Sometimes I think the cart is driving the horse as it were when it comes to some stats. Clearly, hitting the ball hard is a good thing. But it's one of many factors that go into a hit. You can have an approach that dead-center-warning-tracks 2/3rds of your batted ball and they're almost all going to be caught. Regardless of the resulting BABIP.
Oh - and speaking
of. . .thanks to the nitty gritty of Savant, Valdez really isn't a mystery. Go to game logs/statcast, then sort by distance, direction, and lastly, result.
First let's look at last year. 764 OPS v. this year's .436.
Pulling - 34 PAs, .500 BA, 20 have a launch angle of 10 or less. 13 are hard hit (38%.)
Straight-away - 45 PAs, .234 BA, 25 have 10 or less. 34% hard hit.
Opposite - 21 PAs, .429 BA, 7 have 10 or less. 24% hard hit.
So pulling was great. Esp for 12 degrees or higher. 4 HRs, 3 2B, 2 1B, 4 field outs.
And hard hit when pulled? Again, the 4 HR, 2 2B, 4 1B, 2 field outs and 1 DP.
Clearly he should hit the ball hard and pull it in the air MOARZ.
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So let's do that this year. First of all - his BB and K % jumps from 4% and 25% to 4% and 31%.
Pulling - 25 PAs, 13 have a launch angle of 10 or less.
Improvement. 13 are also hard hit.
Improvement.
Or is it?
Well, 5 of those hard hit balls are fly outs, as they're hit too steeply. So we end up with 2 HRs, 2 2Bs, and 4 1Bs overall. .320 BA. But not actually an improvement.
Straight-away - 20 PAs, only 3 have an angle 10 or less.
Improvement. 10 are hard hit (50%)
Improvement. Or is it?
Well, there are basically no line drives, just flyouts and popups, so we end up 3 singles, 2 SFs and 1 SB. .176 BA. So, not an improvement. Just weak in the air contact for outs.
Opposite - 12 PAs. Well, there are basically no line drives, so we end up with 1 double out of 12 PAs (2 ground outs.) .083 BA. So, also not an improvement.
In short he looks like he's trying to hit the ball hard and in the air, so he's swinging and selecting pitches to try to pull for power. In what I'm guessing is in accordance with what he was told to do. His overall EV is up 2mph and his launch angle has gone from 10 to 23.
He can keep doing this all year long, and even if he were to somehow muscle up his exit velocity a bit, the overall result is not going to change.
He needs a different approach - going after different pitches and trying to do different things with them. Because he does one thing well with this approach. And if I'm an opposing pitching coach, I'm not giving him fastballs he can pull in the air.
Which means, nothing middle middle or middle up. (Look at these zone maps:
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/savant-player/enmanuel-valdez-665839?stats=statcast-r-zones-mlb )
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BTW, this is pretty similar problem to Yoshida - as far as the pulling/hit distribution angle goes, but he hits more liners and Ks much less.
Last year Yoshida's overall hits were almost perfectly evenly distributed at aprox. 50 per location - pull, straight-away, opposite. His field outs were 100, 100, 60.
When he was on, April 20th to Aug 28th or so, he put balls into play in an almost perfect ratio - 115, 118, 115.
After Aug 29, he became pull happy. 32 (.219 BA - 22 with a launch angle of 11 or below), 24 (.333), 11 (.545).
This year to date? 28 (.357 BA - 17 with a LA of 10 or below), 24 (.333), 17 (.235).
But up to April 16th? 22 (.273 BA 12 with a LA of 10 or below), 20 (.250), 13 (.231).
Afterward? (SSS!): 6, 4, 4,
