It took me a few times to get into Breaking Bad, but once I did, it was game over. Loved that show. Anyways, there was a character named Saul Goodman, who was a lawyer who represented the shady segment of the population. When assistance was needed, they called Saul. Well, the Atlanta Braves found themselves in quite the shituation after Nick Markakis was hit by a pitch, fracturing his wrist. What did they do? They called up Adam Duvall. Grey called him a hot schmotato in Wednesday’s post. Let’s see if he can be more.
Duvall is 30 years old and bats from the right side of the plate. He was drafted in the 11th round of the 2010 MLB draft by the San Francisco Giants. He spent five years with them and only accrued 77 plate appearances with the big club. In 2015, Duvall was traded to the Reds, where he had back-to-back seasons with over 30 home runs in 2016 and 2017. After struggling in 2018, he was shipped off to the Atlanta Braves, where he hit 15 home runs last year. He began this season in Triple-A, where he clubbed 29 home runs. Since getting called up four games ago. he’s hit three homers.
The power has always been there. The questions have been about putting the bat on the ball. Back in 2018, Duvall had a .195 batting average with a .237 BABIP. Some bad luck perhaps, but he’s normally had a low BABIP throughout his career. That’s normal for flyball hitters. The strikeout rate was 27%. When he had those 30 home run seasons, the strikeout rates were 27% and 26.3%, so that was the status quo. Unfortunately, those rates aren’t kosher when you’re not driving the ball out of the park.
So far in 2019, the strikeout rate is 22.2%. He hasn’t walked, the ISO is .529, the batting average is .529 with a .545 BABIP. Ok, it’s been 18 plate appearances, so not so helpful. Let’s look at the advanced data and see if we can spot anything, even though the sample size is small.
The launch angle of 21.4 is consistent with his career. The barrel rate of 14.3 is a career-high. Fangraphs has the hard hit rate at 64.3%, while Statcast has it at 35.7%. Does not compute. Does not compute. Malfunction in the matrix.
The swinging strike rate is at 9.9%, while the chase rate is at 27.5%. The contact rates are a tick higher but he’s swinging at significantly fewer pitches. Alright, this sucks because the sample size is so small, so we are not really getting anything here.
Let me check out the splits. Here’s a little something something. While the overall strikeout rate looks decent at 22%, that number is a little misleading. Against righties, the strikeout rate is 30.8%. Against lefties? 0%. He’s absolutely crushing lefties. Fine, fine. He’s had five plate appearances against left-handed pitching and 13 against righties.
Not much can be gleaned from the data, except this heater is unsustainable. Hot schmotato indeed. There is some hope, though. Markakis will be out for at least six weeks and Duvall has been batting fifth in the lineup, so the opportunity will be there. With that said, rather than spending hours of my life writing this post, I should’ve just listened to Grey and saved myself. That’s why Grey gets paid the big bucks.
VERDICT
