Breaking down Holliday’s swing

[Aglets]

And after this discussion yesterday, Holliday hit a HR last night in the 8th.  Love to see it.

[Jagwar]

On 7/1/2024 at 2:31 PM, interloper said:

I would much rather see those two numbers reversed. 

I'm not sure it matters. Either way the hitter is OPSing 800. One is likely scoring runs the other is likely driving in runs. 

[interloper]

4 minutes ago, Jagwar said:

I'm not sure it matters. Either way the hitter is OPSing 800. One is likely scoring runs the other is likely driving in runs. 

For me it's just one is more likely to translate at the big leagues. Walks alone is doing nothing for him up here because he will just be challenged. And if he's not hitting, he won't walk.

[Jagwar]

1 minute ago, interloper said:

For me it's just one is more likely to translate at the big leagues. Walks alone is doing nothing for him up here because he will just be challenged. And if he's not hitting, he won't walk.

Fair enough. But if he's hitting I'll bet he's likely a 380-400 OBP. If he's hitting doubles and triples and 15-20 HR where would his OPS end up? Close to 900? If so I'll take that. 

[Aglets]

Weekly update time!

Glad to see Jackson showing a bit more power this last week.   He got into 5 games.

Hit .333/.583/.733     with 3 doubles and a homer.    9 BBs and 6 K's!!

Looks like the bat may be coming around.

Now we just need to get him actually playing the field again..........

[Tony-OH]

Holliday has a swinging strike percentage of 10.2%, which in 8th best in the system of anyone playing A-ball and higher and below the 11.1% major league average. That means his 23.6% strike out percentage (16th worse in system) seems to be driven by a lot of called strike 3s it would seem. He has a 25.1% whiff rate on fastballs, 29.4 on offspeed, and 34.5% against breaking balls, which looks bad, but is actually 3rd best on the team among qualifiers. 

His bigger issues for me remains that he still hits too many ground balls and poor launch angle. His ground ball rate was an issue last year and while it has improved a little bit in AAA (50% in 2023 to 49.3% this year), his fallen line drive percentage 29.3% in AAA in 2023 to 21.1% is not great. His average launch angle of 8 degrees is second worse on Norfolk with only Maverick Handley (7%) being worse. His 6% launch angles on breaking balls suggests he rolls over a bit on them. He has a -5 launch angle when he pulls the ball which is pretty bad and tells me he out in front or on top of way too many fastballs.

Now he does hit the ball still fairly hard (90.3 EV good for 4th behind Mayo (91.6), Stowers (91.6), and Kjerstad (90.6) among qualifiers. 

Either way, some of the data points shows he needs to adjust his hitting style to have more sustained success.

 

 

[now]

13 minutes ago, Tony-OH said:

Holliday has a swinging strike percentage of 10.2%, which in 8th best in the system of anyone playing A-ball and higher and below the 11.1% major league average. That means his 23.6% strike out percentage (16th worse in system) seems to be driven by a lot of called strike 3s it would seem. He has a 25.1% whiff rate on fastballs, 29.4 on offspeed, and 34.5% against breaking balls, which looks bad, but is actually 3rd best on the team among qualifiers. 

His bigger issues for me remains that he still hits too many ground balls and poor launch angle. His ground ball rate was an issue last year and while it has improved a little bit in AAA (50% in 2023 to 49.3% this year), his fallen line drive percentage 29.3% in AAA in 2023 to 21.1% is not great. His average launch angle of 8 degrees is second worse on Norfolk with only Maverick Handley (7%) being worse. His 6% launch angles on breaking balls suggests he rolls over a bit on them. He has a -5 launch angle when he pulls the ball which is pretty bad and tells me he out in front or on top of way too many fastballs.

Now he does hit the ball still fairly hard (90.3 EV good for 4th behind Mayo (91.6), Stowers (91.6), and Kjerstad (90.6) among qualifiers. 

Either way, some of the data points shows he needs to adjust his hitting style to have more sustained success.

 

 

Thanks for the updates and especially this fresh take on Holliday, which helps explain his slippage from 1A to 1B.  A minor shift, perhaps, but given the universal hype (nationally and locally) earlier this year, it seems like a bigger deal.

[EdwinRip]

I’m not concerned about Holiday as long as he continues to improve.  Christian Yelich has only had a launch angel above 8 once in his career and has always been an above average hitter.  Not everyone should be a high launch angle guy especially if you don’t have big power.  You have to play to your strengths.  

[733baseball]

It's also worth pointing out that despite his time on the injured list and in the Majors, he leads all of AAA in walks, and is first in the IL in runs scored. 

[interloper]

6 hours ago, Tony-OH said:

Holliday has a swinging strike percentage of 10.2%, which in 8th best in the system of anyone playing A-ball and higher and below the 11.1% major league average. That means his 23.6% strike out percentage (16th worse in system) seems to be driven by a lot of called strike 3s it would seem. He has a 25.1% whiff rate on fastballs, 29.4 on offspeed, and 34.5% against breaking balls, which looks bad, but is actually 3rd best on the team among qualifiers. 

