The Dizzying Descent Of The Rangers’ Marcus Semien

I’ve spent some time in recent weeks chronicling the relative scarcity of offense during the 2022 MLB season. I took a fairly broad-based view of the situation here, took my first crack at partial season Park Factors here, and identified a poster child for the decline in offense (the Red Sox’ Alex Verdugo) here.

Verdugo was selected as the most apt representative of the overall offensive decline because of his generally solid current batted-ball profile that should be yielding production, but is not, in large part to factors beyond his control.

There are many other much more high profile players who have seen their offensive numbers tumble thus far in 2022, though many of the factors for their respective declines are well within their control. Rangers’ shortstop Marcus Semien may be foremost among them.

Just a season ago, Semien was one of the driving forces behind the resurgence of the Toronto Blue Jays. For the second time in three seasons, he played every single game and led the American League in plate appearances. But for the second time in three seasons, it was about much more than a Perfect Attendance Award for Semien. He eclipsed what had previously been a career season in 2019 in just about every way, hitting 45 homers, driving in 102 runs, and – again, for the second time in three seasons – finishing a strong 3rd in the MVP voting.

This time around, he had the good fortune of entering the free agent market fresh off of this strong campaign, and landed a seven-year, $175M payday from the Texas Rangers, who spent even more to bring SS Corey Seager aboard as they attempted to climb from the depths of the AL West standings.

It hasn’t quite worked out the way the Rangers planned, at least to this point. Now, all of the usual caveats apply here. Baseball is a game of randomness, and sample sizes. 47 games (through Tuesday night) can tell us only so much about Semien and the Rangers’ investment in him. But it is a part of the body of work that is his, and shouldn’t be completely ignored.

At the end of each season, I present my own MVP awards in both leagues, heavily incorporating batted ball-based statistics into my analysis. Last season, I chose Shohei Ohtani narrowly over Vladimir Guerrero Jr. in the AL, and Juan Soto even more narrowly over Bryce Harper in the NL. No big controversies there. The controversies lie with the player in each league that I deemed wholly unworthy of top-tier MVP consideration because of their ordinary batted ball profiles – Semien in the AL, and 5th-place finisher Trea Turner in the NL.

Turner’s speed allowed his batted ball profile to play up, and honestly I believe his speed was actually over-counted by award voters. Semien’s case, at least in my opinion, was even more clear-cut. He simply didn’t hit the ball nearly as hard as his MVP-candidate peers, and relied upon fly ball volume and his ability to selectively pull the ball for distance for his success. Those aren’t skills to sneeze at, but compared to the relatively evergreen ability to mash the baseball that most superstars possess, they’re a rather flimsy base upon which to build long-term excellence.

Want some details? Ohtani hit 49 fly balls at 105 mph or higher last season, and Guerrero hit 38. Those almost always go over the fence. Ohtani hit 42 balls between 95-105 mph last season, and Guerrero hit 48. Those go over the fence less often, and are doing so a lot less thus far in 2022 than they did in 2021.

Semien? He hit only 13 105+ mph fly balls in 2021, and an incredible 89 between 95-105 mph. He curled a lot of those homers down the left field line, and had the help of playing in a pair of very hitter-friendly minor league ballparks as the Jays wended their way northward as COVID-19 restrictions were gradually eased last summer.

My Adjusted Contact Score (for batted balls) and “Tru” Production+ (for all plate appearances) metrics measure how players “should have” performed based on the exit speed and launch angle of all batted balls. Semien overperformed on all batted ball types last season (133 vs. 101 Adjusted Fly Ball, 113 vs. 97 Adjusted Line Drive, and 117 vs. 87 Adjusted Ground Ball Contact Scores) en route to a “Tru” Production+ mark of 108, well below his 131 OPS+. And that was in 2021, when he posted an overall average exit speed of 89.7 mph, an average fly ball exit speed of 92.8 mph, an average line drive exit speed of 94.2 mph and a 43.7% fly ball rate. Those were all career high figures, and only the fly ball rate was materially above league average. In other words, 2021 was a dangerously precarious precipice for Semien to fall from moving forward.

The bottom line numbers thus far in 2022 have obviously been awful – .199-.266-.274, with a single homer and 59 OPS+ through Tuesday night’s games. And the batted ball numbers back them up (66 “Tru” Production+). But in the grand scheme of things, in a random endeavor like baseball, they mean little. Let’s peel the layers back and compare his early-season batted ball numbers to last year’s.

It’s pretty bleak. 85.4 mph average overall exit speed, a career low. 88.5 mph average fly ball authority, 87.9 mph average line drive authority, both career lows. His grounder rate has shot up from 31.0% in 2021 to 40.4% in 2022, at the expense of both his fly ball (down from 43.7% to 38.4) and liner (down from 20.8% to 16.7%) rates. The only positive development is a decline in his K rate from 20.2% to 15.9%, but the contact has been so weak that it hasn’t had an impact.

He has yet to hit a 105+ mph fly ball. He’s hit 18 95-105 mph flies, but 14 of them have been in the lower half of that range. He’s not hitting the ball hard enough in the air for his ability to selectively pull the baseball to matter. That fragile offensive profile of his is under pressure from multiple directions.

So am I saying that Marcus Semien is done? No. I am saying, however, that Marcus Semien as an MVP candidate type of player is done. Only in letter-perfect cirumstances could a player with his offensive profile put up numbers commensurate with such standing.

In 2019, he posted career best K (13.5%) and BB (11.8%) rates, and combined perfect attendance and an average range batted ball profile – thanks to the fact that for the only time in his career he was not an extreme grounder-puller – into a resume that, for me, still represents his career year, better than 2021.

In 2021, he souped up both the fly ball rate and the fly ball authority to career highs that are unlikely to be duplicated, though he did return to his grounder-pulling ways while giving back some of his K/BB excellence. Absent those spikes in key areas that have sparked those two big years, it’s tough to project Semien as more than an average range offensive player, even with some positive batted ball exit speed regression to the mean.

Now, he needs to make some adjustments. He’s hitting his fly balls harder than his liners, which is generally indicative of the need for some sort of swing change. Players with such profiles need to adapt or perish. I suspect Semien will adapt. Plus, he is a reliably 150+ game player who plays credible defense at multiple skill positions. Such guys don’t grow on trees.

But one generally doesn’t pay $25M per year for such players unless they really, really hit. Semien has some work to do before he can be relied upon for plus offensive production moving forward.