on pitches inside of the zone is about equivalent, leading to a slightly lower overall contact rate, but not by much (81.4 vs. 81.0).

What do we make of this? Well, I’m not a pitch f/x expert, but just looking at the leaderboards for O-Contact%, it looks as if the more pitches you make contact with outside the zone, the more of a “slap hitter” you are or the less power you have. Guys like Marco Scutaro and Ichiro Suzuki lead the category, while guys like Carlos Pena and Adam Dunn take up the rear. This explains Hosmer’s elevated strikeout rate this year but doesn’t quite explain his lack of power. One may think, based on his O-Contact rate, that he is swinging harder and therefore missing balls more. If he were actually swinging harder, one would expect Hosmer to see both higher power numbers and a higher BABIP, for harder hit balls fall in for hits more often than non-harder hit balls.

Regarding the power numbers, which are down from last year as evidenced by a meager 13 home runs and a .130 ISO (compared to 19 and .172 respectively in 2011), we might find some sort of explanation within the batted ball data. Said data tells us that Hosmer is hitting more ground balls and fewer fly balls than last year. Unfortunately, ground balls tend not to become home runs (shocker, I know), so more groundballs would naturally correlate to less home runs.
What baffles me a bit is this:  if Hosmer is hitting more ground balls, slightly more line drives, less infield fly balls, and more infield hits, then why oh why is his batting average on balls in play so much lower than both last year and the league average? A more scientific approach confirms this suspicion, as Hosmer’s xBABIP (via slash12’s formula) is .295 this year, based on the aforementioned batted ball data and a bunch of other stuff.

Does this mean Hosmer has gotten unlucky this year? Yeah, probably. Does it mean he’s playing as well as last season? Definitely not. He’s striking out more and hitting the ball on the ground way too much. If done well and paired with very low strikeout rates, this kind of approach can lead to a high batting average (see Jeter, Derek), but in order to excel as a first baseman with the kind of strikeout rate that he’s showing, Hosmer needs to hit for more power. In order to hit for more power, Hosmer needs to stop hitting ground balls and put the ball in the air.

We know that Eric Hosmer has the physical talent to be a good hitter, and he’s shown improved plate discipline this year, which is extremely encouraging. It’s easy to look at the low batting average and home run total (not to mention a negative WAR…yikes) and assume the worst, but it hasn’t been as bad as it looks for Hosmer. With a little bit of luck on his side, as well as an altered approach in which he hits more fly balls, Hosmer could easily return to, and hopefully surpass, the offensive success he had in his rookie season. At 22 years old, he has plenty of room for improvement, both mentally and physically, and his ceiling remains sky high.

** All stats taken from FanGraphs.com.

 

Matt Hunter is a staff writer at Big Leagues Monthly as well as Yanks Go Yard on the FanSided Network. He also manages his own site at thefundamentalsblog.wordpress.com.