The title was originally "Jackie Bradley Jr: Trouble with the Curve" but I couldn't quote a terrible move so...
Using the same Tim Britton piece as I did to start the Bogaerts thread, I noticed the team had a worse observation on Bradley so far. While Bogaerts was merely cheating on outside pitches and pulling them, Bradley was completely lost:
It is never good when a hitter flat out says "I'm lost" and " need to go back to the drawing board. Britton mentioned that the problems with fastballs, but when looking at Bradley's charts, his problem isn't the fastball at all - its the curve ball in the particular. Out of the 58 curve balls that Bradley has seen this year, he was swung at 40% of them. When he does swing, he whiffs 57% of the time. When he makes contact, 80% of them are ground balls and 20% are fly balls. He has one hit off of a curve ball, which was a double. This doesn't even touch on Bradley's problems with breaking pitches generally:
All charts in this post are from Brooks Baseball.
While a .250 BA and .369 SLG isn't great, at least he hits "hard" pitches (Fourseam, sinker, cutter). On offspeed pitches (changeup, splitter, screwball), he struggles quite a bit as well, but swings and misses less - 38% on the change and 25% on the splitter. But the breaking balls (curve, slow curve, slider, knuckler) decimate him. The curve ball is especially troubling for him.
He doesn't generate any line drives with them. He rarely gets them airborne too. Sliders give him a ton of trouble too. He swings at way more sliders (58%), but whiffs at less of them when compared to curves. He still hits sliders for mainly ground balls (45% per BIP) and fly balls (36% per BIP).
Speaking of ground balls, the issue of extreme ground ball rates only accelerated in May:
From the two charts above, you can see that hard and breaking pitches, the ground balls per balls in play has skyrocketed. The only reason offspeed didn't' go up was because it was an already ridiculous 67%. The big change from April to May is that now he's just pounding everything into the ground, with most of hit weakly and fielded on the grass of the infield. When looking at ground balls per handedness, RHP pitchers have been inducing the most ground balls. One in every two balls put in play from RHP were hit on the ground in April. That ratio jumped to 63% in May. LHP have also started having more success getting ground balls from Bradley, going form 35% to 50% over the course of a month.
The whiff rates have also started climbing up over the duration of the season too:
On hard and offspeed pitches, Bradley Jr is swinging and missing a lot more. What is troubling with offspeed pitches is that he cut his swing rate in half in May, but increased his whiff rate by 5%. However, his swing rate on both hard and breaking pitches increased by around 4% each in May. Both of these point to a complete breakdown in approach. Swinging more, whiffing more, and hitting more ground balls. This isn't that big of a revelation, since Bradley Jr. admitted it himself. But I wanted to take a closer look at the curve balls. Curve balls are hard to hit because they break a lot and through different planes; however, they are still distinct pitch. They aren't like a sinker, splitter, or change, that mimic a fastball until they don't (either by dropping or being slower with similar deceptive arm action). Most curves don't even look like sliders, unless they are the tweener "slurves." I've felt that his susceptability has to be due to two things: being behind in the count and expanding the zone and bad pitch recognition, leading to swinging at bad pitches.
The first chart shows that his distribution of hard pitches is the same when facing both RHP and LHP. However, lefties feed him more breaking balls, while righties throw him more offspeed pitches. This makes sense because breaking pitches break away to LHBs from LHPs, while the opposite is true for RHP. Lefties love feeding Bradley Jr. breaking pitches when they are both ahead in the count and have two strikes. His issues of lack of pitch recognition and expansion of the zone when behind is the perfect combination for pitchers. For RHPs, they more evenly mix up breaking and offspeed with ahead and when they have two strikes. I think the same reasoning applies here. Oddly enough with two strikes they go way more toward breaking pitches than offspeed, which is opposite when they are merely ahead in the count where the distribution is even.
When isolating just curves, we see that lefties go one place with them - down and away:
Right-handed pitches vary the location much more. They either try and back-door the curve ball, or throw them low and out the zone to all parts of the plate:
What is clear though is that a vast majority of the curve balls thrown by both LHP and RHP are thrown out the zone and for balls. Based on his scouting report and his MiLB track record, you would expect Bradley Jr. to lay off those pitches and force pitchers to throw curves in the zone for strikes, or revert to something else much more hittable. Instead, all he has done this year is chase:
Luckily, he doesn't chase much when LHP try and drop one down and away. But everywhere else he expands the zone down. Another issue with him chasing those pitches is that he doesn't foul very many off. He has only fouled off 8.6% of them compared to whiffing on 22.4% of them. This is much different than compared to the slider, where he whiffs on 24%, but at least fouls off twice as many (17%). His problem with the slider is hitting them for so many ground balls (45% GB/BIP ratio for sliders). Here is his whiff chart for curves:
And here you see the downfalls of expanding the zone. When he swings at those in the zone he at least makes contact a majority of the time. But when he chases outside of the zone on curves, he misses at least 50% of the time, but more like 80% of the time. This is exactly why RHPs get away with throwing him more breaking pitches when at 2 strikes - he will likely expand the zone and miss. At the worst, there is an 80% chance that if he does make contact, it will simply be a ground ball.
