He might not have upper-echelon profession totals, however boy was Michael Brantley an absolute baller. A five-time All-Star, Brantley additionally gained a Silver Slugger and completed third in American League MVP voting in 2014, a 12 months that noticed him end second within the AL in WAR behind solely Mike Trout, the MVP winner. After a really profitable 15-year profession, the candy swinging lefty outfielder has determined to hold up his cleats. It’s an unsurprising transfer for Brantley, who had battled shoulder accidents for a lot of the final three seasons and would have been getting into his age-37 season.
Brantley was a singular participant. Over the course of his profession (2009-2023), the league-wide strikeout price elevated from 18.0% to 22.7%. However whereas the league was whiffing increasingly, Brantley bucked the development. Throughout his 10-year tenure in Cleveland, he struck out 10.7% of the time; within the 5 years he spent in Houston, that mark was precisely the identical. Certainly, his strikeout price with the Astros was over 40% higher than the league common price (22.8%) throughout that interval. Of the hitters with at the very least 1,000 plate appearances from 2019 to 2023, 21 had a strikeout price beneath 14%. Solely two had a better wRC+ than Brantley: Alex Bregman (137) and José Ramírez (132).
His talent set was timeless, headlined by his elite contact capacity. His wRC+ was truly greater in his 30s (124) than it was in his 20s (112). And his future seemed shiny – ZiPS projected him for a .290/.354/.416 line and a 114 OPS+ within the upcoming season had he performed. As Timothy Jackson of Baseball Prospectus put it, Brantley was “distinctive amongst gamers with outlier expertise.” And so, along with his time within the majors coming to an in depth, I needed to look again at Brantley’s profession development. Extra particularly, I needed to look at how his constantly elite contact expertise allowed him to take care of his efficiency regardless of myriad accidents.
There are a bunch of various methods to clarify what makes for a great contact hitter. You possibly can merely cite contact price or strikeout price. You possibly can pull up a warmth map of the place and the way typically the hitter makes flush contact. You possibly can even have a look at spray charts. All of these issues are factors in Brantley’s favor, however the cause he was such a productive contact-oriented hitter was due to his barrel variability.
Many hitters endeavor to coach themselves to hit exhausting line drives. Doing that whereas not creating holes in your swing requires you to govern your physique and barrel to get on airplane with totally different pitch areas. One of the best of the very best are ready to do that whereas nonetheless making flush contact. This was Michael Brantley’s superpower.
Wherever the pitch was, it appeared like Brantley was in a position to get his barrel to it due to his superior horizontal and vertical bat variance. There’s a cause certainly one of his nicknames was Dr. Clean. The whole lot about his swing was buttery. There isn’t a higher strategy to expertise this than together with your eyes, so I’m going to take you again to certainly one of my favourite video games from Brantley’s profession, when he effortlessly peppered 4 singles towards Tampa Bay on April 30, 2021. Let’s begin along with his line drive within the first inning towards Ryan Yarbrough.
Sure, Yarbrough wasn’t throwing at loopy speeds, however finding a sinker in that spot is sort of assured to be a jam shot. Even when a hitter was to get their barrel to it, they could have hassle holding it honest. However for Brantley, it wasn’t an issue. He pulled his fingers in whereas flattening out his barrel to shoot the pitch up the center for an off-the-cuff single. He made one thing that was very troublesome look easy.
Yarbrough obtained a shot at redemption two innings later:
When you can’t beat him in, then you definately would possibly as effectively strive soft-and-away, proper? Yarbrough noticed this pitch off the sting. For a cut up second, he appeared to have Brantley beat, however Brantley’s capacity to decelerate his physique to completely management his barrel made the situation irrelevant. The cut up second the place he paused was essential for him to regulate his shoulders and get his barrel on the ball despite the fact that the pace initially fooled him.
It was a hopeless battle for the soft-tossing lefty, however he needed to give it one other go within the fourth inning:
First it was up the center, then it was to proper. Subsequent up, left discipline. Even on a pitch beneath the zone, Brantley was in a position to get his bat vertical by creating somewhat further torso bend and giving his fingers house to show over. All in a day’s work. He noticed three good areas, however notched three hits anyway. That’ll go away any pitcher wanting like this:
This response was fairly frequent for pitchers once they confronted Brantley. They’d make their greatest pitch, and he’d beat them in any case. In his subsequent at-bat of that sport, Brantley flicked one other single to proper discipline to cap off a four-hit evening, although fortunately for Yarbrough, Trevor Richards was on the bump. What a aid.
Whereas I may watch Brantley hit eternally, I gained’t topic you all to an infinite article. As an alternative, I’ll go away you with yet one more level of appreciation. There’s a normal perception within the sport that it is rather troublesome for hitters to manage the place they hit the ball on any given pitch. With out query, there may be advantage to that perception. Hitters can solely hit what they get, and so they can’t management what they get. Some hitters have holes of their swing and must assault a selected subset of pitches and areas, however then there are outliers like Brantley who can get their barrel to any spot. That signifies that if you happen to go away a giant gap on one aspect of the sector and pitch to a location that lets a hitter like Brantley play with the hole, he’s going to kill you.
Throughout his time in Houston, Brantley had a .362 wOBA in all non-standard fielding alignments, i.e. shifts and shades; in customary alignments, his wOBA was .335. When you’re going to shift on the barrel variability king, then you definately higher not go away pitches up and away. Zac Gallen, Jonathan Loáisiga, and Luis García all realized that the exhausting method:
Lovely work.
Rangers hitting coach Donnie Ecker as soon as stated in an interview, “[T]right here’s numerous masking up guys on the huge league degree. There’s numerous guys which have huge holes.” He was referring to how hitters transfer and what their motion can do to have an effect on the variability of their bat path. Michael Brantley was the antithesis of masking up. He may hit something you threw at him. No, he’s not a Corridor of Famer or a document breaker, however he was a nightmare for any pitcher to face. The sport will miss him, however pitchers certain gained’t.
