FanPost

Is Kendrys Morales fixed?

Denny Medley-USA TODAY Sports

Kendrys Morales has hit .314/.400/.514/.914 over the last 2 weeks. Last night the Tigers couldn't even get him out once, he went 2/2 with 3 walks and a 3-run HR. Here's a table from baseball-reference showing some more recent splits for him:

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Hooray, he's fixed! Let the roll to the playoffs begin! But before you go running off I'd like to spend a few moments trying to figure out WHY Kendrys Morales is doing better, and whether it's just sheer luck or something more.

Let's start with BABIP. His BABIP over the last 2 weeks is .429. That is entirely unsustainable, especially for a slow runner like Morales. So yeah, he's had some pretty good fortune in his hitting the last 2 weeks. I guess it's worth pointing out that over the last 7 days his BABIP has been a bit lower, and his production has actually increased. But such a small difference in such a small sample is not worth dwelling on. What might be worth dwelling on, however, is that in his last 20 games (1/3 of his season) he has drawn more than half his walks.

Kevin spent a little time earlier trying to figure out why Morales hasn't been doing as well and I'll quote one pertinent section that confirms what I've seen with Morales this year:

The fix here is not immediately apparent. For the external factor, Morales can do nothing about what pitches he sees except lay off the extra breaking balls.

I would add that not only has Morales seen a lot of breaking balls, but he has seen a lot of them low and for most of the season, he's swung at all of them. Don't believe me? Look at this heat map from Brooks Baseball (all of the following maps are vs RHP, because that's where he's struggled this season):


Now do you believe me? Here's how he has swung at all pitch types in the same period:

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Basically he has swung at everything low, in, and low and in. Even if he's making contact (Hint: He's not) it's hard to make good contact with pitches off the plate, consistently.

If you look at those graphics you'll note I cut them off at May 24th, the last game before he was given several days off for a jammed finger. Look at this heat map of swings since then, first just the breaking balls:

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And then all pitches:

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Obviously we're working with a small sample size here - the first set of games is 45 and second set is only 17, and both sets exclude all plate appearances versus LHP. However there still seems to be a pretty noticeable trend of not swinging so much at pitches low or in, especially breaking pitches which has caused him to get more pitches, fewer of which are breakers, over the plate and on the outer half which has allowed him to start extending his arms again and given him a better opportunity to hit the ball the other way. He is swinging at a lot of pitches off the plate away, now, but he's apparently far less likely to miss those:

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Again, it's a small sample size and I obviously haven't included any information about where he's hitting the ball, but for now it sure looks like Morales has forced the pitchers to adjust the way they throw to him and he's having a lot more success because of it.

This FanPost was written by a member of the Royals Review community. It does not necessarily reflect the views of the editors and writers of this site.