In a recent game against the Arizona Diamondbacks, Michael Harris II of the Atlanta Braves went 1-for-4 with a single and hit into two double plays. No runs, no RBIs, not much of a contribution in Atlanta’s 5-2 victory. Except, buried in the middle of a forgettable game were some positive signs for the struggling sophomore.
In his first at-bat, Harris lined a ball at 97 mph into the left-center gap, only to see Arizona’s Corbin Carroll make a spectacular diving catch. In his next at-bats, he laced a 104-mph one-hopper that third baseman Josh Rojas made a nifty backhanded stab on to turn into a 5-4-3 double play, and then Harris hit into another, a hard grounder at 109 mph right to the shortstop. In his final at-bat, he ripped a 113-mph low line drive up the middle for a base hit. A hard-hit ball is classified at 95 mph or better and Harris had four of them in the game, but just the one hit. Yes, getting the ball in the air will help, but in 2023 players are hitting .500 on hard-hit balls.
A few days later, Harris went 3-for-4 with a home run and double against the New York Mets, both hits at 103-plus mph. The game after that, he went 2-for-4 with a double, both hits clocking in at 108 mph. The next, he went 1-for-4 against the Washington Nationals but with two balls at 108 and 110 mph. It has been a rough go for Harris, but those exit velocity numbers suggest he is perhaps finding his 2022 stroke again.
Harris headlines this special edition of Real or Not. Let’s dig into some of the numbers of a few players who have captured my attention and who play important roles on teams in playoff races. (We’re avoiding rookies since we just covered them recently.)
Are these early results — both bad and good — for real? Or … not?
Michael Harris II, CF, Atlanta Braves
Michael Harris II, CF, Atlanta BravesHarris had one of the most impressive rookie seasons in recent memory, jumping almost straight from High-A to the majors — with only a short pit stop in Double-A — and then producing 5.3 WAR (per Baseball-Reference.com) in just 114 games to win National League Rookie of the Year honors. He obliterated right-handers with a .323/.363/.580 line, the fifth-highest OPS against righties among regulars. While he struggled some against lefties, he did this at age 21, and when you’re that good at such a young age, it establishes a future likely full of All-Star Games and top-10 MVP votes. The Braves clearly saw that kind of future, signing Harris to a $72 million contract before the season was even over.
His sophomore season, however, has been a struggle as he tries to get his average over .200 and his OPS over .600. We can dig into his numbers a million different ways, but here are the pertinent points:
- His strikeout rate is the same as last season.
- His walk rate is up a bit and his chase rate, his biggest red flag as a rookie, has slightly improved (although it’s still too high).
- His launch angle has increased, which should eventually translate to more home runs, and his hard-hit rate is also the same as last season.
These are all good signs that he’ll eventually figure things out and get back on track. I went back to the start of the divisional era in 1969 and looked at all 21-year-old rookies. Harris’ OPS+ ranked eighth on a list that includes Albert Pujols (first), Tim Raines (fifth), Darryl Strawberry (sixth), Eddie Murray (11th), Freddie Freeman (18th) and Cal Ripken (21st). All of the players in the top 25 went on to successful careers; so, essentially, it would be unprecedented for a hitter to do what Harris did at age 21 and then suffer a career collapse.
Verdict: Early results are NOT REAL. I would like Harris to tighten up his approach, but he’s going to start hitting. I still believe in his potential to reach that perennial All-Star status (especially when factoring in his defense and baserunning).
Julio Rodriguez, CF, Seattle Mariners
Speaking of 21-year-old Rookies of the Year, J-Rod finished second on the above list, behind Pujols, with a 147 OPS+. While he is outhitting Harris, he’s not reaching the sky-high expectations the baseball world had for him entering 2023. Sometimes the expectations we place on young players are unfair, but in Rodriguez’s case they were absolutely warranted given he hit .297/.358/.567 with 27 home runs over his final 99 games of 2022. It wasn’t unreasonable to dream of a .300/35-homer season.
