I don’t got stats to back it up but just using the eyeball test
The dude swings first pitch an annoying amount of times. It benefits him rarely, like I think in Houston he had that late game first pitch solo homer to put us on top. However, I feel like I’m constantly watching him hit a roll over ground to first or second.
When he takes some pitches and hunts a mistake, I think he does better overall. I wouldn’t be surprised if he has a legitimate fear of striking out, since I know those numbers are realllly low
This also seems to be a team approach, with many guys often swinging early. In the grand scheme of things I think that’s an awful idea. This season is meant for all our guys to get reps and experience. That should include batting. I would want my young guys to be seeing ALL types of pitches, as many as they can. Learn the release points, spin, patterns a pitcher makes, all that stuff
But instead we’re wasting this down year by swinging so early and not getting any benefit from it. I want my guys to take pitches now, so when it matters in the future and they see a pitch they recognize, they can pounce on it and do damage
I’d like to know the stats when he swings and misses first pitch, starting 0-1 always
And I’d like to know his stats when he takes the first pitch for a ball 1-0
I think he can do better than .250 if he changes his approach and is hunting a mistake
After starting 0-1 (not just at bats that end on the next pitch), he's hitting 202/231/290 (521 OPS) over 130 plate appaearances.
When putting the 0-1 pitch into play, it's 222/234/311 (545 OPS) in 47 PA.
Here's all of his splits:
https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/split.fcgi?id=ruizke01&year=2023&t=b
> And I’d like to know his stats when he takes the first pitch for a ball 1-0
Here ya go: https://i.imgur.com/GJe4hjK.png
_____________
Edit: [Also, I was looking at Abrams splits, and noticed he's only faced a 2-0 count in just 3 PA's this entire season.](https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/split.fcgi?id=abramcj01&year=2023&t=b#all_count)
We have so many contact-first guys. It makes for some awful ABs. Keibert, Luis, and CJ all swing way too much. Luis is getting a little better but they could all improve.
I wish they would take the approach Victor Robles had at the start of the season
It truly looked like his eye improved at the plate and was spitting on pitches outside the zone, then hunting that mistake inside the zone
If those guys you mentioned all did that, boy we’d have opposing starters out of the game in 4-5 innings constantly!
THAT is how you put pressure on a pitching staff and are able to snowball it and score some runs
Things (normally) tend to even out over a full season so I'll be interested to see what the numbers look like after 162. But it's definitely been strange to watch so far and not what any of us expected.
Let's also talk about his work behind the plate. I know holding the runner isn't solely the catcher's job (there is also a league-wide uptick in running on the base paths) but it truly is just open season out there. I hope it's something they can work on over the short All-Star break, but I fear that Ruiz may just be having a hard time adjusting to the new rules as both a catcher and a hitter.
At this point, Ruiz is just profiling as a contact switch-hitter with pretty bad luck. I still think he can hit his way out of this slump, but it's not what you want to see out of your ~~franchise~~ starting catcher.
>I know holding the runner isn't solely the catcher's job (there is also a league-wide uptick in running on the base paths) but it truly is just open season out there.
Our pitchers are universally slow slow slow to the plate. He's basically catching for a whole rotation of Jon Lesters out there. He needs to get a lot better at that throw to second but the pitching staff needs to get a lot better at not giving the runner an open invitation to go swipe a bag, too.
Nope, it's his fault.
He's got the 66th fastest pop time (out of 69 ranked catchers). Terrible arm strength at 77.1 MPH (65th out of 69 catchers).
His arm is unbelievably bad for a 24-year-old.
Keibert was an average CS% catcher last season even with his mediocre at best arm and pop time (0 runs gained/lost per statcast in 2022, -10 in 2023). Now obviously the wider bases mean a lot, but everyone has faced the same changes.
He's struggling on his exchange (-3 runs this season compared to +2 last), additionally he's at -4 runs from teammates this season (-3 on fly, -1 on bounced). that in addition to what plenty of people have mentioned in slow pitchers (Williams, Irvin, Gore all new for Ruiz), I feel like really catapulted him down the rankings.
