Dissecting Jason Heyward’s Season (Heat Maps)
October 20, 2011 at 2:04 pm by Ben Duronio under Atlanta Braves
There is one very important date that needs to be emphasized when analyzing Jason Heyward’s season. On May 10, Heyward expressed that his right shoulder that bothered him through spring training, and that it caused him to be removed from that night’s game. Heyward stated that he felt “numbness” in his forearm, and went 0-3 in that game before being removed. At this point, his average was down to .220, so it is likely that this injury became more serious at the end of April or beginning of May.
Heyward’s April line of .263/.354/.525 was impressive, though his average and on base percentage were both lower than the previous season. It is indeed possible that Heyward’s 2010 season was a bit overstated due to a potentially abnormal BABIP of .335. At the end of April, Heyward’s BABIP stood at .260, which looks a bit low but the seven home runs Heyward had in 26 total hits could be a factor.
Everything seemed fine with Heyward at that point offensively. The walk rate was still solid, the power was even better than the season previous, and the nagging injuries that have been so common in his young career were not hurting his play.
Below are three heat maps, courtesy of the great ESPN Stats & Info Group. Each map details Heyward’s batting average on balls in play.
Heyward in April of 2011
What I see here is a player who is able to extend his arms and reach outside pitches with regularity. Pitching him inside is likely the best option, given the count and situation of course. While Heyward stands as far away from the plate as almost any other player in the league, his lengthy arms allow him to cover the plate well enough to still be highly productive.
Heyward in 2011
This looks like an entirely different player, which could partially be due to the small sample size of the previous heat map and partially because of an injury or an alteration in his stance or swing. The outside is not quite a place to avoid as it was in April. The middle-half of the outer portion is his best zone, and down and in is a place he can turn on a ball. Anything up in the zone that is not in the middle of the plate can lead to an out as well. Pitchers have a lot of options when attacking this hitter, which is not a statement I expected to make about Jason Heyward before this season.
Heyward in 2010
Now this looks like a good hitter, aside from maybe the odd non-hot zone in the middle of the plate. This is a hitter that has really no open spot for a pitcher to pick on. Outside, inside, up, or down, he can get hits with regularity. Middle-away may be his weakest spot, but not nearly as weak as some of the open spots you saw in the heat map from this year. It is easy to understand how Heyward netted a .376 wOBA in 2010 when viewing this heat map.
The performance on pitches up and in is the biggest difference between 2010 and 2011. Correlation does not equal causation, but that shoulder injury keeps popping in my head when I see the differences in the two seasons. The next biggest difference between 2010 and 2011 is the volume. The heat maps does not look too different in terms of placement of the hot zones, but rather the volume is higher in each section in 2010 compared to 2011.
Could this be blamed entirely on the shoulder injury? Probably not. As mentioned, it is reasonable to say that Heyward was a bit lucky in 2010 with balls in play. A ground ball rate as high as his should probably not net a BABIP of .335. While I am not ready to put all of 2011 on Heyward’s shoulder, I am ready to say that it was a large factor, and a much bigger factor than poor luck. The shoulder injury likely hurt his power more than his average, which is something that has not been covered often.
When factoring in the injuries he suffered from and the good fortune he had in 2011, his career line of .255/.362/.427 seems to be a fairly accurate measure of his production and a reasonable base for projections. By that I mean, if you give him even luck rather than good luck in 2011 and he avoids the two big injuries that have hindered his play during his career, his line should look something like this but with a bit of an increase in the slugging percentage — probably more around .440-.445.
Now, what to expect from Heyward next season? With the expected improvements that a player his age often incurs, a .265/.365/.455 line seems fairly reasonable. He has the upside to put up an OBP above .400, and the downside of putting up an OBP in the .310 range. There is a good amount of volatility in projections, but expecting him to land on the higher side of the mean, as in the previously mentioned .365 OBP level, seems to be a sound projection. Combine that level of offensive performance with his defense and baserunning, and Heyward is a roughly 4 win player next season if he plays in 135 games and amasses 550 plate appearances. If he is able to avoid injuries and plays 150 or more games, moving back into the 5-5.5 win territory is certainly not out of reach.
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Welcome back, comment section.
Constanza has much more upside.
Ben, how much do you think the tinkering that Parrish was doing with Heyward played into his bad season? I know they said that they were working with him daily to make changes to his approach but you didn’t see a lot of results in games.
Just today I was thinking how much I wish comments would come back. Prayers answered. Great article Ben, it’s easy to tell without even reading the article that changes so drastic was predominantly due to injury.
Great piece, the heat maps are very illustrative.
I’d say a lot of the blame should fall squarely on the Frediot/Parrish tandem-I’m praying we get Frank Thomas to be our next hitting coach.
I don’t think Parrish had a lot to do with Heyward’s struggles. I won’t blame him for the problems, but his job is to help fix them and he obviously did not do too well in that regard.
Oh I agree that Parrish probably wasn’t the cause of them initially, but his ineptitude and Fredi’s sporadic usage of Heyward certainly were not helpful.
His hot zones in general look like a lake bed drying up from ’10 to ’11. Like you said though up and in completely evaporated. Great graphic. Is the heat map “tool” publicly available?
I was actually surprised at his hot zone on the outside of the plate, something that can be tough to pick up on while watching on TV.
I just want to see that absurdly high pop-up rate go down next season.