LHPs opt more for the slider against him:
When sliders are thrown down and middle-away outside of the zone, Bradley Jr swings 70.6% (12 of 17) of the time. Of the times he swings, he misses 58.3% (7 of 12) of the time. This is atrocious for pitches that are balls. The sliders from LHP are more varied in location than curves, but he can't lay off the slider from LHPs. Essentially, the LHP have two weapons: curve down in the zone generally, and sliders down and away.
I think the articles (and possible FO's) focus on his troubles with fastballs ignore that the fastball is the least of Bradley Jr's problems. He absolutely cannot handle breaking pitches. LHPs get him to expand by going down and away with sliders, while RHPs get him to expand down with curve balls. This to me is the most troubling part. He is having trouble recognizing breaking pitches from both LHPs and RHPs. And it is not just one type of pitch, but two. His issue simply isn't cheating on pitches to pull them over the short left field (like Bogaerts), it is simply recognizing breaking pitch is coming and adjusting accordingly. The fact that he is expanding the zone so much is evidence to me that he can't adjust and instead swings because he thinks it will fall for a streak, or won't break as much as it does. The FO needs to get him to lay off so many pitches. To do this he needs to learn to recognize him. If Bradley can work himself back into better hitters counts due to laying off garbage down in the zone, I think he will immediately start seeing more fastballs that he can handle. At the very least the pitcher will elevate the breaking pitch more, increasing the risk of it being hittable, or even better, hanging one that can be crushed.
I'd be curious to know if the reason he has stayed up is because he needs exposure to major league breaking balls. I wonder if the quality if breaking ball is worse in AAA, so much so that he can easily lay off of them? That may be one explanation for why we must endure his struggles at the plate on a nightly basis.
Using the same Tim Britton piece as I did to start the Bogaerts thread, I noticed the team had a worse observation on Bradley so far. While Bogaerts was merely cheating on outside pitches and pulling them, Bradley was completely lost:
Bradley has had similar issues at the plate, dating back to his big-league experience last year. The outfielder’s problems with fastballs in have been discussed ad nauseam, to the point that he began cheating in — and thus rolling over pitches on the outer half that he usually hits with authority the other way.
For a stretch in late April, Bradley was doing just that: In a four-game stretch late in the month, he had six hits, including four doubles and a triple. He has just two extra-base hits in 14 games since.
Bradley was candid when discussing how he feels at the plate after Friday’s loss.
“I’m lost,” he said. “I’m not getting the results that I want, and I’m sure it’s not the results they want …. You have to go back to the drawing board.”
It is never good when a hitter flat out says "I'm lost" and " need to go back to the drawing board. Britton mentioned that the problems with fastballs, but when looking at Bradley's charts, his problem isn't the fastball at all - its the curve ball in the particular. Out of the 58 curve balls that Bradley has seen this year, he was swung at 40% of them. When he does swing, he whiffs 57% of the time. When he makes contact, 80% of them are ground balls and 20% are fly balls. He has one hit off of a curve ball, which was a double. This doesn't even touch on Bradley's problems with breaking pitches generally:
All charts in this post are from Brooks Baseball.
While a .250 BA and .369 SLG isn't great, at least he hits "hard" pitches (Fourseam, sinker, cutter). On offspeed pitches (changeup, splitter, screwball), he struggles quite a bit as well, but swings and misses less - 38% on the change and 25% on the splitter. But the breaking balls (curve, slow curve, slider, knuckler) decimate him. The curve ball is especially troubling for him.
He doesn't generate any line drives with them. He rarely gets them airborne too. Sliders give him a ton of trouble too. He swings at way more sliders (58%), but whiffs at less of them when compared to curves. He still hits sliders for mainly ground balls (45% per BIP) and fly balls (36% per BIP).
Speaking of ground balls, the issue of extreme ground ball rates only accelerated in May:
From the two charts above, you can see that hard and breaking pitches, the ground balls per balls in play has skyrocketed. The only reason offspeed didn't' go up was because it was an already ridiculous 67%. The big change from April to May is that now he's just pounding everything into the ground, with most of hit weakly and fielded on the grass of the infield. When looking at ground balls per handedness, RHP pitchers have been inducing the most ground balls. One in every two balls put in play from RHP were hit on the ground in April. That ratio jumped to 63% in May. LHP have also started having more success getting ground balls from Bradley, going form 35% to 50% over the course of a month.
