Kyle Schwarber and Fiddling with Swing Mechanics

[DurhamBull]

Or look at Schwarber last season, adjustments to make more contact.

That’s a good point about Schwarber, and not to be taken for granted. He deserves credit for being able to make that adjustment and I think the team was better off for it.

[phillychuck]

Or look at Schwarber last season, adjustments to make more contact.

That’s a good point about Schwarber, and not to be taken for granted. He deserves credit for being able to make that adjustment and I think the team was better off for it.

Actually, the narrative on Schwarber is like many narratives, a story our brain concocts to make sense out of randomness; Here are Schwarber's career stats (2023 and 2024 at the bottom):

Over the last two seasons his K% has been virtually identical, and his BB% has actually dropped. The difference for Schwabs was entirely luck driven, BABIP, which hitters don't control. If you look at O-swing percentage, it dropped a little, but his Z-percentage (in zone) went up by a lot more. His overall contact percentage on swings was flat. It's entirely mythical narrative that he was significantly more selective this year.

[zambonir]

I thought the narrative was merely that he adjusted to hitting LHP, which Long worked on too. He was already selective and I don't think increasing his BA meant he was more so (as the above also shows and you note. His power was also down to accompany the higher AB).

[allentown]

Over the last two seasons his K% has been virtually identical, and his BB% has actually dropped

Looks like you reversed 2023 and 2024.

[Austinfan]

BABIP isn't all luck, Schwarber went opposite way/CF more than straight pull this season - if you pull into a shift (ok, these days it's a partial shift) that's going to lower your BABIP. Now that won't account for the entire improvement, some was regression to the mean but it does help.

[phillychuck]

BABIP is not a repeatable skill from year to year for anyone. This has been studied repeatedly because it's so counter-intuitive, but there is no discussion of this anymore. Every person in baseball knows this is true.

Schwarber's stats are copied and pasted from Fangraphs. His BB% went from 17.5% in 2023 to 15.3% in 2024, a drop. His K% went from 29.9% to 28.5%, a small drop but pretty much in the bounds of his career K%. The story that he somehow was making more contact and "going the opposite way" to cut down on Ks is a myth statistically. If anything he lost a few walks and increased his BABIP because a few batted balls found holes that didn't the previous year. His LD% and other contact numbers were pretty much unchanged. The one place that may be repeatable is his infield hit percentage on batted balls went from about 0% to about 5%, which might very well be repeatable if he continues to stay in shape.

[LegoDoom]

It looks like Schwarbs was really unlucky last year. Am I reading that right?

[andyb]

I would say there are reasons to suggest Schwarber did try not to pull the ball a bit more. Pull percent went from 52.5% to 48.4% (though 2024 was still way above his career average of 44.4%). What it does look like is that Schwarber cut down his swing a bit to increase his contact rate. Popups went from 11.5% to 7.8%. Ground balls up 6% and fly balls down 5% with a small increase in line drives.

To me this looks like he became smarter. His exit velocities were the same, but he appears to be picking and choosing a bit more to put the ball in play in certain situations. I think I am with AF here. It is not that he tried to go opposite field that much more. Just that in certain situations (maybe 2 strikes, maybe times where a single was all that was needed) he put up more of a contact swing than a power swing. It just looks like he became a smarter situational hitter up there.

[phillychuck]

The bottom two lines are 2023 and 2024. He was lucky last year.

In 2023 he hit .209 on the balls he put into the field of play. Last year he hit .301, his second highest career BABIP. If you look at this number over his career, it fluctuates wildly (numbers that don't consistently track from season to season are often predominantly a product of luck rather than skill). You can see this by just Schwarber's career stats. His BABIP doesn't track closely with LD% or GB%. Some years the Texas Leaguers drop in, some years the GBs find holes. Other years not so much. The one thing that I sort of believe is that he got in better shape and legged out a decent number of IF hits. That accounts for about 1/3 of his BA increase.

I believe he tried to pull less (but, obviously, actually pulled the ball more than his career norm). And he may have tried to hit more GBs. But those do not appear to be connected to his BA increase based on his other stats. IMO it's just he found the holes last year, and he didn't in 2023.

