What's going on with Ozzie Albies?
Atlanta's second baseman needs a "get right" game in the worst way...or does he?
The Atlanta Braves have some tough decisions to make on some long-time players in the next few seasons.
Closer Raisel Iglesias and designated hitter Marcell Ozuna are in their fourth and sixth seasons with the organization, respectively, but that could end this offseason when both reach unrestricted free agency. Shortstop Orlando Arcia could be retained for a sixth season if the team picks up his $2M club option (which isn’t much to pay for a backup, so be prepared for that to happen).
But soon after those decisions will come a much tougher one: Ozzie Albies.
Currently the longest tenured member of the organization, signing with Atlanta in July of 2013 as an international free agent and debuting in 2017, Albies is a three-time All-Star, two-time Silver Slugger, and one of the most popular members of the Braves across the fanbase.
He’s also struggling in virtually every respect right now. His current .233/.303/.400 line would be a career low in both average and slugging, and his two homers in 23 games is a 14-homer pace…should Ozzie play a full season, something he’s done only twice in the last four years.1
What’s going on with our Short King? Let’s talk about it.
He’s always been a streaky hitter
It’s important to note that Ozzie’s always been prone to times of boom or bust - in 2022, he opened with a month of .214 baseball before jumping to .274 in May and then falling back to .222 in June. In 2023, it was more of the same, swinging almost 100 points between July and August of that season.
That’s not that odd for Ozzie.
But what is odd is how poorly he’s played to start this season. That mark of two homers in his first 23 games is one of the worst season-opening stretches of his career. The only other time he’s had two or fewer homers to open a season was last year, and he was hitting .309 with a .832 OPS at the time.
But you know how I like to do things here on Braves Today.
Let’s talk about what’s going into that performance from a numbers perspective.
Two notable improvements
Podcast listeners have heard me say “two things can be true at once” enough that it’s a joke by now.
But let’s break it out.
Thing number one: Ozzie’s currently running the best strikeout and walk rates of his career
Really! Doesn’t feel like it, when you watch him, but it’s true. Going into the off day, Ozzie’s struck out just 13 times in his first 94 at-bats on the year, good for just 13.83%. His walk total is similarly up, with 9 walks giving him an 8.7% walk rate.
His career averages for both are 16.8% K rate and 6.7% BB rate, so he’s easily outperforming both right now…but he’s not just outperforming the career averages, he’s outperforming the career bests.
Those both came in 2017, his debut year, with a 14.8% strikeout rate and an 8.6% walk rate. Over time, both of those rates have trended in the wrong direction, ending up at an 18.7% K and a 5.3% walk rate, respectively (when you take 2020 out of the equation).
Part of this massive improvement is reducing his chase rates. Never really a super-disciplined hitter, Ozzie’s nonetheless improved over the years to a career-low 31.3% this year (which is still just 28th percentile in all of baseball, so let’s not get too excited here.)
Another part of the walk rates is the general passivity at the plate. Like a lot of Braves hitters, Ozzie’s being more selective and has reduced his overall swing percentage by more than 5%.
I don’t know if that walk rate will hold, though - pitchers aren’t throwing him a lot of first pitch strikes (a career-low 50%, when he’s almost always been in the low-60s) and so he’s swinging at the first pitch a lot less, just 34.3%. I’d estimate it’s probably at least 2% easier to draw a walk when you’re up 1-0 in at least half of your plate appearances on the year.
Look how Miles Mikolas handled Ozzie on Wednesday - two first-pitch outs on non-fastballs, one a curveball in the zone that he got under and one changeup that started in the zone and ran back out.
Some notable declines, as well
But here’s thing number two: Ozzie’s also posting the worst quality-of-contact metrics of his career
In the three seasons we’ve had bat tracking capabilities in Statcast, Ozzie comes in 399th (out of 510 qualified hitters) with an average bat speed of 69.3 mph on competitive swings. He’s no Luis Arraez (63.3 mph) or Steven Kwan (64.2 mph), but he’s well below the league average and the slowest swinging regular on the team.
That’s getting worse every season.
He’s at only 67.8 mph this season, 5 mph lower than any other qualified Braves hitter and 236th out of 252 qualified hitters (6th percentile).