Like Harris, however, the one minor red flag was plate discipline. Rodriguez’s chase rate as a rookie was 33.5% (Harris’ was 39%). The MLB average is under 30%, but you would expect a young player to improve in this area, particularly one with Rodriguez’s talent. Check out Rodriguez’s month-by-month totals for chase rate/swing-and-miss rate/strikeout rate/OPS:
April 2022: 31%/31%/37%/.544
May 2022: 34%/33%/25%/.866
June 2022: 33%/32%/25%/.903
July 2022: 35%/37%/23%/.884
Aug. 2022: 37%/23%/25%/.701
Sept. 2022: 31%/24%/20%/1.202
April 2023: 38%/29%/28%/.770
May 2023: 34%/30%/27%/.755
June 2023: 47%/34%/31%/.710
Not only has Rodriguez not improved, but he’s regressing within the season — although a three-hit game with a home run this past Saturday will hopefully get his June going in the right direction. It feels like with the entire Seattle offense struggling, Rodriguez is even more pressed to carry the load. Pitchers are attacking him with the oldest approach in the book: fastballs in, breaking balls away. Those sliders remain Rodriguez’s Kryptonite and his inability to lay off them may be affecting his ability to crush fastballs. Last year, he hit .309 and slugged .585 against four-seamers; this year, he’s down to .237 and .356 as he’s too often caught in-between. The strikeouts are contagious in the Seattle lineup right now and Rodriguez can’t seem to escape the disease.
Verdict: Early results are REAL. Look, he hasn’t been terrible, but there are things he has to clean up before he jumps into the top-10 MVP conversation like last season.
Alek Manoah, SP, Toronto Blue Jays
It’s like Manoah and Jose Berrios have switched. After struggling in his first full season with the Blue Jays last year, Berrios is back to looking like the pitcher acquired from the Minnesota Twins. Meanwhile, Manoah — who finished third in the Cy Young voting in 2022 — has pitched so poorly the Blue Jays finally sent him down to the Florida Complex League, where he’ll work on the back fields to figure out what, exactly, has gone wrong with his mechanics that led to 42 walks in 58 innings.
Such a move will sound familiar to longtime Blue Jays fans who will remember Hall of Famer Roy Halladay. After a 10.64 ERA in his second season in the majors in 2000, Halladay had to go back to High-A the following season to get back on track. The difference: Halladay wasn’t as established at the time as Manoah is, and in his first season in the majors, Halladay had walked 79 batters with just 82 strikeouts. He went to the minors and completely reworked his motion, going from over the top to the three-quarters delivery that turned him into a Cy Young winner.
Manoah did outperform his peripherals last season, posting a 2.24 ERA compared with a 3.35 FIP (fielding independent pitching) as he allowed a .248 BABIP and held batters to a .148 average with runners in scoring position. He was unlikely to repeat that 2.24 ERA regardless. Note, as well, a general trend in the wrong direction in his swing-and-miss rate: 75th percentile in 2021, 43rd percentile in 2022 and 18th percentile in 2023. His game relies on inducing soft contact, but you have to throw strikes in the right places. It’s a fine line.
Verdict: Early results are NOT REAL, but worrisome.
J.D. Martinez, DH, Los Angeles Dodgers
All those teams out there are getting subpar production from the DH slot while the Dodgers signed Martinez to a one-year deal for $10 million and he has been one of the best sluggers in the majors, already matching the 16 home runs he hit last season for the Boston Red Sox. He’s now closing in on 300 career home runs (298) and 1,000 career RBIs (946). Not bad for a player the Houston Astros released when he was 26 years old. It’s not like Martinez hasn’t hit for power before, of course, he hit 28 home runs in 2021, but his average exit velocity has one of the biggest increases in the majors, from 89.0 in 2022 to 93.0 this year. That matches where he was in 2018 when he hit 43 home runs with Boston, so the 16 homers are no fluke.
He’s doing all this despite some clear red flags in his numbers. His walk rate, which has hovered between 8.7% and 11% in recent seasons, is down to 5.1%. His swing-and-miss rate is all the way down to the 10th percentile. This is the type of profile that pitchers usually learn to exploit, but Martinez is still doing damage. My guess is he’s hunting fastballs to the extreme — a common approach as hitters age and their bat speed starts to slow. He slugged .418 against four-seam fastballs last season but is torturing them at a .726 clip in 2023. It’s leading to more swing-and-miss to go with more power. It’s probably unsustainable, but Martinez has long been one of the best in the game.
Verdict: Early results are NOT REAL. I just don’t see him maintaining a 146 OPS+ at age 35 after not hitting at that level the past five seasons. The Dodgers’ analytical staff may certainly be helping him, but this looks like a case where the rest of his season projections should be folded in, so something like a .260 average and sub-.500 slugging moving forward is probably more realistic.
