Collette Calls: Arozarena's Awfulness

Randy Arozarena came into 2021 with more helium than just about any other player in fantasy baseball. He willed the Tampa Bay offense into the World Series last year with his amazing offensive run and finished the primary draft season this year with an ADP of 57, going as high as 24th and as low as 101 in more than 1,400 drafts. 

Midway through June, Arozarena looked as if he was on pace to meet the expectations of those drafters as he was batting .266/.341/.436 with 10 homers and 11 stolen bases. Fast forward to July 20, and he's still sitting on 10 homers and 11 steals. (Ed note: started writing this on the 19th and finished it the evening of the 20th as Arozarena started the game with a double and a homer on batted balls back up the middle. Go figure.)

A baker's dozen of hitters have been held homeless the last 30 days, while Arozarena and three others have also been shut out in the stolen base category:

He enters play on July 20 in the midst of a 72 at-bat homeless streak, which is not even his longest dry spell of the season as he went 75 at-bats between homers from May 21 to June 11. He also had a 56 at-bat dry spell from April 24 to May 12 but never went more than 35 at-bats without a homer during the regular season and seemingly never went more than five at-bats between homers in October.

Arozarena has not struck out that often in this rut and has accepted his walks striking out 20 percent of the time while walking 13 percent of the time. Normally, when we see a guy struggling to hit for power while also hitting .190/.307/.254, we think the player is hiding an injury or is struggling to make contact. In this case, the player is working through some things and his hitting coach, former UCF great Chad Mottola, had some things to say in an interview before Tuesday's game (thanks to RaysRadio for the audio transcript): 

There's been about four or five days running where we've seen the bat speed show up again ... He's narrowed up his stance a little bit, creating a little more freedom. ... We need Randy and we tell him that all the time. My message to him all the time is we're better with you in the lineup. So we need you to get going without putting unnecessary pressure on himself. I think it's been going on all year as far as the mental side pressing and trying get the performance to match up with what happened in 2020, which leads to mechanical troubles. So, I think that has probably increased the mechanical problems that have become more permanent. [Narrowing his stance] is freeing him up a little bit. Widening out get him short to the baseball but it did decrease bat speed. A narrow stance give him more freedom and a little more athleticism. It's been showing up in a couple of swing and some in-game results are encouraging. 

The running record of his exit velocity below is over the course of the last two seasons and includes the 2020 postseason. The 2020 data cleanly ends at 100 batted balls in play, which shows us a sizable dip early in the season and some peaks and valleys since. 

Whereas he was routinely hitting rockets in 2020, the batted balls over 100 mph have not been as prevalent this season, but there have been more lately even though the overall results are not showing it. The batted balls this week, including the events happening as this article is being written have gone as such:

• Double - 105.7 off the bat
• Single - 109.9 off the bat
• Home run - 104.3 off the bat
• Double - 110.5 off the bat

Your first reaction would be to just say it came against Baltimore pitching, but Spenser Watkins held most of the lineup at bay all night and John Means is not exactly batting practice. The recipe most pitchers have used for Arozarena has been to attack him up with heat and then down and/or away with breaking stuff. It is worth noting that Arozarena is having a healthy season of hitting against Baltimore but nothing to the level Gleyber Torres did a couple seasons ago.

If you view the StatCast data by pitch grouping, 2021 looks very much like 2020:

Fifteen of his 17 regular-season home runs have come off fastballs, which is why he hunts them so much early in the count. The aggressiveness hunting for fastball leaves him susceptible to the breaking stuff, particularly sliders as he is 14 for 92 (.152) with a 30 percent strikeout rate against the slider. It is worth noting that the success against fastballs comes with the caveat that Arozarena is much better against sinkers (.429) with a 12 percent strikeout rate compared to four-seamers (.281) with a 29 percent strikeout rate. 

The hard contact overall has been there throughout the season until a noticeable dip in his rolling average before the break until a recent upswing:

His previous runs of positive offense have been predicated by similar rises on the chart that we appear to be seeing this week as he resets himself against Baltimore. Note the jump in offense over his two most recent valleys of wOBA:

Arozarena is one of two rookies (Jazz Chisholm the other) to have double-digit homers and steals this season as both now have 11 of each. His overall offensive production has been slightly above league average (105 wRC+), but he was not drafted by fantasy players to be slightly above average. He is working through some mechanical issues and watching games this week show him with a more deliberate effort to stay back on the baseball and hit it through the middle and him once against making loud contact with the baseball. He could be on the precipice of another hot streak, and he would enter August with a third of his games coming against Baltimore, six of which would be in Camden Yards. The issues with stolen bases and the quiet homer total lately leave a final window of opportunity to see if Arozarena has another big run in his bat, but that window could slam shut quickly if this week continues against Cleveland pitching as it has begun against the Orioles.