What’s Up With Clint Frazier?
We’ve seen more of Dejected Clint this year than ever before (AP)
Not Who We Thought We Had
It’s no secret that Clint Frazier has been pretty awful this year. We had grown accustomed to him being a reliable, sometimes great, offensive player who was plagued by defensive issues. He’s basically flipped that script entirely. His OPS+ is 64, his wRC+ is 68, and all his highlights this year (catch some below) are great defensive plays.
Look, I have no problem with Clint Frazier suddenly becoming good on defense. Sure, he still makes routine plays a little bit more exciting than they should be, but I think it’s pretty good that he can be a value add in left field every so often. I think we’re all pretty happy with Clint’s defensive performance so far, but personally, I’d trade it all to have Masher Clint back.
The Player We Thought We Had
In order to understand what makes this year’s Clint Frazier so weird, it’s important to understand what kind of player Old Clint was. We’re talking about a guy who doubled and homered in his second and third career ABs against the eventual (cheating) World Series Champions.
We’re talking about a guy renowned for his legendary bat speed. We’re talking about a guy who in 108 games between 2019 and 2020, posted a 125 OPS+ and a 30 double, 30 homer, 96 RBI per 162 pace. Gleyber Torres, who was unbelievable in 2019, had a 122 OPS+ over those same two seasons. Clint was RAKING, and it’s sounding all kinds of alarm bells for me that his production has dropped off so significantly.
So What Gives?
I can already think of a few people who are going to read this article and have a problem with what I’m about to say, but the numbers are telling me a pretty interesting story. Clint Frazier got too good at making contact.
Clint has now appeared in parts of 5 different MLB seasons (at least 15 games in every year 2017-2021). He has been above average by both OPS+ and wRC+ in 3 of those years (2018-2020) and below average in two of those years (2017 and 2021).
The two years he has been below average are the two years during which he made contact on the highest percentage of his swings.
Take a look at these two charts. They show Clint’s whiff percentage, or the percentage of swings that resulted in a swing and miss, by pitch location in 2019 and 2021 (min 1 swing per zone segment). The strike zone is outlined in green. Here’s 2019.
Chart courtesy of Baseball Savant Visuals
Here’s 2021.
Chart courtesy of Baseball Savant Visuals
We can observe a couple of things here. First, Clint has not yet swung at pitches in as many out of the zone locations in 2021 as he did in 2019. It’s entirely possible that’s totally explained by sample size, as he’s only had about 45% as many plate appearances this year as in 2019, but his walk rate is also about 2.5x what it was in 2019 this year, so it seems reasonable to say he’s a more disciplined hitter now.
That’s not what I’m interested in. What I’m interested in is that in 2019, Clint Frazier swung at at least one pitch in 25 distinct zones outside of the strike zone. In only 5 of these zones (20%), was he more likely to make contact than whiff (whiff % < 50%). This year, as of Friday, Clint has swung at pitches in 15 distinct zones outside of the strike zone. He’s more likely to make contact than he is to whiff in 6 of those zones (40%).
Let’s follow this thread. The data we’ve seen thus far suggest that Clint is better than he used to be at hitting pitches that are outside of the strike zone. If we want to put even more specific numbers on it, Fangraphs has his O-Contact %, the percentage of swings at balls outside of the strike zone that result in contact, at 60%. His prior career high O-Contact % was 47.8% in 2018. From 2017-2020, Clint’s O-Contact % was 42.9%. In other words, Clint Frazier is making contact with balls thrown outside of the strike zone this year 39.9% more often than he did previously in his career. Given that his Z-Contact %, the percentage of swings at balls in the strike zone that result in contact, has been steady year over year, his skyrocketing O-Contact % has shot his overall Contact % up to 77%, up from 71% from 2017-2020.
I don’t exactly think I’m breaking news with this one, but I’m going to propose that it’s hard to hit a ball very hard if that ball is not in the strike zone. The fact that Clint is better at making contact with balls that aren’t in the strike zone this year than ever before coupled with the fact that it’s tough to hit a ball that’s not in the strike zone all that hard might go a long way toward explaining why Clint’s exit velocity is down 4.55 MPH (5.13%) compared to his average exit velocity from 2017-2020.
This decrease in exit velocity likely tells us a reasonable amount about why Clint’s expected stats are so much worse than they have been in prior years. Per Fangraphs, Clint’s xBA is only .208, down from .246 last year. His xwOBA is .314, down from .368 last year. His xSLG is .357, down from .447 last year. The funny thing about xBA, xwOBA, and xSLG is hitting the ball hard helps all of them, and not hitting the ball hard hurts all of them.
Given all of this, it really seems like Clint’s problem really is that he’s gotten too good at making contact with pitches that are not in the strike zone. It’s funny to say this about a guy who currently sports a career high walk rate (96th percentile in MLB) and an elite, 14.1% chase rate (99th percentile in MLB), but Clint Frazier may actually need to get MORE disciplined. Given his newfound bat-to-ball skills, he needs to employ them much more selectively in order to be a successful hitter. Either that, or he needs to un-learn how to put the bat on the ball so often. Clint was meaningfully more productive as a player who made contact about 70% of the time, and could only put the bat on a pitch out of the zone 42.9% of the time, than he is as a guy who can’t help but make a ton of contact. That’s weird, and it’s counterintuitive. How could you get worse at baseball, a sport centered around putting the bat on the ball, by getting better at putting the bat on the ball?
Well, Clint has shown us how. Clint started making a lot more contact on pitches that he can’t hit hard, and it’s tanked his offensive output. Here’s to Clint starting to miss pitches out of the zone, and allowing himself to drive pitches in the zone moving forward.
Let’s go Clint, and let’s go Yankees.
