Kris Bryant hit two home runs and drove in six runs Saturday to help the Cubs to a 7-2 win over the Marlins. Bryant now owns a .278/.381/.486 slash line in 307 plate appearances. Those are excellent averages for anyone, let alone a 23-year-old rookie. It was his second multi home run game of the season.
One thing that may put a damper on the our perception of Bryant, however, is his home/road split. So far, he is a monster at Wrigley with a .330/.448/.661 slash line, an okay .240/.329/.360 line on the road (okay because the OBP is good). In 134 PA at home versus 173 on road, he has the same number of hits, doubles, triples, and six more home runs in Chicago. It’s possible he is a hitter built for Wrigley Field.
What makes that split even more strange is that the Wrigley is playing to favor the defense this season. Wrigley owns the third lowest park factor in the majors this season, .752. That means one would expect just 3/4 of the runs scored there versus a neutral park. So in what appears to be a tough park, Bryant is killing the ball, but in neutral territory, he’s just okay. Both sample sizes are still very small, and I suspect these numbers will be more in line by the end of the season.
No offense, but what was the point of this? You pretty much said nothing, and certainly nothing that touched on the topic of the title.
Bryant’s got weird splits all over. The home/road splits suggest it’s mental/emotional, since Wrigley despite its rep is not a hitter-friendly park. Since he’s a 23 year old hyped superstar who receives tons of love at home and probably gets a lot of crap on the road (from fans, but also a ton of distracting media attention) this makes sense – I would expect this split to fade away as his career progresses.
The day/night splits, which are also severe (albeit not as extreme as they were his first month+), are different in that they may be physical and may be permanent. It’ll be interesting to see if the Cubs phase out day games during his tenure in order to give their best player the best odds of success.
The last fascinating split for him is wins and losses. And they are EXTREME splits. Like – he is utter garbage in the 33 losses, hitting under .200 with an insane number of strikeouts and virtually no power. In the 37 wins, he is Babe Ruth, and even the strikeouts go way down to normal levels (just under 25% I think). Now this is a sizable sample size. So. It suggests two things – one, that the Cubs depend on him more than any other hitter, including Rizzo – as goes Bryant, so goes the offense. And two, it suggests that Bryant is streaky in a weird way – within single games. He doesn’t spread out his offense, all his damage is done in relatively few games, and other games he just completely takes the day off, not getting any production and whiffing multiple times.
He is a weird, weird hitter so far. Never seen a player like him in the big leagues. He’s statistically been one of the best hitters in the NL despite a near-33% K-rate (supposedly players who do this are not supposed to be able to stay in the majors, but – well, Bryant looks like he’s here to stay). He’s been one of the best hitters in the NL despite not looking like it to fans who watch him every day (I think this, again, is due to his lack of spreading out his offense – to me, he’s seemed to have been in a slump almost all season).
It’s scary to think how good he’ll be once he works out the kinks, which have been significant. The stats don’t lie, and they say he’s been amazing so far. But the eye test says he’s mostly been in a funk this year since his call-up. I fully expect that at some point in the next year, he’s going to become more or less the minor league version of himself, who just crushes day-in, day-out.
Paul » They can’t all be gems. 🙂 My point is that his good stats might just be an illusion of his home park, but that conclusion would be more convincing if the park helped hitters overall.
He’s probably not Mike Trout, but he’s also probably not Corey Patterson.
But the Theo tolerance for strikeouts is seemingly endless.