Sean Murphy, C, Atlanta Braves
Murphy’s Statcast numbers are impressive and indicate that what he has done so far is backed up by the quality of his balls in play: 93rd percentile in expected batting average, 97th in expected slugging, 96th in barrel rate (not to mention 98th in pop time to second and 95th in framing). These are MVP-type results when factoring in the defense. He had certainly been a quality player for the Oakland Athletics with a 115 career OPS+ entering this season, but even the Braves couldn’t have expected these types of numbers.
The Braves have been pretty good about not wearing down Murphy too much, as he started 45 of the team’s first 64 games (with an additional four starts at DH). That puts him on pace for 114 starts, about the same as the 116 he made for the A’s last season, when he improved his OPS by 100 points in the second half. With the Mets and Phillies scuffling, there is an even greater likelihood that the Braves run away with the National League East, making it easier to keep Murphy fresh down the stretch.
Verdict: Early results are REAL. Because of playing time, it’s hard for a catcher to win MVP, so I won’t go that far (especially considering teammate Ronald Acuna Jr. might be the top candidate right now), but I can see a top-10 finish for Murphy.
J.T. Realmuto, C, Philadelphia Phillies
On the other hand, Realmuto is suffering through his worst offensive season since his rookie year with the Miami Marlins back in 2015. As a catcher who has been a model of consistency and durability throughout his career, the obvious question is: At 32, is this an age-related thing? Is he paying a price for last season’s heavy workload — 130 starts in the regular season, plus every inning of all 17 of the Phillies’ postseason games?
The numbers don’t suggest bad luck. His expected wOBA (weighted on-base average) has dropped from the 86th percentile to the 25th. He has quit drawing walks and his hard-hit rate has plummeted. (The Phillies, expected to have one of the best offenses in the majors, instead have seen Realmuto and Trea Turner both struggle with sub-.300 OBPs and Kyle Schwarber hit well under .200.)
Verdict: Early results are REAL. Realmuto leads the majors in innings caught — 37 more than Keibert Ruiz and a whopping 75 more than Murphy. The weather is getting hot. We all know about Realmuto’s supreme athleticism for a catcher and he can still run and throw, but a few more days off might help. Overall, however, the decline in offense is concerning given his age and position.
Carlos Correa, SS, Minnesota Twins
Xander Bogaerts, SS, San Diego Padres
Francisco Lindor, SS, New York Mets
Turner isn’t the only big-name shortstop struggling at the plate. In short:
- Correa: .836 career OPS entering 2023, at .710
- Bogaerts: .815 career OPS entering 2023, at .739
- Lindor: .816 career OPS entering 2023, at .711
Correa is 28, Bogaerts is 30 and Lindor is 29, so age shouldn’t be a big factor. Correa and Lindor aren’t hitting for average, while Bogaerts is down a bit in average and power. Let’s go to Statcast to look at actual production versus expected production based on quality of contract:
- Correa: .302 wOBA versus .326 expected (.354 career)
- Bogaerts: .329 wOBA versus .322 expected (.356 career)
- Lindor: .311 wOBA versus .332 expected (.344 career)
Correa and Lindor have perhaps been a little unlucky, although still hitting below their career norms. Lindor is the easy one to figure out: He’s selling out for power. More strikeouts, more fly balls, low batting average on balls in play. His strikeout rate, while still below league average, is 10 percentage points higher than in his early seasons with Cleveland. Correa is mostly suffering from a low BABIP of .260 — way below his career mark of .314. I think he’ll get going.
Bogaerts is the one who doesn’t appear to have been hitting with some bad luck. I don’t want to make a declarative statement here, but this one may be pretty clear: He has moved from Fenway Park to Petco. I’m pretty sure I pointed this out when he signed, but look at his career splits during his Red Sox tenure:
Home: .319/.381/.511, .892 OPS
Road: .278/.346/.432, .778 OPS
Bogaerts moved from a park he thrived in to a park that’s tougher for hitters. Still, he’s below even his career road OPS (let alone his road OPS of .825 since 2018) and he has actually hit better at Petco than on the road. The lack of doubles is concerning, which speaks to a general decline in his isolated power:
2018: .234
2019: .246
2020: .202
2021: .198
2022: .149
2023: .138
On the other hand, Bogaerts’ defensive metrics have once again been outstanding.
Verdict: Early results are NOT REAL. All three will hit better, but all three may never again hit at their peak level. They have a combined 23 years left on their contracts after this season. Gulp.
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