Kurt Suzuki Has Not Been Lucky, He’s Been Good
How excited would you be if I told you that the Braves were signing an aging, middling defensive catcher with declining hitting ability and a career wRC+ of 89? Obviously, this is not the type of news that would ignite a positive response from any fan. Age-related decline often comes fast and furious for catchers due to extreme physical demands of the position. There is absolutely no reason to think that a catcher on the wrong side of 30 who had never been particularly great would suddenly become even an average hitter. And yet, here we are a year and change after Atlanta signed Kurt Suzuki to back-up Tyler Flowers, and “Zuk” is arguably the best hitting catcher in baseball. It would be easy to chalk this up to luck. Because he has primarily been a backup to Flowers, his plate appearances have been limited, meaning that the Small Sample Size warning could apply. Instead, the underlying statistics don’t point to a player who is riding a streak of good luck. They show a hitter that has managed to completely transform himself into an elite offensive catcher in his age 33 and 34 seasons.
When hitters come out of nowhere to post amazing seasons, the first thing I look at is their BABIP. Remember when Chris Johnson hit .321 for Atlanta with an impressive 127 wRC+ in 2013? Well, he put up those numbers on the back a BABIP that was just a few ticks shy of .400. While his career BABIP had been higher than average, that mark of .400 was so far above what would be expected that it was inevitable that his numbers wouldn’t look so good after his BABIP fell back down to earth. Sure enough, his wRC+ in 2014 was a disappointing 82 even though his BABIP of .345 was still well above the MLB average. When his BABIP finally landed close to the MLB average of around .300 in 2016, his wRC+ cratered all the way to 64. Johnson is now in the minors hoping to fight his way back onto an MLB roster.
Given Suzuki’s long history of mediocre offensive production and his age, I expected to check his impressive 2017 stats and see a high BABIP. Instead, Zuk’s BABIP was a completely reasonable .268. In fact, that number is slightly below his career average. He’s off to an even more impressive start in 2018 despite his BABIP falling to .263.
So how is it possible that Suzuki could go from a light-hitting backup catcher to an All-Star performer at age 34? Suzuki’s highest career fly-ball percentage (FB%) prior to signing with Atlanta was 44% with a career percentage below 40. Even in the year that he posted a 44 FB%, his hard-contact-percentage was only 20% and his pull% was only 44.6%, meaning he wasn’t hitting those fly balls particularly hard nor was he pulling them with any authority.
Since joining the Braves, Suzuki has completely transformed his batted-ball profile. After hitting career highs in FB% (47%) pull% (49) and hard-contact% (33) in 2017, he’s been even more extreme in 2018. While his FB% is almost the same, his ground-ball percentage has plummeted to a career low 12.5%, meaning that when he’s not crushing fly-balls, he’s crushing line drives. His pull percentage has increased to 59% and his hard-contact rate is an excellent 44%, more than double his pre-Atlanta career high. Simply put, Suzuki is swinging as hard as he can and trying to hit the ball in the air as much as possible. He has entirely bought in to the modern philosophy of “hit it high and watch it fly” with an added emphasis on hitting it hard, too.
This change in approach does not make Suzuki unique among MLB players in recent years. As Statcast data have become available to teams, more hitters are trying to achieve the optimal launch angle. The trick for most players, though, is to alter their swing without offsetting any gains obtained by an improved launch angle with an increase in strikeout rate or soft contact percentage. The team at FiveThirtyEight has discovered that, on average, a change in launch angle is just as likely to hurt as it is to help. It’s not easy for a player who has accumulated thousands of plate appearances and taken perhaps 100,000 or more swings over the entire course of their life to make radical adjustments without taking away the part of their swing that got them to the Big Leagues in the first place. Prior to an impressive start to the 2018 season, former Brave Jason Heyward has been the poster child for hitters who have tried to change their approach to elevate the ball only to hurt their swing in other ways. Impressively, Suzuki has managed to elevate the ball and swing harder without an uptick in strikeout rate. In fact, his strikeout rate has remained incredibly low. His 13% K-rate for 2017 was just one percentage point above his career average and well below the MLB average. So far in 2018, he is striking out an almost impossibly low 6% of the time.
The results of Suzuki’s new approach are plain to see. The season is still very young, but Suzuki’s wRC+ of 173 puts him in very elite company. He’s even narrowly out-performing Freddie Freeman at the plate, per wRC+ (albeit, in fewer plate appearances). That type of production is even more valuable considering that catchers are typically an offensively-challenged group as a whole. Add in the fact that Atlanta signed him on a one-year deal for only $3.5 million and Suzuki is perhaps one of the best veterans in baseball when weighing his performance relative to his position and cost. While it is unlikely that he can sustain a 173 wRC+ for the entire season, his high hard-contact percentage and fly-ball rate coupled with his low strikeout rate indicate that he is fully capable of continuing to perform at an All-Star level. Zuk hasn’t been lucky. He’s been good.
