Dee Gordon: The Ground Ball Magician

Twenty-sixteen was not Dee Gordon’s season.
In April of that year, Dee Gordon was caught using PEDs, though he denies that he used them knowingly. Sure, the larger picture makes sense: a skinny batter trying to put on mass in any way he can.
But I’m not writing to convict or acquit Gordon of using PEDs knowingly. I’m here to say that Gordon could be a star without ever having to hit another long ball.
Why? How he dominates with ground balls and weaker contact.
As of today, 59.6% of Dee Gordon’s hits this season are grounders. That leads the major leagues, though he’s far from the only batter with half of his batted balls as grounders. Of the 27 other batters who fit this range, only 7 have a better BABIP (batting average on balls in play).
However, what makes Dee stand out is that his contact type is much weaker than these batters.
For instance, let’s look at Dee versus D.J. LeMahieu, the next closest in ground-ball rate with a higher BABIP.
Dee: .333 BABIP, 59.6% grounders, 16.6% hard contact.
LeMahieu: .350 BABIP, 55.3% grounders, 30.4% hard contact.
LeMahieu improves his BABIP with hard liners and a few home runs. His weak contact gets him into more trouble than Dee, creating more than twice the number of double plays as Dee this year (12 to 5).
In fact, only three players in the MLB have a sub-20% hard contact rate: Jarrod Dyson (16.5), Dee (16.6), and Billy Hamilton (17.5).
Dyson bats .268 BABIP, so more of his ground balls are inhibitors to performance than Dee.
Hamilton, on the other hand, bats .328 BABIP, virtually what Dee bats. In fact, Hamilton and Dee are identical in almost every way — speed, contact type, BABIP — except for ground-ball rate.
Dee: 59.6% (1st in MLB)
Hamilton: 45.5% (T-63rd in MLB)
The two have been separated by the same ~10–15% since 2013 in ground-ball rate. And the last time the two split from their hard contact trends was 2014, when Hamilton hit 20.5% hard contact. Dee capitalizes on grounders more than Hamilton, though infielders don’t like trying to throw out the speedy Hamilton either, being league-leader in speed factor and stolen bases.
What Dee has done with the ground ball is incredible. While Hamilton continues to fly out at a 30%+ rate, Dee has limited his fly ball rate this year to 17.0%. Dee has a more wholesome spray chart, hitting it pull, center, and opposite field in the 30-37% range for each category, not allowing opposing teams to set up a shift one way or the other.
In turn, he pokes through a lot of grounders, and his speed helps him capitalize on the occasional in-field hit (10 so far this year).
Dee does not need significantly more power or fly balls. His strikeout rate is high enough already that a move towards harder swinging and, most likely, swing-and-miss would only decrease his value.
What Dee needs is better pitch recognition to complement the difficult task of fielding and throwing him out on a grounder. His BB/K ratio is 0.30, putting him in the bottom fifth of qualified MLB batters. Though his 10 HBP is fifth-highest in the league, he can’t bank on pitchers throwing in his batter’s box regularly.
If Dee begins to build more plate discipline while still reaching on well-placed, soft-to-medium grounders and bunts (he leads the league in bunts-for-hits with 8), his OBP will rise. And being one of the top-five fastest players in the MLB, with the second-most stolen bases in the league (35), his player value will only grow more and more.
Just keep it low and go, Dee.