His bigger issues for me remains that he still hits too many ground balls and poor launch angle. His ground ball rate was an issue last year and while it has improved a little bit in AAA (50% in 2023 to 49.3% this year), his fallen line drive percentage 29.3% in AAA in 2023 to 21.1% is not great. His average launch angle of 8 degrees is second worse on Norfolk with only Maverick Handley (7%) being worse. His 6% launch angles on breaking balls suggests he rolls over a bit on them. He has a -5 launch angle when he pulls the ball which is pretty bad and tells me he out in front or on top of way too many fastballs.

Now he does hit the ball still fairly hard (90.3 EV good for 4th behind Mayo (91.6), Stowers (91.6), and Kjerstad (90.6) among qualifiers. 

Either way, some of the data points shows he needs to adjust his hitting style to have more sustained success.

Hopefully they sort him out in the offseason. I don't see this kind of thing improving dramatically in the remaining couple of months. 

[OriolesUpAndDowns]

The ground ball rate is concerning and LD rate is slightly concerning but the EV are still really good.  
 

Hopefully he can make some tweaks but I would have thought the O’s would have known and asked him to make tweaks last offseason? 
 

[Warehouse]

On 7/9/2024 at 9:45 AM, Tony-OH said:

Holliday has a swinging strike percentage of 10.2%, which in 8th best in the system of anyone playing A-ball and higher and below the 11.1% major league average. That means his 23.6% strike out percentage (16th worse in system) seems to be driven by a lot of called strike 3s it would seem. He has a 25.1% whiff rate on fastballs, 29.4 on offspeed, and 34.5% against breaking balls, which looks bad, but is actually 3rd best on the team among qualifiers. 

His bigger issues for me remains that he still hits too many ground balls and poor launch angle. His ground ball rate was an issue last year and while it has improved a little bit in AAA (50% in 2023 to 49.3% this year), his fallen line drive percentage 29.3% in AAA in 2023 to 21.1% is not great. His average launch angle of 8 degrees is second worse on Norfolk with only Maverick Handley (7%) being worse. His 6% launch angles on breaking balls suggests he rolls over a bit on them. He has a -5 launch angle when he pulls the ball which is pretty bad and tells me he out in front or on top of way too many fastballs.

Now he does hit the ball still fairly hard (90.3 EV good for 4th behind Mayo (91.6), Stowers (91.6), and Kjerstad (90.6) among qualifiers. 

Either way, some of the data points shows he needs to adjust his hitting style to have more sustained success.

 

 

His swinging strike percentage is also deflated by his takes though.  For whiff rate (which only includes swings in the denominator), he is at 27.6% on the year vs. the AAA avg of 26.7% and the MLB avg of 25.1%.

Link

[OriolesUpAndDowns]

On 7/9/2024 at 9:45 AM, Tony-OH said:

Holliday has a swinging strike percentage of 10.2%, which in 8th best in the system of anyone playing A-ball and higher and below the 11.1% major league average. That means his 23.6% strike out percentage (16th worse in system) seems to be driven by a lot of called strike 3s it would seem. He has a 25.1% whiff rate on fastballs, 29.4 on offspeed, and 34.5% against breaking balls, which looks bad, but is actually 3rd best on the team among qualifiers. 

His bigger issues for me remains that he still hits too many ground balls and poor launch angle. His ground ball rate was an issue last year and while it has improved a little bit in AAA (50% in 2023 to 49.3% this year), his fallen line drive percentage 29.3% in AAA in 2023 to 21.1% is not great. His average launch angle of 8 degrees is second worse on Norfolk with only Maverick Handley (7%) being worse. His 6% launch angles on breaking balls suggests he rolls over a bit on them. He has a -5 launch angle when he pulls the ball which is pretty bad and tells me he out in front or on top of way too many fastballs.

Now he does hit the ball still fairly hard (90.3 EV good for 4th behind Mayo (91.6), Stowers (91.6), and Kjerstad (90.6) among qualifiers. 

Either way, some of the data points shows he needs to adjust his hitting style to have more sustained success.

 

 

Tony, I don’t know enough about elite level hitting mechanics so I’m curious your opinion on how easy these issues are to correct?  Specifically the launch angle and ground ball issue.  

Edited July 13 by OriolesUpAndDowns

[EdwinRip]

14 minutes ago, OriolesUpAndDowns said:

Tony, I don’t know enough about elite level hitting mechanics so I’m curious your opinion on how easy these issues are to correct?  Specifically the launch angle and ground ball issue.  

How is that launch angle a problem?  I’d like to see it up to about 10-11% in a perfect world but Holiday is not the type of hitter to have a high launch angle. I only see a minor tweak needed.

[OriolesUpAndDowns]

1 minute ago, EdwinRip said:

How is that launch angle a problem?  I’d like to see it up to about 10-11% in a perfect world but Holiday is not the type of hitter to have a high launch angle. I only see a minor tweak needed.

I should have been clearer, I also see it as a minor problem.  I just don’t know enough about hitting mechanics to know how hard it is to get it about a couple degrees.