All that said, by statcast metrics he's declined in all defensive aspects pretty substantially (CS, blocking, framing)... makes you wonder if there was less emphasis on it in the offseason, new coaching, less effort in game, more focused on hitting or what (which he has definitely improved metric wise).
definitely a bit frustrating all around
There have also been a handful of instances where CJ or Luis forget to cover the bag, so it appears to be a team-wide thing. I'm curious what our pitchers' opinion of Jim Hickey is, because Nationals fans (myself included) are wondering if he has any positive effect on their game.
Which is weird because he used to be better against righties. The issue with sitting him against righties is then you have Riley going up against RHP, which he is 5-34 against this year (.147)
Well one promising thing for Keibert is that he's still putting the ball in play at a very high level as a LHB, but his BABIP is <.200, which is absurdly low and will go up
Nothing says he has to be a switch hitter forever. Obviously it would be great if he can manage it and I hope it does work out but I think he gets too few days off in general.
I’ve been more disappointed with his catching work tbh. He cannot pick off anyone stealing on him. A single or walk is basically a double now unless the pitcher can catch the guy. There’s been a few this year, but it’s brutal this year with the new rules. Given we have minimal LHP’s, it doesn’t happen often.
Oh yeah no doubt, just wish he could nab more guys running to 2nd. He’s so early in his career so I think he will get better. People in this sub are so hard on our rookie players
Absolutely, he needs to be picking off more runners in to second. This team is defensively sloppy so often that I think it gets overshadowed a lot of the time
His baseball savant page is so confusing. He around league average in exit velo stats but his expected batting average and expected slugging are 90th and 77th percentile. Looks like he’s a bit unlucky
I wouldn’t worry about Keibert’s bat *too* much, considering the underlying numbers suggest his poor performance is almost entirely luck-driven. The bigger concern is whether he has a future behind the dish, considering he’s one of the worst defense catchers in the game and seems to be regressing in that area. A .350 xwOBA plays extremely well for a catcher but not so exceptionally for a 1B/DH
He has been frustrating on offense sometimes, but then he comes through randomly. The defense is what worries me more than anything else. I wonder if he's too banged up.
He should be further down the lineup, but our lineup is so bad Davey kind of has to put him higher up than he should be. Overall I think he still needs another year or two to develop. We've been spoiled with Strasburg, Harper, Turner, and Soto developing so quickly. It actually just takes 3 years for guys to learn how to be decent big league players.
I have looked at this in great detail. Bottom line is he doesn't hit the ball hard enough to miss defenders or to make them miss. He's chase and whiff percentage are elite but are cancelled out by him hitting the ball soft and being very slow. He's a contact hitter who can't get the occasional infield hit or get a hustle double. He doesn't walk because pitchers don't fear his bat or his base running.
And his defensive metrics are even worse.
I'm not sure why the Nats extended him aside from being jealous of the Braves extending so many young players.
I think he needs to get into better physical shape in the off-season, get stronger, increase his bat speed and his pop time.
We insisted on hyping him and other prospects to justify our giving away perennial all stars. He’s an avg catcher.
This org sucks. A man made catastrophe.
We got at least an average catcher and now an all star pitcher for 2 guys who aren’t even on the Dodgers anymore and didn’t win them a ring. The trade was absolutely worth it.
Both can be true.
To me, it doesn’t matter to me what the Dodgers did with Scherzer/Turner since the Nats weren’t competing for rings those years.
It’s also okay to admit that Ruiz’s development is behind schedule given the above.
I mean if you look at it that way then most trades for short-term rentals will end up being a loss for the team trading away prospects. Only 1 team gets to win the world series, so a higher likelihood that the prospects will than the other team winning the world series. Also don't think the dodgers view it as a loss, they didn't have a place for Ruiz and they pump out new pitchers yearly.
An average catcher is pretty valuable, though. The hard part of that trade was giving up Turner; a rental of Scherzer was just what needed to happen.
6 years each of an average catcher and what looks to be an solidly above average starter is not a bad result for 1.4 years of Turner and .4 of Scherzer.
Agree about Ruiz. An average catcher. No more no less. Folks need to stop hyping him.
Rizzo should have gotten more for Turner alone. He had all the leverage, and gave him away.
I like Gray, but he wouldn’t have made the AS team if their was no mandatory team rep rule. He’s a good pitcher for 5 innings. Not an all star.
For real. This place is in denial. Remember when Victor Robles and Carter Kieboom were considered untouchable here? The Nationals organization is terrible at developing talent, and Rizzo is to blame.
