White Sox: Is this the Real Yoan Moncada?
White Sox third baseman Yoan Moncada is a totally different hitter compared to last year. Is his current great performance real? Could he get even better?
The White Sox have shown some tremendous flashes this season. Some young players have showcased the potential which has made White Sox fans so excited over the last couple of years. The most notable of those is the highlight of the Chris Sale trade in 2016, Yoan Moncada. What has happened with Moncada this season? Why has he been so much better? Where have all the strikeouts gone?
Last year Yoan Moncada had the third highest strikeout rate in baseball behind the recently zero for his last fifty-four at-bats Chris Davis and a reincarnated Adam Dunn, also known as Joey Gallo. It’s still early, but according to Fangraphs Moncada has cut his strikeout rate from 33.4 percent in 2018 to 24.7 percent this year Overall MLB hitters have struck out in 23.4 percent of their plate appearances before this past Monday’s slate of game. Essentially, Moncada went from an almost historic number of strikeouts in 2018 to a league average amount in 2019.
There’s a stat from Jeremy Frank on Twitter which is truly amazing. “Yoan Moncada struck out looking 85 times last year (most in the 21st Century, likely most ever). This year, he went his first 86 plate appearances before striking out looking for the first time. Entering Sunday’s game he was one of only seven qualified hitters without a ꓘ.”
Many people felt as if Moncada had a very small strike zone last year and that he was called out on strikes much more frequently than he deserved. Well, this year that is a non-issue. Hard to get called out on strikes when you’re swinging with two strikes.
Moncada still has not been very good in two-strike counts. Most hitters aren’t. Last year there were only two players in MLB who had 200 or more plate appearances with two strikes who had an OPS of over .800. Only one hitter had an average of .300 or better in two-strike counts. So far this year Moncada has hit .174/.174/.348 with two strikes just before this past Monday. That’s…. Not very good. It is a large improvement over his .110/.212/.204 stat with two strikes last year though.
Maybe Moncada will never be a good two-strike hitter. Is that the end of the world? Not really. Ichiro Suzuki for his career maintained a triple slash line of .311/.355/.402 for an OPS of .757. With two strikes he slashed .253/.286/.304 for an OPS of .590. Ichiro is one of the greatest leadoff hitters the game has ever seen. His two-strike weakness didn’t hurt him that bad.
So not being good with two strikes can be okay for a singles hitter, what about for a power hitter? Well, Giancarlo Stanton will most likely be the active home run leader in a few years. Only seven players in the history of the game have hit more home runs than he did through his age 28 season. What has Stanton done with two strikes in his career? He has seen his triple slash line decrease from .268/.358/.547 and a .905 OPS all the way down to a .162/.241/.324. That is a .565 OPS. That .565 OPS is .035 lower than the career OPS of the notoriously soft hitting Rey Ordonez‘s career OPS.
If Moncada is going to have issues hitting with two strikes, there’s a good way to help that. It’s pretty simple. Avoid two strikes. Moncada has done a much better job of that this year. Last year 372 of Moncada’s 650 plate appearances were two-strike plate appearances. That’s a 57.2 percent rate. This year 46 of his 87 plate appearances before Monday were with two strikes. That is a 52.8 percent rate.
If a player is going to struggle with two strikes, that player limiting plate appearances with two strikes is a great idea. Going forward he may be able to limit his two-strike plate appearances even more and make that smaller amount of plate appearances more productive. Also limiting two-strike plate appearances will, of course, decrease the potential for strikeouts.
The big question with Moncada’s current performance is, can it continue? Is this new, better version of Moncada here to stay? A lot of data seems to say that much of his current performance is sustainable. Fangraphs calculates a few different stats which can sort of estimate luck for a player. The first of these is BABIP. That stands for Batting Average on Balls in Play. This is the batting average for a player during all at-bats which are not home runs or strikeouts. League average BABIP typically sits around .300. The higher the number, usually the luckier the player is. It certainly isn’t perfect, but can give an estimate for sustainability.
Moncada has a .370 BABIP this season. This is not a sustainable number. The only player in baseball history with a career BABIP of over .370 is Ty Cobb. This does not mean that Moncada has been incredibly lucky though. Faster players like Ichiro with good bat control can maintain high career BABIP numbers. Ichiro had a .338, well over the typical league average.
Mike Trout, Christian Yelich and Joey Votto are all active players and have a career BABIP over .350. Faster players who can beat out infield contact, players with good bat control, and players that hit the ball hard all can have a much higher than league average BABIP. Slow players who are easy to shift against typically drag down the league average BABIP. For example, Kyle Schwarber has a career .269 BABIP.
Moncada for his career has a .345 BABIP. He has played long enough to show that that is not a small sample size. According to Baseball Savant, Moncada has the seventh highest average exit velocity in baseball for any player with at least 10 batted ball events with a 95.5 exit velocity. Moncada is tied for 22nd in speed down the first base line. He has reached 90 feet in 3.81 seconds.
His top end speed isn’t quite as impressive, but he has reached 27.6 feet per second this year, ranking him tied for a spot in the top 100. Do you know who else has exactly those same numbers? Reigning NL MVP Yelich. It’s true. Both Yelich and Moncada have the same sprint speed, exit velocity, and ninety-foot split. Long story short, Moncada’s current BABIP is unsustainable. He has probably been a little lucky, but the profile of his speed and strength are very similar to a player with one of the best BABIP numbers of all time.
What about Moncada’s power outburst? Moncada has six home runs this season in 21 games. Moncada started pretty strong with four home runs in 20 games. During 2018 Moncada hit 17 home runs. A number much lower than many would expect for such a strong man. Last year Moncada hit 11.7 percent of his fly balls for home runs according to Fangraphs. This year? 25 percent of Moncada’s fly balls have left the park before Monday.
For reference, Stanton has a career 26.7 percent home run rate. We know Moncada is strong, is he as strong as Stanton, a man who hit 59 home runs two seasons ago? That’s doubtful. That being said, last year Moncada only homered on 11 percent of his fly balls. That was under his career 14.6 percent rate. His home run to fly ball rate shouldn’t be doubling, but it should be better than the low rate he had last year.
So 25 percent is probably too high, the 11 percent was too low, what is reasonable? Well, his fly ball rate is very close to his career numbers. For his career, 38.4 percent of Moncada’s balls in play have been fly balls. This season he sat at 40 percent before Monday. What’s different is how hard he is hitting those balls. Last season Moncada’s average exit velocity was 90.6. This year it has reached as high as 95.5. Adding another five miles per hour in exit velocity can push a few balls from the warning track to the seats.
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Basically, Moncada is a very fast and strong baseball player who has made a drastic change in approach. He has been very exciting to watch. Will he be this good going forward? Maybe not. He is only 23 though. This could be just a stepping stone to a prime Moncada who could be a dominant force in the White Sox lineup for years to come.