The whiff rates have also started climbing up over the duration of the season too:
On hard and offspeed pitches, Bradley Jr is swinging and missing a lot more. What is troubling with offspeed pitches is that he cut his swing rate in half in May, but increased his whiff rate by 5%. However, his swing rate on both hard and breaking pitches increased by around 4% each in May. Both of these point to a complete breakdown in approach. Swinging more, whiffing more, and hitting more ground balls. This isn't that big of a revelation, since Bradley Jr. admitted it himself. But I wanted to take a closer look at the curve balls. Curve balls are hard to hit because they break a lot and through different planes; however, they are still distinct pitch. They aren't like a sinker, splitter, or change, that mimic a fastball until they don't (either by dropping or being slower with similar deceptive arm action). Most curves don't even look like sliders, unless they are the tweener "slurves." I've felt that his susceptability has to be due to two things: being behind in the count and expanding the zone and bad pitch recognition, leading to swinging at bad pitches.
The first chart shows that his distribution of hard pitches is the same when facing both RHP and LHP. However, lefties feed him more breaking balls, while righties throw him more offspeed pitches. This makes sense because breaking pitches break away to LHBs from LHPs, while the opposite is true for RHP. Lefties love feeding Bradley Jr. breaking pitches when they are both ahead in the count and have two strikes. His issues of lack of pitch recognition and expansion of the zone when behind is the perfect combination for pitchers. For RHPs, they more evenly mix up breaking and offspeed with ahead and when they have two strikes. I think the same reasoning applies here. Oddly enough with two strikes they go way more toward breaking pitches than offspeed, which is opposite when they are merely ahead in the count where the distribution is even.
When isolating just curves, we see that lefties go one place with them - down and away:
Right-handed pitches vary the location much more. They either try and back-door the curve ball, or throw them low and out the zone to all parts of the plate:
What is clear though is that a vast majority of the curve balls thrown by both LHP and RHP are thrown out the zone and for balls. Based on his scouting report and his MiLB track record, you would expect Bradley Jr. to lay off those pitches and force pitchers to throw curves in the zone for strikes, or revert to something else much more hittable. Instead, all he has done this year is chase:
Luckily, he doesn't chase much when LHP try and drop one down and away. But everywhere else he expands the zone down. Another issue with him chasing those pitches is that he doesn't foul very many off. He has only fouled off 8.6% of them compared to whiffing on 22.4% of them. This is much different than compared to the slider, where he whiffs on 24%, but at least fouls off twice as many (17%). His problem with the slider is hitting them for so many ground balls (45% GB/BIP ratio for sliders). Here is his whiff chart for curves:
And here you see the downfalls of expanding the zone. When he swings at those in the zone he at least makes contact a majority of the time. But when he chases outside of the zone on curves, he misses at least 50% of the time, but more like 80% of the time. This is exactly why RHPs get away with throwing him more breaking pitches when at 2 strikes - he will likely expand the zone and miss. At the worst, there is an 80% chance that if he does make contact, it will simply be a ground ball.
LHPs opt more for the slider against him:
When sliders are thrown down and middle-away outside of the zone, Bradley Jr swings 70.6% (12 of 17) of the time. Of the times he swings, he misses 58.3% (7 of 12) of the time. This is atrocious for pitches that are balls. The sliders from LHP are more varied in location than curves, but he can't lay off the slider from LHPs. Essentially, the LHP have two weapons: curve down in the zone generally, and sliders down and away.
I think the articles (and possible FO's) focus on his troubles with fastballs ignore that the fastball is the least of Bradley Jr's problems. He absolutely cannot handle breaking pitches. LHPs get him to expand by going down and away with sliders, while RHPs get him to expand down with curve balls. This to me is the most troubling part. He is having trouble recognizing breaking pitches from both LHPs and RHPs. And it is not just one type of pitch, but two. His issue simply isn't cheating on pitches to pull them over the short left field (like Bogaerts), it is simply recognizing breaking pitch is coming and adjusting accordingly. The fact that he is expanding the zone so much is evidence to me that he can't adjust and instead swings because he thinks it will fall for a streak, or won't break as much as it does. The FO needs to get him to lay off so many pitches. To do this he needs to learn to recognize him. If Bradley can work himself back into better hitters counts due to laying off garbage down in the zone, I think he will immediately start seeing more fastballs that he can handle. At the very least the pitcher will elevate the breaking pitch more, increasing the risk of it being hittable, or even better, hanging one that can be crushed.
I'd be curious to know if the reason he has stayed up is because he needs exposure to major league breaking balls. I wonder if the quality if breaking ball is worse in AAA, so much so that he can easily lay off of them? That may be one explanation for why we must endure his struggles at the plate on a nightly basis.