There's a lot of buzz going around Busch Stadium concerning the prime acquisition of the off-season, Matt Holliday. Production-wise, Holliday has been nowhere near his half-season run with the Cards last year, when he had a 1.023 OPS, 13 home runs, and .353 batting average, and the fans are starting to wonder where Albert's protection has gone. Especially on nights like last, when the Cards couldn't even get one run to support their ace. What happened to him this year?
As much as I wish I had a clear-cut answer, the numbers don't do as much to explain this year's struggles as they do to explain why last year's tenure in St. Louis was a bit of an anomaly. First this: which set of numbers looks more akin to this year's .289/.355/.458 line?
A) .286/.378/.454
B) .353/.419/.604
Now, what if I said both A) and B) were in the same season? Holliday's numbers this year are much more comparable with A), his part of the 2009 season in Oakland before being traded to St. Louis. B) represents his part of the season after the trade to St. Louis. What changed from the end of last season to this year? The all-important luck indicator BABIP explains a little bit, as his end of season run in St. Louis was sustained by an extremely high .380 BABIP (the baseline BABIP is around .300). This year, Holliday's BABIP is back down to .323, which is a little high but still pretty average for his career. He's hitting balls that just aren't landing on the grass quite as much.
Two other changes this year are apparent, perhaps explaining some of his struggles this year. First, his walk percentage (BB%) is down to 7.7%, below his 10.7% composite last year. Being able to walk is a huge part of maintaining production - just ask Colby Rasmus. The next goes hand-in-hand with that - his outside the strike zone swing percentage is the highest of his career at 29.9%, above his 24.9% composite last year. He's still making contact with those pitches at a 65.1% clip, but the fact remains that he's making contact with balls outside of the sweet zone. It would be interesting to see a graphic of where these pitches have been and what the subsequent result of the contact was, but I would venture to say that he's not hitting the ball as cleanly because it's outside the zone.
Hopefully, we'll see Holliday start to smash the ball soon, but, for now, I think he needs to be a little more patient at the plate and choose his pitches a little more wisely. More importantly, I think we need to adjust our expectations a tad. Holliday isn't going to have numbers that are sustained by a .380 BABIP, give or take a few. He's still valuable, but a .350 batting average is a little unrealistic at this point.
Video of the day: Our prize-winning video for financial literacy at SEMO, not directed by M. Night Shyamalan.
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