We’re only a little over two weeks into the 2015 season but Ryan Braun has been having some pretty might struggles at the plate. He’s only hitting 238/273/310 with a 2.3% walk rate. He only just hit his first home run of the season on Monday. After the suspension and especially the thumb injury people are understandably concerned about him. But how worried should Brewers fans be about Ryan Braun?
He has had a trying few years in baseball. In 2012 it was initially announced that Ryan Braun would be suspended for using PEDs. He appealed the suspension and the unthinkable happened. He won his appeal. MLB was not satisfied with the process and left no stone un-turned, or impartial arbiter not fired, until finally in mid-2013 they got their desired outcome and Braun was suspended for the rest of the season. But before that a more significant event occurred in the life of Ryan Braun.
He suffered a thumb injury that would plague him for the rest of his playing time in 2013 and for most of 2014. A nerve in his thumb was damaged somehow and caused him severe pain whenever he swung a bat. It got to the point where his whole hand hurt and he couldn’t even shake a person’s hand.
At the plate it sapped his power and had him hitting into a career high number of ground balls. His career average GB% is 44.1% and in 2014 he had 51.8 GB%. Something similar happened in June of 2013 before he was suspended when he had a 58.3 GB%. Clearly the thumb was having a severe affect on his ability to drive the ball. The question now becomes: Is it still a problem?
In the offseason Braun underwent a cryotherapy procedure (a first for a baseball player). The goal of the procedure was to freeze the nerve causing the problem effectively killing it and stopping the pain. To date Braun has only ever said publicly that the procedure has worked and he’s no longer suffering pain. However with how poorly he’s played so far (small sample size caveat applies) it’s hard not to wonder if that’s the truth.
I took a look at his batted ball data expecting to find a high ground ball rate like in previous instances where Braun was dealing with severe nerve pain in his thumb. That’s not at all what I found. His current GB% actually mirrors his career rate. So that’s fine. His LD% is about 4-5% lower than one might expect and his FB% is about 7-8% higher than is typical for him.
Perhaps that suggests he’s just not squaring up on the ball. If that’s the case then one can reasonably expect that to change. Once he starts driving the ball with authority, if he can, then his numbers will start look like the good version of Ryan Braun once again.
One other thing that stood out to me were his plate discipline numbers. He is swinging at a career high number of pitches (57% vs career 47.8%). The problem seems to be the type of pitches he’s swinging at. On pitches in the strike zone (Z-Swing%) he’s swinging at 64.5%. That’s near his career average. However on pitches outside the strike zone (O-Swing%) he’s swinging at 51.0%. That’s nearly 20% higher than his career average.
He is making more contact than usual both in the zone (91.8% vs career 88.0%) and out of the zone (77.6% vs career 67.8%). But chances are good that out of zone contact (O-Contact %) is poor contact (think weak flyouts). This must be contributing to his inability to square up on pitches. With the Brewers’ offense struggling as horrible as they are one can’t really blame Braun for pressing but he needs to find a way to return to patience (a side-effect of this hyper aggressiveness is that 2.3 BB%).
When Ryan Braun is good he’s among the best in baseball. Even last year before the thumb started acting up he hit 328/361/592 (Mar/Apr) and 323/354/548 (May). That’s the Ryan Braun the Brewers need if they have any hope of righting the ship and making the playoffs. More importantly, that’s the Ryan Braun they expected to have when his 5 year $105 million extension kicks in next year. So far I don’t see any reason to think the thumb is the cause of his early struggles. So I think there’s still a good chance he can find his swing again.
Statistics courtesy of FanGraphs
