The Big Hole in the 2016 Rays’ Hitters Swings

In 2016, the Rays posted a wRC+ of 98, ranking 12th out of the 30 teams in baseball. Their slugging ranked 13th and their wOBA ranked 19th. By many measurements, they were an extraordinarily average offense.

When it came to making contact with the baseball, however, they were far from average. The 2016 Rays posted a league-low 81.7 zone contact rate, a percent and a half worse than the 29th-ranked Houston. The 2016 Rays posted a league-low 74.4 contact rate, four percent off the league average, and more than seven percent behind league-leaders Boston. Finally, their 12.1 percent swinging strike rate also managed to lead the league, this time by half a percent over the Swiss cheese bats (Mark Trumbo and Adam Jones included) of the Baltimore Orioles.

Let’s break this down a bit.

Who were the main offenders?

There were many. Of the 16 Rays with at least 100 plate appearances in 2016, 13 had swinging strike rates over ten percent. Only Kevin Kiermaier (9.4%), Brandon Guyer (9.2%), and Logan Forsythe (8.2%) were below ten percent -the league-wide swinging strike rate was basically ten percent in 2016 (10.1 percent to be exact). When over 80 percent of your team is worse than average in a statistical category, it should be no surprise when the team brings up the rear league-wide.

Tim Beckham led the way with an astronomical 17.4 percent swinging strike rate in his 215 plate appearances last year, a figure that would have led all qualified hitters by a significant margin. Among players with at least 200 plate appearances, only the ghost of Ryan Howard had a higher swinging strike rate.

Beckham was also the worst on the team in terms of overall contact rate (64.6%), but Steven Souza Jr. – he of the 468 plate appearances – wasn’t far behind (68.6%). For a reference point, there were five hitters with as many plate appearances as Souza who had a contact rate over 90 percent. Only seven hitters with as many plate appearances as Souza posted a worse contact rate, and only one of those players (Melvin Upton) had a worse contact rate on pitches in the strike zone (75.3% for Souza).

The Rays’ final big contributor to the issue was Corey Dickerson. Dickerson sported the fifth-worst contact rate on pitches in the zone (76.7%) among qualified hitters. (Although, are they really qualified hitters if they can’t make contact on a quarter of the pitches they see in the strike zone? Hey oh!) Dickerson was also "top" ten in swinging strike rate (8th among qualified hitters, to be exact), not exactly the two metrics in which you want to see yourself landing among the top ten.

Can the Rays improve in 2017?

If you notice above, of the three hitters who were actually able to stay below a ten percent swinging strike rate, two are no longer with the team. Brandon Guyer was traded to Cleveland at last year’s trade deadline, and Logan Forsythe was traded to the Dodgers during the offseason. That makes Kevin Kiermaier the Last of the Mohicans, so to speak.

That’s not necessarily a death knell, though. Let’s take a look at our three main offenders from last year and see if 2016 was a fluke or if we should expect similar struggles in 2017.

First up, Tim Beckham’s breeze-inducing 17.4 swinging strike rate. There’s a little good news/bad news here. The good news is that Beckham is 27 years old and now nearly a decade removed from his turn as the number one overall pick in the 2008 draft. With each passing year, the Rays can feel less and less obliged to give him a shot if he continues to look so over his head at the major-league level. The bad news is, well, the rest. In his 446 career plate appearances, Beckham sports a 16.2 percent swinging strike rate that, as the kids say, sucks butt. His 2016 season was his highest swinging strike rate, but there’s not much evidence to suggest it is far removed from his actual talent level. Beckham has had a strong spring and is garnering a bit of buzz, but it's fair to proceed with caution here.

The outlook is, unfortunately, not much brighter for Souza. Souza has had only two real seasons in the big leagues, but the holes in his swing have yet to dissipate. Souza saw all three of his contact rate, zone contact rate and swinging strike rate get worse from 2015 to 2016, and while some of that may come back to earth in 2017, it’s not as if those rates were great to begin with. Even if we combine his 2016 and 2017, Souza still ends up 12th in swinging strike rate, sixth-worst in contact rate, and sixth-worst in zone contact rate among hitters with as many plate appearances.

So how about you, Corey Dickerson? Can you be our saving grace? With Dickerson, the news is a little better. His zone contact rate in 2016 was by far the worst of his career, four percent worse than his second-worst performance (2014). His contact rate and swinging strike rate were also the worst of his career, but both categories show a disturbing trend. In the four years Dickerson has been a major leaguer, his contact rate has dropped and his swinging strike rate has risen each and every season. That’s not the trajectory Rays’ fans want to see. Part of this could be explained away by Dickerson feeling pressure to perform in a new city. Part of it could be a fluke in the numbers. I’m willing to propose that Dickerson’s contact rates could at least flat line in 2017 instead of getting worse, but that still doesn’t do the Rays a lot of good.

So how much does this all matter?

Well, as we noted from the jump, the Rays managed to be about league-average in most of the advanced offensive metrics last season despite the painful contact rates. However, it is worth noting that few teams were as inefficient at turning home runs into runs scored last season. The Orioles and Mets, two other teams with plenty of swing and miss in their lineup, were right around the same level, but the 672 runs on 216 home runs that the Rays tallied in 2016 left a lot to be desired.

Of course, the two teams we just mentioned (Mets and Orioles) both made the playoffs last year, so it’s fair to ask how much of a penalty really comes with a strikeout-laden lineup. (It’s a question sabermetricians have been asking for years.) All signs point towards the Rays having plenty of swing and miss in their 2017 lineup, so let’s hope the answer is not much.