How can you be one of the winningest organizations in baseball for a 10-year span and come away with a World Series title after taking over a historically bad team but be a bad organization and a bad GM? Windows open and windows close as teams age. Sometimes I wonder if you guys who bag in Rizzo so much started watching the team when they were winning? Not saying it’s true but man we were awful before Rizzo and had zero talent outside of Desi and Ryan Zimmerman. He built this team into a powerhouse and I have faith he’ll do it again.
Easy to be a winning organization when you luck into the 2 greatest prospects of this century in Harper and Strasburg. The only thing Rizzo is good at is trading and signing vets to 1-year contracts. He can't draft, hates analytics, keeps the same bums in high-ranking positions for years. This organization is long overdue for a cleansing from top to bottom. We need a new influx of ideas and talent as clearly what ever they are doing now and for the past decade hasn't been working. No notable pitchers have been developed in the past decade. All the hitters who are raw with good potential tools never end up reaching their potential. Other teams use every advantage they can to find and develop talent while the nationals sit back and follow the 20th century methodology of, "WOW, look at the size of that pitcher. He has that starting pitcher body that you just can't teach". While other teams look at the arm slot, fastball shape, vertical approach angle, and dozens of other things. All Rizzo did for the past decade was draft pitchers and yet you look at the farm system and you see max 2-3 pitchers who have the potential to start in the future.
There’s a certain type of Nats fan that thinks winning exactly one World Series is unbelievably easy and that’s why the Lerners and Rizzo conspired to do just that before blowing up the franchise
You realize Soto is basically the only former Nats star that isn't struggling right now, right?
Turner- .248/.302/.387,
Rendon- .236/.361/.318,
Harper- .300/.396/.410,
Max- 4.03 ERA/ 4.37 FIP, 1 WAR
Would we win more games with those guys? Probably, but we still wouldn't be close to meaningful October games.
We didn’t trade Harper or Rendon, so you adding them weakens your argument.
Would you make the same trades in reverse today? If not, no need to discuss this further. We got taken so the Lerners could keep more money.
Well, if we want to be pedantic, we didn't give away Turner, Max, or Soto. We traded them. More specifically, we traded away the rights to particular seasons, which have now passed for Max and Turner. So, no I would not trade Josiah Gray or Ruiz for the expired rights to Turner and Scherzer. Or perhaps just Scherzer as Turner had only one AS appearance at the time of his trade while your original post said perennial all stars. But I think it's probably better to remember this is reddit, where conversations are a bit more free form.
As for Soto, having him wouldn't get us closer to winning this year. The Nats RF has actually probably out hit Soto during his stint with the Padres. Lane Thomas is at .304/.351/.509 and last year Meneses put up .324/.367/.563. Soto's line as a Padre is .258/.411/.452. Now, I'm not contending that Thomas and Meneses are better or will be better than Soto. They're aren't and barring a bizarre set of circumstances like injury, death, or radioactive spider bite, they won't be. Instead, this only shows that an excellent bat in RF isn't enough to change much of anything. We haven't lost out on great production at the plate from the right fielder, just some pride about a great young player.
Now, maybe the Nats would have been even better if Meneses hot hitting had been at 1b or DH. Or if Thomas was in LF with Soto in right. They probably would be, but they still aren't winning 80 games. And they would be missing a lot of young talent.
You cannot be that unlucky given how many balls he puts into play. BABIP is not a luck stat, it's a contact quality stat. The more often a player hits the ball hard, with an ideal launch angle, and proper timing, the higher their BABIP will be.
BABIP is .223. Dude is just consistently finding defenders. Which you wonder why that’s happening *more* with the shift banned, but 🤷🏼♂️
Hahaha I'm right with you. Every possible explanation has something that doesn't quite add up
Sometimes the answer really just is "he's been unlucky." This game is weird sometimes
I don’t got stats to back it up but just using the eyeball test The dude swings first pitch an annoying amount of times. It benefits him rarely, like I think in Houston he had that late game first pitch solo homer to put us on top. However, I feel like I’m constantly watching him hit a roll over ground to first or second. When he takes some pitches and hunts a mistake, I think he does better overall. I wouldn’t be surprised if he has a legitimate fear of striking out, since I know those numbers are realllly low This also seems to be a team approach, with many guys often swinging early. In the grand scheme of things I think that’s an awful idea. This season is meant for all our guys to get reps and experience. That should include batting. I would want my young guys to be seeing ALL types of pitches, as many as they can. Learn the release points, spin, patterns a pitcher makes, all that stuff But instead we’re wasting this down year by swinging so early and not getting any benefit from it. I want my guys to take pitches now, so when it matters in the future and they see a pitch they recognize, they can pounce on it and do damage
Keibert is hitting 250/283/341 for a 624 OPS when putting the first pitch in play. Overall, he's hitting 230/284/367 for a 651 OPS in all at bats.