Sidebar: Some of this may be due to the bat he swings, a 34.5-inch/32 oz monster that’s longer and heavier than many on the team. That’s a bigger bat than Matt Olson (34”/31.25oz), Austin Riley (34”/31 oz) and Marcell Ozuna (34”/32 oz)
It’s not just the bat speed that’s a problem for Ozzie. While he’s making more contact than ever, having cut his whiff rate down to a career-high 19.7% (80th percentile), it’s not very good contact. Ozzie’s average exit velocity is a 7th percentile 85.3 mph, easily a career-worst mark and over 3 mph slower than last season, which in and of itself was a drop from 2023. This carries over to his hard-hit rate, which has fallen almost 5% to a near-career-worst 27.3%.
He’s also hitting the ball in the air a lot more, but not in a good way - a career-high 15.6% pop-up rate, double of both MLB and his career averages. His fly ball rate is actually one of the lowest in his entire career at just 28.6% when he’s usually in the 30s.
Is it an approach change?
Now, some of this could be explained by attempting to have a different approach with two strikes, right? He’s choking up on the telephone pole he carries out there and is trying to put the ball into play, right?
Well, not exactly, and we can tell this by both the conventional stats and the advanced ones.
With two strikes, Ozzie’s regressed from a career .189/.258/.292 hitter to just .140/.159/.209 this year. Clutch situational hitting doesn’t explain it, either, as he’s hitting just .207 with runners in scoring position and is 1-13 with both runners in scoring position and two outs.
The advanced stats back this up, too. I went into Statcast and pulled his batting averages in every one of the four attack zones (Heart, Shadow, Chase, and Waste).
Heart: .303
Shadow: .213
Chase: .111
Waste: .0002
(Those batting averages in both the shadow and the chase are, respectively, the worst batting averages in his career in both attack zones, by the way.)
But even with two strikes, he’s hitting worse than normal in almost all of those areas. Here’s the two strike numbers:
Heart: .231
Shadow: .087
Chase: .167
Waste: .000
And that shadow one stands out to me - Ozzie has a grand total of two hits on two-strike pitches in the shadow of the zone, one off a sweeper and one off a split finger.
He just can’t seem to buy a two-strike hit unless it’s a meatball (and even then, his average on pitches in the zone is lower than the rest of the time)
But this brings to bear a larger conversation about Ozzie’s struggles with breaking balls in general and lefty breaking balls in particular.
Ozzie can’t hit a breaking ball right now
I’m going to be honest - when I saw the bat speed had cratered, I expected Ozzie to be struggling with fastballs. Nope, he’s still got that - a .256 average on heaters this year, below his career norms but still plenty respectable.
It’s his performance against breaking balls that worries me. Ozzie is hitting just .160 against them, a drop from last season’s atrocious .189 line. While no one expected him to recreate 2023’s .318 performance against breaking balls, dropping by almost 100% in two seasons is inexplicable.
But wait, it gets worse.
Ozzie’s hitting .200 against righty breaking balls, an improvement from last year’s .162 average. He hasn’t hit a single lefty breaking ball this year. Not one.
Last year, he hit .296 on lefty breakers. This year? .000
Not great!
Here’s the bottom line: Ozzie’s continuing to decline from a quality-of-contact perspective, and the one thing he has going for him right now, his walk rate, doesn’t seem likely to hold to these levels.
This doesn’t even mention his defense, which is currently positive for the first time in a few seasons (+1 OAA) thanks to his above-average range but could potentially be hampered by literally the worst non-first baseman arm strength in the entire sport.
Here’s the other aspect of this: I don’t know how you fix this. Do you give him a new bat? Move him to DH to negate the arm, even though the range is still above average, and so you can live with him in the field for now but with the understanding that you’ll lose the back half of a double play now and again?
I’m honestly not sure.
But for Ozzie’s sake, I hope they do it. Because he’s got two club option years at $7M each after this year, but if I were in Alex Anthopoulos’s shoes…I don’t know if I’d be comfortable going beyond that.
If you’re superstitious, then be heartened by the fact he’s in an odd year - he played 156 games in 2021 and 148 games in 2023
Which is to be expected - in his entire career, Ozzie has three total hits on pitches in the waste attack zones. By definition, a pitch thrown here is essentially a wasted pitch and a swing here is essentially a wasted swing.