[LegoDoom]

Why are you only comparing 2 years while posting many? The .209 was his worst.

[zambonir]

Isn't .300 considered normal BABIP? No question he had some bad luck in the previous two seasons.

But I think what y'all are talking about also correlates with his success against LHP. That was where he most consciously changed his approach. He actually hit .300 against them in '24, vs. .218 against RHP, and had a higher OPS as well. 248 PAs. vs. 444. He still hit twice as many HRs against RHP but his overall SLG was better against LHP too.

BABIP was .389 vs. LHP, .247 vs. RHP. So surely a combo of luck and approach there too.

[bkeich]

My understanding is one thing that can effect BABIP is foot speed. If guys get in better shape and move a little faster over a long period their BABIP will go up (not incredibly but enough to have an effect).

As players get older generally their BABIP goes down and strength and footspeed are two reasons. If Schwarber was in better shape this had some effect, but looking at his career numbers 2023 was crazy unlucky and 2024 was very lucky.

[zambonir]

It's certainly possible that a combination of cutting down his swing and being a little faster to 1B got Schwarber a few more hits, but I can't imagine he was legging out infield singles or cruising into 2B on what would have been outs last year. Rojas is the type of hitter you would hope can be more than lucky on BABIP. Merrifield too (when he was good). So yeah Crawford might be, but I think we want him to be more than that (not that him having five years like Merrifield's best as a plus CF wouldn't be more than fine).

[phillychuck]

Why are you only comparing 2 years while posting many? The .209 was his worst.

Posting many so the headings are visible. Comparing two because the question was whether or not Schwarber's announced change in swing approach in 2024 affected his BA. I'm claiming mostly not, since BABIP is primarily luck, while admitting he did significantly increase IF hits, possibly due to his announced weight loss and better conditioning.

[andyb]

To be clear, cutting down his swing was far less important to Schwarber's performance than BABIP luck. It just looks like it was a small factor. We are talking a 30%+ increase in BABIP as opposed to swing result changes in the 5% range. Luck is most of the difference. Just not all of it (and he did hit a few less HRs so that was probably a cost to cutting down his swing a bit too).

[Austinfan]

Thing is, with good hitters, incremental improvements can have a sizeable impact.

Turner doesn't need to garner a lot more walks, if he could just turn some 1-2 counts into 2-1 counts, he'd probably have 5-10 more hits and that's an increase in BA of .010+ and OPS of .020+.

Heck, if Rojas could become a plus bunter he'd probably be a 3 WAR CF.

[LegoDoom]

So what was the reason for dropping from .306 to .240 to .209? Why is .209 his baseline? Why is .301 the outlier and not .209?

[phillychuck]

Random luck. That's my point--there is no reason to BABIP luck. It just happens. Does not even out over a season. He was lucky in the two 300-ish seasons, unlucky the 219 and 209 seasons, and for the most part the rest of the seasons were within a standard deviation or so of his mean. I think it's foolish to look for "reasons" for luck.

[andyb]

So what was the reason for dropping from .306 to .240 to .209? Why is .209 his baseline? Why is .301 the outlier and not .209?

I would not say it is all random luck. .209 is really low. But .306 is probably abnormally high for a hitter like Schwarber. There is maybe a .010 difference due to approach. Schwarber hits the ball really hard and that is a factor in relatively high BABIP but his approach gave him fewer fly balls last year also. The other factor in BABIP that is neutral is speed and that will always work against Schwarber as he is one of the slowest players in the majors. Because of the lack of speed a .280 BABIP may be more normal for him than .300. And Turner's normal may be more like .320.

Random luck is the biggest factor. Just not the only factor. Players that are fast and hit the ball hard should have higher BABIPs. Tony Gwynn had a .341 BABIP for his career so approach matters too (he had average speed and power at best when looking at his whole career). We are just producing more guys now that hit the ball hard than place the ball well and the benefits to that (more HRs) have driven the last 20 years of hitting development.

[LegoDoom]

Wouldn't the shift rule have pointed to why the .209 was unlucky?