Checking Your (Brandon) Belt
As you get older, it’s a good idea to keep an eye on your belt. A danish or three and you might need to reevaluate that notch you’ve worn into your favorite leather strap. As your fantasy team progresses, you might want to keep an eye on your Brandon Belt, too. A home run or three, and you might want to reevaluate that notch he’s worn into your team’s bench.
Certainly, the news is better today than it was even just a week ago. He’s now got three home runs and looks to have a handle on at least three-quarters of the playing time at first base in San Francisco. Especially now that Aubrey Huff Kendrys Morales‘d that Matt Cain celebration, the position is mostly Belt’s to own. He’s always had patience, too, so in OBP leagues — especially those with five outfielder slots — he’s already a boon. But the question still remains: what is his true-talent power level?
Belt only once had an isolated slugging percentage below .244 in the minor leagues, and that was his .218 Triple-A ISO in 2011. So it wasn’t really a surprise when projections systems like Bill James‘ and RotoChamps’ pegged him for an ISO around .215 in the major leagues. Or when certain emboldened analysts embiggened those projections in a fit of optimism. There were plenty of high hopes surrounding the former college pitcher turned first-sacker.
There are some mitigating circumstances to those minor league slugging rates. That .218 ISO in 212 Triple-A at-bats last year came in the PCL, where the average ISO was .162. The average ISO in the majors this year is .144. An average line of .286/.359/.448 in the PCL makes you want to put a fat asterisk on those numbers. But Belt also hit .337/.413/.623 in 201 Double-A plate appearances, and that was in the Eastern League. That more neutral league showed a .259/.332/.397 line (.138 ISO) that he blew out of the water. Belt showed non PCL-aided power in the minor leagues.
He hasn’t quite shown it in the major leagues. After a single in four plate appearances Sunday night, his .162 ISO this year is barely above league average. His career ISO is around .175. The league’s first basemen have a .179 ISO this year, but that’s with power down around the league. In 2000, the league average ISO for a first baseman was .207, and it stayed at or near .190 until sometime in the last four years. With OBP factored in (.338 was the league average 1B’s OBP last year), he’d be above average, but he’s struggling to put up league average power for his position.
And league-average power doesn’t quite excite the average fantasy player. Not when the player once showed much more promise, too.
Unfortunately, where Logan Morrison had a more stable approach at the plate, Belt is more of a work in progress. Take a look at his batted ball angle below on the left, and we can maybe see why his batted ball distance (on the right) hasn’t really shown the peaks that the Marlins’ young hitter has shown.
If Belt wants to show some pull power, he should be displaying a positive batted ball angle (more towards right field). He hasn’t ever done that consistently, and so he’s still waiting for a power boost like the one Morrison had late last year. Belt does have more powerful success when he pulls the ball, like most power hitters, but he hasn’t been consistent in that approach. Check out his spray charts (career on the left, 2012 on the right, thanks to TexasLeaguers.com).
For every groundout to the second baseman, it seems that Belt has a more powerful hit to right field. It seems that though his distribution of balls in play is almost equal to all fields, his distribution of hits is not. Belt might benefit from pulling the ball more.
One thing that we did notice as Belt advanced in the minor leagues was that his strikeout rate went up with each level. 370 plate appearances into his major league career, he has a double-digit swinging strike rate and has struck out in about a quarter of his at-bats. A .300 batting average is probably not in his future.
But we also know that 370 PAs don’t close the book on a player’s true talent power. If he’s not going to be a great contact hitter, he might as well focus a little more on the inner half of the plate, pull the ball to right field with more authority, and push that power to where it belongs. If he doesn’t belt the ball more, he’ll continue to be a deep leaguer, OBP league oddity, and barely worthy of a bench spot in deeper mixed leagues.
With a phone full of pictures of pitchers' fingers, strange beers, and his two toddler sons, Eno Sarris can be found at the ballpark or a brewery most days. Read him here, writing about the A's or Giants at The Athletic, or about beer at October. Follow him on Twitter @enosarris if you can handle the sandwiches and inanity.
Does his tendency to consistently pound the ball to RF have any correlation with his crazy reverse splits (.955 OPS vs LHP)?
Thanks for doing an article on Belt!
Whoops, consistently not* pulling the ball
I would say SSS size has more to do with that, since Bochy would rather send his right-handed bat boy to face lefties.
(I mean that as a condemnation of Bochy, not Belt. It would be nice to see what a bigger sample vs lefties would look like.)
Since Bochy seems to be the poster manager for reliance on SSS, the fact that BB9 hit all three of his recent home runs against left handers virtually guarantees that he’ll get a chance to hit against them some more.
I’ve always been frustrated that Fangraphs splits page doesn’t have plate discipline stats. But, it is possible to reconstruct such splits by using the game logs page.
Please see this link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AkI6iENJPLHudGZVaFJaeGViSkxVR25OT0VpZTJxSlE
To view Belt’s monthly plate discipline. You’ll notice that SwStr% has held steady for two months. But is still higher than one would want. (But way lower than April).
Zone Ct% has gone from poor to above average. O-Ct% has fluctuated.
The one number that really stands out here is Belt’s Z-Sw%. It’s at 78.6% for the year, with numbers of 82%, 74%, and 84% month to month. That is markedly higher than the league average Z-Sw% of 64%.
I’m kind of at a loss here. So Belt has great recognition of when a pitch is in the zone (as he’s not a pure free-swinger since his O-Sw% is league average or better). Now, I know june is a very small sample size. BUT if this new stance and regular playing time allows him to keep a Z-Ct% of 89% while also swinging at 15% more pitches in the zone than the average player, he’s not going to strike out that often as his SwStk% might suggest.
The problem here is his below average O-Ct%. At best he’s showing a 51% O-Ct%. So while he swings at out of the zone pitches on a league average basis, he sucks at putting the bat on the ball on those occasions.
I don’t know if there is much pure predictive value here, but there is a clear pathway here for Belt to get much better at the plate. If he keeps a high Z-Sw%, keeps the higher Z-Ct% of June, and then is able to pull his O-Ct% to league average, we’ll see a guy who can sustain a BB/K over 1.00 (I think).
But if he fix his problems with pitches outside of the strike zone the scouting reports might get around and he’ll start striking out at a higher rate.
Those are my armchair analyst thoughts.
I think this analysis works for a better batting average, but I’m not sure better contact outside the zone would be better for his power.
quick, someone now do a story on Freddie Freeman…
Belt is only 24 years old and was rushed through the Giants system. I think it’s wise to be more patient with players like Belt because they can exceed expectations. Regular playing time and a few years of big league experience go a long way, particularly with a pitcher-turned-first baseman like Belt.
And bradon belt doubles bring in 2. tie the game in the top of the 9th