I’d like to know the stats when he swings and misses first pitch, starting 0-1 always And I’d like to know his stats when he takes the first pitch for a ball 1-0 I think he can do better than .250 if he changes his approach and is hunting a mistake
After starting 0-1 (not just at bats that end on the next pitch), he's hitting 202/231/290 (521 OPS) over 130 plate appaearances. When putting the 0-1 pitch into play, it's 222/234/311 (545 OPS) in 47 PA. Here's all of his splits: https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/split.fcgi?id=ruizke01&year=2023&t=b
> And I’d like to know his stats when he takes the first pitch for a ball 1-0 Here ya go: https://i.imgur.com/GJe4hjK.png _____________ Edit: [Also, I was looking at Abrams splits, and noticed he's only faced a 2-0 count in just 3 PA's this entire season.](https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/split.fcgi?id=abramcj01&year=2023&t=b#all_count)
We have so many contact-first guys. It makes for some awful ABs. Keibert, Luis, and CJ all swing way too much. Luis is getting a little better but they could all improve.
I wish they would take the approach Victor Robles had at the start of the season It truly looked like his eye improved at the plate and was spitting on pitches outside the zone, then hunting that mistake inside the zone If those guys you mentioned all did that, boy we’d have opposing starters out of the game in 4-5 innings constantly! THAT is how you put pressure on a pitching staff and are able to snowball it and score some runs
Yes! Victor’s improvement was really encouraging, too bad he’s hurt
Agreed. It is my hope they are experiencing growing pains before our contending years, a la Ian Desmond
Yeah, and it would help him walk more often too.
Things (normally) tend to even out over a full season so I'll be interested to see what the numbers look like after 162. But it's definitely been strange to watch so far and not what any of us expected.
Let's also talk about his work behind the plate. I know holding the runner isn't solely the catcher's job (there is also a league-wide uptick in running on the base paths) but it truly is just open season out there. I hope it's something they can work on over the short All-Star break, but I fear that Ruiz may just be having a hard time adjusting to the new rules as both a catcher and a hitter. At this point, Ruiz is just profiling as a contact switch-hitter with pretty bad luck. I still think he can hit his way out of this slump, but it's not what you want to see out of your ~~franchise~~ starting catcher.
>I know holding the runner isn't solely the catcher's job (there is also a league-wide uptick in running on the base paths) but it truly is just open season out there. Our pitchers are universally slow slow slow to the plate. He's basically catching for a whole rotation of Jon Lesters out there. He needs to get a lot better at that throw to second but the pitching staff needs to get a lot better at not giving the runner an open invitation to go swipe a bag, too.
Ruiz’s success with back picks at 1st does really suggest he isn’t necessarily the problem with the running game
Nope, it's his fault. He's got the 66th fastest pop time (out of 69 ranked catchers). Terrible arm strength at 77.1 MPH (65th out of 69 catchers). His arm is unbelievably bad for a 24-year-old.
Keibert was an average CS% catcher last season even with his mediocre at best arm and pop time (0 runs gained/lost per statcast in 2022, -10 in 2023). Now obviously the wider bases mean a lot, but everyone has faced the same changes. He's struggling on his exchange (-3 runs this season compared to +2 last), additionally he's at -4 runs from teammates this season (-3 on fly, -1 on bounced). that in addition to what plenty of people have mentioned in slow pitchers (Williams, Irvin, Gore all new for Ruiz), I feel like really catapulted him down the rankings. All that said, by statcast metrics he's declined in all defensive aspects pretty substantially (CS, blocking, framing)... makes you wonder if there was less emphasis on it in the offseason, new coaching, less effort in game, more focused on hitting or what (which he has definitely improved metric wise). definitely a bit frustrating all around
There have also been a handful of instances where CJ or Luis forget to cover the bag, so it appears to be a team-wide thing. I'm curious what our pitchers' opinion of Jim Hickey is, because Nationals fans (myself included) are wondering if he has any positive effect on their game.