I had stopped visiting any discussion sections all together as this one had spoiled me.
Did they ever actually give his right shoulder a diagnosis?
Do you think that JHey should consider getting shoulder surgery? Don’t they have small operations that just cleans up the should like they do with athletes knees? Especially now in the offseason, get it over with so he has the ability to recover and get back to full strength and not worry about having to deal with these types of injuries next season?
10,
Yes, he had an MRI after the season and it showed no structural damage.
Finally, comments! I now don’t have to sit here and listen to my wife!
Btw tho, I fucked up my shoulder/rotator cuff years ago in the same manner that heyward did and it still gives me trouble daily. Im totally worried that he’ll get hurt again mid-way thru the season. Maybe he should take a pre-emptive 15 day DL in June/July?
Frank Thomas? Is that just conjecture on your part, or have you heard something?
rcunnyftw – Dude, one of the reasons he banned comments was for cussing. Mind your p’s and q’s.
Thank you for re-introducing the comment section for the blog.
Although I do not post often (I am in New Zealand-the time difference causes me to miss relevant discussion patterns)
I do read all of them and thoroughly enjoy this blog above all others of my favorite team.
I also enjoyed looking at the clustrmap for traffic and guessing I am responsible for over 50% of the New Zealand traffic (embarrassed).
Keep up the great stories and analysis.
horray for comments being back, and thanks for the great analysis of Heyward. Hopefully he can rest his shoulder and be a threat next year.
off topic but interesting read on how Wren and Ed Wade worked the Bourn deal:
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/anatomy-of-a-baseball-trade-10202011.html
I pray the return of comments also means a return of BRAVESNATION4EVER
What does Jason need to do to get his batting average up? He’s only hitting .255 for his career and I think he needs to atleast hit .280 to make the Hall.
Vinny, forget the hall man he’s only played about a season and a half. He needs to actually start hitting the ball consistently first and focus on making a couple all-star games and winning divisions. You have to admit, on numbers alone he wouldn’t have made the all-star game his rookie year if he didn’t have all that hype to start the season
Probably a bit early to be commenting about the HOF with Jason. What he needs to do is hit more line drives rather than ground balls, and that comes with an alteration of his swing. Whether that happens or not is yet to be determined, but what needs to be stressed is that he doesn’t *need* to alter his swing to make him extremely productive.
It would be nice to see him turn some ground balls into line drives or fly balls, but it is not a necessity. Hopefully this winter he works on it a bit but does not go into a full overhaul of his approach and swing.
@13/Ryan W: I don’t think that that was a reason he specified. Peter actually has been known to throw a few bombs himself. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Ben or Kevin do such though.
Great article, Ben. I look forward to even more like this. It is also a great time to re-examine the comments policy. There should be far less traffic than earlier in the season.
Thank God comments are back!!!! I finally have something to do while I work.
Regardless of the last 2 season, what are the odds of JHey hitting a homer in his first AB next season??
I’m going 3-1.
Comments!!!!! YES!!!!!!!!!
Not sure what to make of the Greg Walker rumors. Konerko says he’s the best in the business, while Adam Dunn would probably like to kill him.
One thing I noticed as the season went on was how much more slight Heyward’s shoulders appeared later in the season. He had thick shoulders to start the year, and it makes sense that he would be unable to continue working out if his shoulders bothered him. Taking away a lot of his chest and shoulder strength would make him much less of a hitter.
Ben,
Do you know where I could find heat maps describing where Heyward has been pitched? It’d be interesting to see if pitchers have adjusted from last year.
I am not an expert by any means but I would like to think (more like guess) that this might have to do with better scouting report for Jason COMBINED with his injury. Sophomore slump is something that gets tossed around but making adjustments to adjustments is what good professional hitters do.
Joe Simpson would talk about this a lot toward the end of the year but the kid’s top hand would just roll through the zone on contact and not remain flat which causes him to pound the ball into the ground.
Hell, all of this + ESPN covering him so much + all of us fans trying to guess what is wrong with him is probably all a little to blame (even though media stuff should not matter).
Nice to have the comments back.
Its funny. Whenever I try to form an opinion about next year, my mind just comes up empty. I’m still numb.
how come Peter doesnt post any more articles?
did i miss something
I’m SO glad to see the comments back. I tend to shy away from the BABiP thing a little and look more at the ‘Batted Ball’ profile of the hitter. Even looking at that can be deceiving, though. For instance, Heyward’s GB% actually went down slightly from 55.1% in 2010 to 53.9% in 2011. This may just be my convenient memory, but it sure seems like when he hit ground balls in 2010, he did it with authority most of the time (which would lead to a higher BABiP – less reaction time for the fielders), whereas in 2011, most of his ground balls seemed to be slow rollers and easy plays for the defense. Hopefully the HIT F/X or FIELD F/X or whatever it’s going to be called can incorporate the ‘exit velocity’ of the ball off the bat to prove/disprove things like this. Regardless, a 50+% ground ball rate is way to high for a guy with Heyward’s power. I look forward to him taking more advantage of his strength and creating more opportunities for extra base-hits by getting the ball in the air more.
Good analysis on his swing. Speaking from shoulder surgery experience, if rehab and strength exercises will do the trick, avoid surgery.
With such a long swing, wouldn’t it benefit J-Hey to study the “good” at bats that Ryan Howard has in hitting the ball to left-center?