Launch Angle Craze Claiming Mets’ Francisco Lindor As Victim

Let’s get this out of the way up front – Francisco Lindor is a really, really good baseball player. He plays quality defense at the most important position on the field, is exceedingly durable and his bat brings power and has been quite reliable over the years. Just last year he logged a 6.8 fWAR season and at age 30 could be well on his way to the Hall of Fame with 43.3 fWAR already in the books.

But……Lindor is having a worrisome season with the bat, and his Mets are languishing around the .500 mark. He’s in the second year of a 10-year, $341 million deal that guarantees him big bucks through the 2031 season, which is a long ways away. Let’s peel away some of the layers of Lindor’s offensive performance and try to determine if this is merely a slump or something of real concern.

ADVERTISEMENT

First, some personal background. I was with the Mariners as a Special Assistant to the GM in 2011, Lindor’s draft year. We had the second overall pick that year, and had him into town for a private workout just prior to the draft. He was jaw-droppingly incredible. Obviously, we knew he was good coming in, but there were concerns about the eventual power projection. Let’s just say he answered those questions and more. For me, he was the clear #2 overall pick – he wouldn’t turn 18 until November, and was a slam-dunk quick-twitch defender with life in his bat and legs. And a face-of-the-franchise personality to boot.

Well, we didn’t take Lindor. We spent at least twice as much on lefty pitcher Danny Hultzen out of Virginia – I liked him, but as a pitcher, he got hurt and only made a cameo appearance in the big leagues. Lindor – well he became Lindor.

He’s been everything I thought he would be in the majors, albeit with more power and perhaps a little less hit tool overall. But in his Cleveland years? Yup, that was the guy.

Through Monday’s games, Lindor was hitting .213-.284-.404 with a 92 wRC+ and an unsatisfactory 61/19 K/BB. Even now, that’s worth 1.4 WAR to date, putting him on track for a near-4.0 WAR season, which is nothing to sneeze at. But that’s not what Mets’ brass is paying him for, nor what Mets’ fans are expecting. This is smack in his prime, and the club needs him to be more like the 2022 version, with an excess WAR contribution beyond his salary.

ADVERTISEMENT

What stands out in Lindor’s current offensive body of work? Let’s start with the K/BB profile. In each of his major league seasons, his K rate has been over a half standard deviation lower than league average. This season, it’s spiked up to a career high 23.4%, which is higher than league average. Meanwhile, his BB rate has dropped to 7.3%, near his career low. As recently as 2021, it stood at a strong 11.1%. For much of his career his K/BB profile has given his overall production a boost – now, it’s dragging him down a bit.

Now let’s look at the contact he’s making. On the surface things don’t look so bad. His 90.6 mph overall average exit velocity ties a career high, and his average fly ball exit speed is a career-best 93.2 mph. Despite this, however, his Adjusted Fly Ball Contact Score sits at a meager 74, way below average. How can this be?

Well, Lindor is hitting a ton of 85-100 mph fly balls that look good on the Baseball Savant page but aren’t getting him much of anywhere. He’s hitting .095 AVG-.167 SLG on those fly balls (4 for 42, 3 singles, 1 homer). And it’s not bad luck. No hitters get far in the lower two of those buckets (85-90 mph flies = .075 AVG-.123 SLG, 90-95 mph = .079 AVG-.180 SLG for all MLB hitters through 5/31). So this is a clear case when simply looking at average exit speed can be mighty misleading.

ADVERTISEMENT

But all of those warning track at best fly balls aren’t his biggest problem. Lindor’s apparently actively seeking them out – his average launch angle of 18.3 degrees is by far a career high (previous high was 14.5 degrees in 2018; up from 13.7 degrees in 2022). His pop up rate has steadily ramped up from 1.5% in 2020 to 3.9% in 2021 to 5.4% in 2022 to 6.3% thus far this season. His 39.7% fly ball rate is a career high, his 33.5% grounder rate a career low by far.

And there’s more. For only the second time in his career, Lindor qualifies as an extreme ground ball puller (first time was the pandemic-shortened 2020 season). Shift ban or not, this is killing him – he is batting a woeful .135 AVG-.154 SLG on grounders (7 for 52), and deserves every bit of it. He’s pulled 37 grounders, hit only two the other way, and 13 to the middle third of the infield. That makes him an extreme grounder-puller among extreme grounder pullers. Oh, and with the 61 strikeouts, 22 pop ups, 52 mostly-pulled grounders and and 42 can-of-corn fly balls, he’s simply handing away free outs in about two-thirds of his plate appearances.

So Lindor is lifting and pulling, and actually “should be” hitting even worse according to my batted ball-based metrics – he’s at 75 “Tru” Production+, with a projected .205-.264-.384 line. Pretty ugly.

ADVERTISEMENT

It’s pretty clear what needs to be done here to avoid a Rougned Odor-esque pyrrhic 25-homer season. Sacrifice a few homers by tightening up his strike zone and squaring the ball up where it’s pitched from both sides of the plate, picking up lots of extra singles and doubles (and walks) in the process to more than compensate. He’s a gifted athlete who can make the necessary adjustments, but first he must realize there is a problem to be fixed.

Jimmy Rollins possessed many of the same traits during his career – dead pull hitter from both sides of the plate, pop up tendency – but he had game-changing speed and maintained a minuscule strikeout rate that kept his offensive floor pretty high. We are now finding out where Francisco Lindor’s floor is, and he needs to do something quickly to bounce off of it.