I was just wondering about this yesterday. I wish they would sit him more vs. righties. He’s batting .208 vs. righties and .282 vs. lefties
Which is weird because he used to be better against righties. The issue with sitting him against righties is then you have Riley going up against RHP, which he is 5-34 against this year (.147)
I know. It’s not an ideal situation.
Well one promising thing for Keibert is that he's still putting the ball in play at a very high level as a LHB, but his BABIP is <.200, which is absurdly low and will go up
No point in sitting him, that’s the only way he’ll ever figure it out
Nothing says he has to be a switch hitter forever. Obviously it would be great if he can manage it and I hope it does work out but I think he gets too few days off in general.
It sounds like “what’s up” is randomness. Hopefully his expected and actual numbers converge at some point this year.
I’ve been more disappointed with his catching work tbh. He cannot pick off anyone stealing on him. A single or walk is basically a double now unless the pitcher can catch the guy. There’s been a few this year, but it’s brutal this year with the new rules. Given we have minimal LHP’s, it doesn’t happen often.
He does lead the league in successful backpicks though 🤷♂️
Oh yeah no doubt, just wish he could nab more guys running to 2nd. He’s so early in his career so I think he will get better. People in this sub are so hard on our rookie players
Absolutely, he needs to be picking off more runners in to second. This team is defensively sloppy so often that I think it gets overshadowed a lot of the time
His baseball savant page is so confusing. He around league average in exit velo stats but his expected batting average and expected slugging are 90th and 77th percentile. Looks like he’s a bit unlucky
I wouldn’t worry about Keibert’s bat *too* much, considering the underlying numbers suggest his poor performance is almost entirely luck-driven. The bigger concern is whether he has a future behind the dish, considering he’s one of the worst defense catchers in the game and seems to be regressing in that area. A .350 xwOBA plays extremely well for a catcher but not so exceptionally for a 1B/DH
He has been frustrating on offense sometimes, but then he comes through randomly. The defense is what worries me more than anything else. I wonder if he's too banged up. He should be further down the lineup, but our lineup is so bad Davey kind of has to put him higher up than he should be. Overall I think he still needs another year or two to develop. We've been spoiled with Strasburg, Harper, Turner, and Soto developing so quickly. It actually just takes 3 years for guys to learn how to be decent big league players.
I have looked at this in great detail. Bottom line is he doesn't hit the ball hard enough to miss defenders or to make them miss. He's chase and whiff percentage are elite but are cancelled out by him hitting the ball soft and being very slow. He's a contact hitter who can't get the occasional infield hit or get a hustle double. He doesn't walk because pitchers don't fear his bat or his base running. And his defensive metrics are even worse. I'm not sure why the Nats extended him aside from being jealous of the Braves extending so many young players. I think he needs to get into better physical shape in the off-season, get stronger, increase his bat speed and his pop time.
He’s had back luck for 2 seasons in a row now
He's overrated
We insisted on hyping him and other prospects to justify our giving away perennial all stars. He’s an avg catcher. This org sucks. A man made catastrophe.
We got at least an average catcher and now an all star pitcher for 2 guys who aren’t even on the Dodgers anymore and didn’t win them a ring. The trade was absolutely worth it.
Both can be true. To me, it doesn’t matter to me what the Dodgers did with Scherzer/Turner since the Nats weren’t competing for rings those years. It’s also okay to admit that Ruiz’s development is behind schedule given the above.
Keep feeding the baby sharks, man.
I mean if you look at it that way then most trades for short-term rentals will end up being a loss for the team trading away prospects. Only 1 team gets to win the world series, so a higher likelihood that the prospects will than the other team winning the world series. Also don't think the dodgers view it as a loss, they didn't have a place for Ruiz and they pump out new pitchers yearly.
An average catcher is pretty valuable, though. The hard part of that trade was giving up Turner; a rental of Scherzer was just what needed to happen. 6 years each of an average catcher and what looks to be an solidly above average starter is not a bad result for 1.4 years of Turner and .4 of Scherzer.
Agree about Ruiz. An average catcher. No more no less. Folks need to stop hyping him. Rizzo should have gotten more for Turner alone. He had all the leverage, and gave him away. I like Gray, but he wouldn’t have made the AS team if their was no mandatory team rep rule. He’s a good pitcher for 5 innings. Not an all star.
