He could not have upper-echelon profession totals, however boy was Michael Brantley an absolute baller. A five-time All-Star, Brantley additionally received a Silver Slugger and completed third in American League MVP voting in 2014, a yr that noticed him end second within the AL in WAR behind solely Mike Trout, the MVP winner. After a really profitable 15-year profession, the candy swinging lefty outfielder has determined to hold up his cleats. It’s an unsurprising transfer for Brantley, who had battled shoulder accidents for a lot of the final three seasons and would have been getting into his age-37 season.
Brantley was a singular participant. Over the course of his profession (2009-2023), the league-wide strikeout price elevated from 18.0% to 22.7%. However whereas the league was whiffing an increasing number of, Brantley bucked the development. Throughout his 10-year tenure in Cleveland, he struck out 10.7% of the time; within the 5 years he spent in Houston, that mark was precisely the identical. Certainly, his strikeout price with the Astros was over 40% higher than the league common price (22.8%) throughout that interval. Of the hitters with a minimum of 1,000 plate appearances from 2019 to 2023, 21 had a strikeout price under 14%. Solely two had the next wRC+ than Brantley: Alex Bregman (137) and José Ramírez (132).
His talent set was timeless, headlined by his elite contact capacity. His wRC+ was really greater in his 30s (124) than it was in his 20s (112). And his future appeared vivid – ZiPS projected him for a .290/.354/.416 line and a 114 OPS+ within the upcoming season had he performed. As Timothy Jackson of Baseball Prospectus put it, Brantley was “distinctive amongst gamers with outlier abilities.” And so, together with his time within the majors coming to a detailed, I wished to look again at Brantley’s profession development. Extra particularly, I wished to look at how his constantly elite contact abilities allowed him to keep up his efficiency regardless of myriad accidents.
There are a bunch of various methods to clarify what makes for contact hitter. You may merely cite contact price or strikeout price. You may pull up a warmth map of the place and the way usually the hitter makes flush contact. You may even have a look at spray charts. All of these issues are factors in Brantley’s favor, however the purpose he was such a productive contact-oriented hitter was due to his barrel variability.
Many hitters endeavor to coach themselves to hit exhausting line drives. Doing that whereas not creating holes in your swing requires you to govern your physique and barrel to get on aircraft with totally different pitch places. The perfect of the most effective are in a position to do that whereas nonetheless making flush contact. This was Michael Brantley’s superpower.
Wherever the pitch was, it appeared like Brantley was in a position to get his barrel to it due to his superior horizontal and vertical bat variance. There’s a purpose considered one of his nicknames was Dr. Clean. The whole lot about his swing was buttery. There is no such thing as a higher strategy to expertise this than along with your eyes, so I’m going to take you again to considered one of my favourite video games from Brantley’s profession, when he effortlessly peppered 4 singles in opposition to Tampa Bay on April 30, 2021. Let’s begin together with his line drive within the first inning in opposition to Ryan Yarbrough.
Sure, Yarbrough wasn’t throwing at loopy speeds, however finding a sinker in that spot is nearly assured to be a jam shot. Even when a hitter was to get their barrel to it, they may have hassle holding it truthful. However for Brantley, it wasn’t an issue. He pulled his arms in whereas flattening out his barrel to shoot the pitch up the center for an off-the-cuff single. He made one thing that was very troublesome look easy.
Yarbrough bought a shot at redemption two innings later:
For those who can’t beat him in, you then may as nicely strive soft-and-away, proper? Yarbrough noticed this pitch off the sting. For a break up second, he appeared to have Brantley beat, however Brantley’s capacity to decelerate his physique to completely management his barrel made the situation irrelevant. The break up second the place he paused was essential for him to regulate his shoulders and get his barrel on the ball regardless that the pace initially fooled him.
It was a hopeless battle for the soft-tossing lefty, however he needed to give it one other go within the fourth inning:
First it was up the center, then it was to proper. Subsequent up, left subject. Even on a pitch beneath the zone, Brantley was in a position to get his bat vertical by creating somewhat further torso bend and giving his arms house to show over. All in a day’s work. He noticed three good places, however notched three hits anyway. That’ll depart any pitcher trying like this:
This response was fairly frequent for pitchers once they confronted Brantley. They’d make their greatest pitch, and he’d beat them in any case. In his subsequent at-bat of that recreation, Brantley flicked one other single to proper subject to cap off a four-hit evening, although fortunately for Yarbrough, Trevor Richards was on the bump. What a aid.
Whereas I may watch Brantley hit perpetually, I received’t topic you all to an countless article. As an alternative, I’ll depart you with yet one more level of appreciation. There’s a normal perception within the recreation that it is vitally troublesome for hitters to manage the place they hit the ball on any given pitch. With out query, there’s advantage to that perception. Hitters can solely hit what they get, and so they can’t management what they get. Some hitters have holes of their swing and must assault a selected subset of pitches and places, however then there are outliers like Brantley who can get their barrel to any spot. That implies that in case you depart a giant gap on one aspect of the sphere and pitch to a location that lets a hitter like Brantley play with the hole, he’s going to kill you.
Throughout his time in Houston, Brantley had a .362 wOBA in all non-standard fielding alignments, i.e. shifts and shades; in commonplace alignments, his wOBA was .335. For those who’re going to shift on the barrel variability king, you then higher not depart pitches up and away. Zac Gallen, Jonathan Loáisiga, and Luis García all realized that the exhausting means:
Stunning work.
Rangers hitting coach Donnie Ecker as soon as stated in an interview, “[T]right here’s loads of masking up guys on the massive league degree. There’s loads of guys which have massive holes.” He was referring to how hitters transfer and what their motion can do to have an effect on the variability of their bat path. Michael Brantley was the antithesis of masking up. He may hit something you threw at him. No, he’s not a Corridor of Famer or a report breaker, however he was a nightmare for any pitcher to face. The sport will miss him, however pitchers positive received’t.