A month after Rowdy Tellez was non-tendered by the Brewers, the primary baseman signed with the Pirates to little fanfare. It’s not arduous to see why that specific transaction flew beneath the radar. Again within the good outdated days of December, the offseason was at its peak. There have been extra urgent issues than a participant with precisely 0.0 profession WAR becoming a member of a rebuilding membership. But two months later, amidst the dullest stretch of the winter (and maybe a bout of offseason-induced delirium), I’ve realized we made a dreadful mistake. FanGraphs has cursed Rowdy Tellez, and now it falls on my shoulders to reverse the spell. Let me clarify.
It looks like each time somebody at FanGraphs writes about Tellez’s success, he falls right into a stoop shortly thereafter. It began when Jay Jaffe wrote about Tellez throughout his Davis Schneider-esque cup of espresso with the Blue Jays in 2018. The next season, Tellez dissatisfied, posting a 91 wRC+ and -0.3 WAR. Just a few years later, Jay dared to cowl Tellez’s sizzling begin to the 2022 marketing campaign. The slugger promptly started to battle after the article went stay, going 2-for-24 over the subsequent week. In the end, he posted a 100 wRC+ for the remainder of the season, manufacturing too modest for a bat-only first baseman. Most not too long ago, Chris Gilligan wrote an interesting piece about Tellez final June. On the time, the 28-year-old was off to a smashing begin to the season, fueled by a affected person method on the plate:
Rowdy Tellez has stopped swinging. Not fully; he’s tied for ninth within the Nationwide League with 12 residence runs and twentieth with a .494 slugging share. However this 12 months, the Brewers slugger has reduce at simply 35.3% of all pitches, the second-lowest fee in baseball after the famously picky Juan Soto. It’s uncharacteristic of Tellez, representing an eight-point drop from final 12 months and a 13.2-point drop from his 2021 marketing campaign.
But certain sufficient, as quickly as that article hit the homepage, every part modified. The truth is, it looks like the curse is barely rising stronger. Check out the graph beneath:
The bottom level on the graph, circled in purple, represents Tellez’s rolling 20-game swing fee getting into play on Could 31, the day Chris pitched his article. It’s the bottom swing fee Tellez has posted in any 20-game span of his profession and represents the end result of a pattern that started on the very starting of the 2022 season. The steep upward climb from the purple to the inexperienced circle represents his subsequent 20 video games that 12 months. It’s not as if Tellez became a free swinger impulsively, however his swing fee went from excessive outlier to primarily unusual. Via Could 30, solely Soto had a decrease swing fee (min. 150 PA). But from that time to the tip of the season, 53 different batters swung much less typically than the Brewers first baseman.
On Could 31, Chris’s draft appeared on the backend of the FanGraphs web site. “Can Rowdy Tellez Get Extra By Swinging Much less?” the title requested. That night, Tellez noticed 19 pitches. A strong drive past his management compelled him to swing at 10 of them. It marked the primary recreation during which he swung at over half the pitches he noticed in practically 4 weeks. Two days later, the completed piece appeared on FanGraphs, with Tellez’s image on the high. That very same day, he noticed 13 pitches and swung at eight. His 61.5% swing fee was his highest in a single recreation (min. 2 PA) for the reason that earlier summer time. Swiftly, as if cursed by darkish magic, Tellez had left his affected person method by the wayside. And it’s not as if he did so with good purpose. Fairly the alternative, actually. From that time on, his robust season crumbled earlier than his eyes.
Via Could 30, Tellez had performed 49 video games. He was strolling 12.2% of the time. His 12 residence runs and 123 wRC+ have been tops amongst certified Brewers hitters. Then, from Could 31 by way of the tip of the 12 months, he performed one other 57 video games. His stroll fee fell to 7.6%, and he added only one extra residence run. No different Nationwide League hitter (min. 150 PA) had a decrease wRC+ than his 31. I can’t assure his new swing tendencies caused his downfall, however I can definitely present the correlation:
The normal markers of poor plate self-discipline — a low stroll fee and excessive strikeout fee — weren’t the foundation of Tellez’s struggles. His strikeout fee was unchanged, as all his additional swings merely canceled out his known as strikes from earlier within the season. Furthermore, his 7.6% stroll fee wasn’t that far beneath league common, nor was his 0.31 strikeout-to-walk ratio. As a substitute, the true bother got here when he put the ball in play. A hitter outlined by his energy instantly discovered himself powerless, hitting lazy fly balls as an alternative of driving pitches into the seats.
Brute energy wasn’t the difficulty; Tellez might nonetheless pummel the baseball. For the fifth 12 months in a row, he completed within the 94th percentile or larger in most exit velocity, and his hardest-hit ball of the 12 months got here in July. The truth is, his three hardest-hit balls of the season all got here after Could 31. Even so, he wasn’t doing practically as a lot injury as he had earlier within the season; in fact, he wasn’t doing any injury in any respect. Though he put extra balls within the air, these balls have been far much less more likely to be hit arduous. As a substitute, he was hitting extra cans of corn to the alternative subject and extra popups to the infield. His barrel fee plummeted, and most of the time, these barrels have been changed by the sort of contact Statcast classifies as “poorly/beneath” hit. As well as, he was hitting extra foul balls, and never simply as a way of staying alive with two strikes. It’s fairly clear Tellez was struggling to see pitches and swing on the proper choices. But he continued to swing.
William of Ockham would possibly level to an easier rationalization than darkish magic. What if opposing pitchers adjusted to Tellez’s new method, forcing him to swing extra typically by throwing extra pitches within the strike zone? It’s a believable speculation, I’ll give William that, however the numbers don’t assist it. Tellez didn’t see a change in his total zone fee after Could 31. The one zone during which he noticed considerably extra pitches was the chase zone.
What’s extra, he elevated his swing fee throughout the board. He swung extra typically at pitches within the coronary heart zone, the shadow zone, the chase zone, and the waste zone. He swung extra typically at fastballs, offspeed pitches, and breaking balls. He swung extra when he was forward within the rely, when he was behind within the rely, and when the rely was even. None of these swings did him any good, both. As you may most likely guess from his total numbers, he produced damaging worth on swings in all 4 assault zones, towards all three pitch sorts, and whatever the rely. Merely put, it regarded as if Tellez was compelled to swing, whatever the final result. He was cursed.
Maybe you assume a bodily damage is a stronger rationalization than a curse. In spite of everything, Tellez spent about six weeks on the injured checklist final summer time, first with forearm irritation after which with a torn nail. After the season, he instructed he had been enjoying by way of ache, telling reporters, “I feel that when [the injuries] occurred – after which attempting to cope with the accidents and never saying something and simply being that man that goes out each day whether or not it’s proper or improper – simply sort of rolling by way of it actually affected me.”
Even when his arm began to hassle him greater than a month previous to his eventual IL stint (and his finger continued to hassle him lengthy after he returned), it’s slightly odd that he would swing extra typically in consequence. If Tellez have been attempting to scale back his ache or compensate for diminished energy, one would possibly count on him to swing even much less. As a substitute, he triggered himself larger ache in change for worse outcomes. It reads like a punishment from Greek mythology. Or, , like a curse.
If Tellez goes to get again on monitor this 12 months, he has to hit for energy. Steamer tasks him for a 106 wRC+, whereas ZiPS has him at 92. The one appreciable distinction between these two projections? Steamer is assured he can rediscover his plus energy. To perform that, he has to make higher contact, and a method he can accomplish that is by shedding pitches he can’t hit. Thus, Tellez must reverse the FanGraphs curse. If writing about his success portends his failure, I hope that writing about his struggles could have the alternative impact.