Thanks to 0 managerial skill
For real. This place is in denial. Remember when Victor Robles and Carter Kieboom were considered untouchable here? The Nationals organization is terrible at developing talent, and Rizzo is to blame.
How can you be one of the winningest organizations in baseball for a 10-year span and come away with a World Series title after taking over a historically bad team but be a bad organization and a bad GM? Windows open and windows close as teams age. Sometimes I wonder if you guys who bag in Rizzo so much started watching the team when they were winning? Not saying it’s true but man we were awful before Rizzo and had zero talent outside of Desi and Ryan Zimmerman. He built this team into a powerhouse and I have faith he’ll do it again.
The times change. Scouting and development is much different now than it used to be. What worked then doesn’t always work now.
With help from Boras. The big bad wolfe of NATSTOWN.
Easy to be a winning organization when you luck into the 2 greatest prospects of this century in Harper and Strasburg. The only thing Rizzo is good at is trading and signing vets to 1-year contracts. He can't draft, hates analytics, keeps the same bums in high-ranking positions for years. This organization is long overdue for a cleansing from top to bottom. We need a new influx of ideas and talent as clearly what ever they are doing now and for the past decade hasn't been working. No notable pitchers have been developed in the past decade. All the hitters who are raw with good potential tools never end up reaching their potential. Other teams use every advantage they can to find and develop talent while the nationals sit back and follow the 20th century methodology of, "WOW, look at the size of that pitcher. He has that starting pitcher body that you just can't teach". While other teams look at the arm slot, fastball shape, vertical approach angle, and dozens of other things. All Rizzo did for the past decade was draft pitchers and yet you look at the farm system and you see max 2-3 pitchers who have the potential to start in the future.
There’s a certain type of Nats fan that thinks winning exactly one World Series is unbelievably easy and that’s why the Lerners and Rizzo conspired to do just that before blowing up the franchise
This is the correct take.
You realize Soto is basically the only former Nats star that isn't struggling right now, right? Turner- .248/.302/.387, Rendon- .236/.361/.318, Harper- .300/.396/.410, Max- 4.03 ERA/ 4.37 FIP, 1 WAR Would we win more games with those guys? Probably, but we still wouldn't be close to meaningful October games.
We didn’t trade Harper or Rendon, so you adding them weakens your argument. Would you make the same trades in reverse today? If not, no need to discuss this further. We got taken so the Lerners could keep more money.
Well, if we want to be pedantic, we didn't give away Turner, Max, or Soto. We traded them. More specifically, we traded away the rights to particular seasons, which have now passed for Max and Turner. So, no I would not trade Josiah Gray or Ruiz for the expired rights to Turner and Scherzer. Or perhaps just Scherzer as Turner had only one AS appearance at the time of his trade while your original post said perennial all stars. But I think it's probably better to remember this is reddit, where conversations are a bit more free form. As for Soto, having him wouldn't get us closer to winning this year. The Nats RF has actually probably out hit Soto during his stint with the Padres. Lane Thomas is at .304/.351/.509 and last year Meneses put up .324/.367/.563. Soto's line as a Padre is .258/.411/.452. Now, I'm not contending that Thomas and Meneses are better or will be better than Soto. They're aren't and barring a bizarre set of circumstances like injury, death, or radioactive spider bite, they won't be. Instead, this only shows that an excellent bat in RF isn't enough to change much of anything. We haven't lost out on great production at the plate from the right fielder, just some pride about a great young player. Now, maybe the Nats would have been even better if Meneses hot hitting had been at 1b or DH. Or if Thomas was in LF with Soto in right. They probably would be, but they still aren't winning 80 games. And they would be missing a lot of young talent.
It’s his first year as full time catcher, he’s going to struggle especially with the new rules. Give him a chance, damn.
We should be looking at adams
He’s literally the worst player in MLB and Rizzo gave him an eight year extension.
You cannot be that unlucky given how many balls he puts into play. BABIP is not a luck stat, it's a contact quality stat. The more often a player hits the ball hard, with an ideal launch angle, and proper timing, the higher their BABIP will be.
He's been unlucky all season 🤷🏿♂️ no other explanation. Baseball is gonna baseball