Concerning Nelson Cruz

After Sunday's monster game against the Oakland Athletics, I think it's safe to say that Nelson Cruz is back, at least for now. After worrying much of Marinerland through the first weeks of April, his wRC+ now sits at a pretty 150, a higher mark than his 2016. While his hot week has pulled many back from the ledge, how much longer can Cruz fight off Father Time?

(For reference, I am ignoring Cruz's 2005 stats with the Brewers, as these came in just seven plate appearances.)

A check-in with Cruz's contact profile raises a couple of red flags. His hard-hit rate is just 28.6%, good for "below average" per FanGraphs's benchmarks, and his lowest mark since 2006. His fly balls are down, his pop-ups are up, and to top it all off, his overall contact rate sits at just 63.6% - the worst of his career by almost five percentage points. Despite Cruz swinging less often than ever at 44.9%, his swinging strike rate has jumped to 16.4% - once again, the worst mark of his career. His HR/FB seems abnormally low, but with the spike in infield pop-ups, it doesn't look like complete noise.

With all of this in mind, the sustainability of Cruz's success starts to get a little murky. While one can still absolutely be a solid hitter with a poor contact rate, it is much harder to do so than with an average one. Fortunately, there are a few positive signs that we can point to. For one, Cruz's home run and double on Sunday put his ISO up to an even .200 - a forty-eight point jump from where he was entering the game. While he still has a long way to go to match his two previous years, this is undoubtedly a refreshing sight to see.

Another positive is that along with his swing rate in general going down, Cruz's O-Swing% is also down by about three points. His 27.1% mark is his best since 2009, and if that stays around where it is, that can potentially mitigate a lot of the contact concerns.

Where Cruz is truly shining, though, is taking ball four. After another walk - a Jack Cust Special, to boot! - on Sunday, his walk rate sits at a very pretty 15.1% - almost six full percentage points over his 2016. This also represents the highest rate on the team, just edging out Kyle Seager. His isolated OBP (simply OBP-AVG) is .113, the only triple-digit mark of his career. And aside from a 2008 with just 133 plate appearances, the .384 OBP Cruz has notched in 2017 is his best.

This brings us to another question - what is driving this sudden, massive spike in walks? The initial and logical response is, "Oh, he's swinging at pitches out of the strike zone less, which are called for balls, which then lead to more walks. This is basic stuff, Kenner." With this in mind, I took a look at Cruz's heatmaps for his swing rate for 2017 compared to 2016, and found a couple of surprises.

Take a look at that bottom left corner. So far in 2017, Cruz has not swung at a pitch thrown in that location once. This excitement is quelled somewhat when you discover that only 0.6% of pitches he has seen so far have been thrown there, but nonetheless, he has largely left those down and in pitches alone.

On pitches outside, though, it gets a little more worrying. See those light blue sections on the far right? On pitches thrown well outside, Cruz has swung about a quarter of the time he sees them. Below is the same 2017 heatmap, but with contact rate instead of swing rate. The results of those swings? Well...

That dark, Royal blue really stands out on this chart, huh? So far, Cruz has not made contact on a single one of those middle-outside and low and away pitches. The bottom right corner is especially glaring. Out of all the pitches Cruz has seen this season, 3.4% of them have ended up there, the largest percentage of the entire chart. Of course, considering his immense power, Cruz should expect to see a lot of breaking pitches down and away like that. Unfortunately, though, his swing rate on pitches there has jumped from 17% last year to 24% so far this season - not exactly a trend you like to see. His swing rate on the middle-away pitches has spiked by eight percentage points, as well.

Nelson Cruz turns 37 years old at the start of July. While early anxiety about his performance has been quieted, he isn't getting any younger, and the drop in contact is alarming. The power is still very much there, though - the exit velocity on the home run Sunday was 107 miles per hour! While I think the excellent walk rate will come down somewhat, keep in mind that Cruz's BB% has climbed every year since 2013, and was a solid 9.3% last year. There's reason to believe that the gain this year is at least somewhat sustainable.

The "Big Three" of the M's lineup - Robinson Canó, Cruz, and Seager - performing at or near their 2016 marks is absolutely necessary for this team to even approach a postseason berth. For the time being, it looks like at least one of them is achieving that. Keep walking and hitting, Nellie. Please.