Three Important Stats To Watch for Michael Conforto in 2021

There are lots of new things happening for the New York Mets in Port St. Lucie. There’s new ownership, a bunch of new players (including a new superstar), and a new level of optimism spreading throughout camp with Opening Day about five weeks away.

One thing that isn’t new is the presence of outfielder Michael Conforto, and many of us want that to continue happening into the foreseeable future.

With full-squad workouts getting underway, Conforto spoke with the media for the first time this week. There were a lot of good soundbites showing how thoughtful and driven he is to help make this season a successful one, but we also learned that contract extension talks haven’t started just yet.

Either making progress or actually getting an extension done with him and Francisco Lindor before April 1st will be the focus of many in the coming weeks. That’s especially the case because it seems like Conforto is coming into his own as a hitter.

Despite the shortened 2020 season and an injury that cut his campaign even shorter, he registered at least 2.0 fWAR for the fourth consecutive year. This was accompanied by single-season career-high marks in both wRC+ (157) and wOBA (.401).

While Conforto made a ton of progress in his own development, despite not playing a full regular season, this smaller sample caused some eye-popping stats that may normalize over a longer period of time.

The following three stats are areas of Conforto’s game I’ll be focusing on with 162 games on the schedule. Especially since he’s currently preparing to enter 2021 as his platform year prior to free agency.

The Rise In BABIP (And Its Impact)

Heading into 2020, Conforto had finished with a BABIP above .300 just once (.328 in 2017). That number settled in at .289 and .290 in ‘18 and ‘19, respectively. By the time 2020 was over, though? He finished with a .412 BABIP, which easily led the league among qualified hitters (Donovan Solano was second at .396).

This was obviously the main driver in producing a .322/.412/.515 line, which really pops because Scooter hadn’t finished with a batting average above .279 prior to last year. It’s not as if he didn’t earn it, because his 30.3% line-drive rate was second in baseball to Freddie Freeman (31.1%), and good things are going to happen when that’s paired with a 36.8% hard-hit rate.

Conforto keeping his BABIP that high throughout a full regular season is unlikely, especially considering his history in this department. What will also be interesting to follow is how his line-drive rate progresses over a larger sample, since this elevated rate came at the expense of his fly-ball rate (40.0% in ‘19 to 28.3% in ‘20). His ISO dipped to .193 last season after being above .200 for the three years prior.

His 2020 stats make it look like that’s not a huge deal — and it may not be — but who knows how things will even out during a six-month marathon.

The Direction of His Contact

There aren’t many more beautiful things in the Mets’ lineup than watching Conforto take a ball to the opposite field with authority. The numbers are telling us he did that much more often last year. Here’s a look at the direction in which the outfielder’s contact has gone since debuting in 2015:

As we can see, the last time he spread the ball all over the field this much was his All-Star campaign of 2017. When looking specifically at fly balls, we can see this trend of pulling less often match up once again with that same All-Star performance (with a career-best hard-hit rate, to boot):

Conforto’s always had this ability — just ask Keith Hernandez, he loves it — and maybe he’s showing his maturity as a hitter by now making it a reality. It clearly ended up working well in 2020, so let’s hope this continues moving forward.

His Performance vs. Sliders

Since I haven’t made enough references to Conforto’s 2017 season yet, his performance against sliders can be the final one. While his power against this pitch was a smidge limited thanks to a 36.0% line-drive rate and 28.0% fly-ball rate, his overall production was excellent.

As the pitch he saw the second-most times in 2020, Scooter posted a 7.1% walk rate, 21.4% strikeout rate, .870 OPS, and a 154 wRC+. Check out how these numbers have progressed when facing this offering since 2017:

While we’re obviously still dealing with small sample sizes, that drop in strikeout rate has consistently improved each year, which is encouraging to see. And from the standpoint of overall production, his performance against this pitch once again on par with what he did in 2017.

Conforto has clearly made significant strides as a hitter since getting fast-tracked to the big leagues in 2015. We saw some of the results of this growth in a truncated 2020 season, and hopefully, this upcoming year will be a continuation of that breakout. And, while we’re hoping for things, let’s hope this growth, elite production, and incredibly sweet swing keep doing what they do for years to come in the orange and blue.

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