Kris Bryant: Road Warrior

On Monday against Cincinnati, Kris Bryant had a literally historic night for the Chicago Cubs. In smashing three home runs and adding a pair of doubles against the Reds, Bryant became the first player in Major League history to achieve the feat. It was the latest chapter in what has been one of the greatest starts to a career for any player, ever. That doesn’t mean that Bryant’s short career to this point hasn’t been without those who have attempted to disparage it, of course.

Some predicted a sophomore slump could be in the cards for Bryant, pointing to a lack of contact, a high strikeout rate, and a reliance on the big fly as potential causes of such a scenario. Additionally, one of the primary criticisms for those who had insisted in disparaging Kris Bryant had been his inability to find consistent success on the road. And to a very realistic extent, his home/road splits in 2015 certainly did lend themselves to that very trend.

The following represents Bryant’s home and road splits from the 2015 season:

	AVG	OBP	OPS	ISO	wRC+
Home	.311	.408	1.037	.318	181
Road	.243	.333	.693	.116	94

Interestingly enough, Bryant also struck out less at Wrigley than he did when he was on the road (28.3% strikeout rate at home vs. 32.7% on the road). He also walked more at home than he did on the road (13.1% vs. 10.7%). Of his 26 home runs that he hit throughout the 2015 season, only five of them came away from Wrigley. This is reflected in perhaps his most notable disparity among those splits, where his ISO fell to a paltry .116 mark on the road.

It’s not as if Bryant was running into all sorts of bad luck on the road, either. His BABIP on the road was at .367 as opposed to a .390 mark at home. He was still able to demonstrate strong on-base skills in either scenario, but the remainder of the numbers across the board don’t exactly paint the prettiest of pictures. Of course, playing at Wrigley obviously helped tremendously as it ranked near the top of the league in park factors for a power hitter such as one with Bryant’s skill set.

As the 2016 season approached, there were those who pointed to entities such as those tremendous splits and the strikeout rate and thought that a sophomore slump might be in the cards for last year’s National League Rookie of the Year. It turns out that this season has been anything but. Back in May, we touched on his improving contact rate thanks to a slight tweak in his swinging mechanics. That trend has continued throughout the season, as his contact rate is up at 72.1%, up almost six full percentage points from his 2015 mark (subsequently, his swinging strike rate is down about three percent, to 13.6%).

And while that contact rate is obviously a tremendous success for a player who struck out at a 30.6% clip, perhaps the most significant improvement that Bryant has made thus far in 2016 has been his ability to hit away from Wrigley Field, to the point where he’s actually thriving more away from the Friendly Confines. Not only is he experiencing success on the road, but he’s actually performing better on the road than at Wrigley:

	AVG	OBP	OPS	ISO	wRC+
Home	.230	.322	.814	.262	117
Road	.313	.403	1.017	.301	167

That the splits have reserved so significantly is quite astounding. Just as the strikeout and walk rates followed the rest of the trends at home last year, the same has occurred in 2016. He’s striking out more at home than on the road (25.2% vs. 20.4%), while also walking more on the road (12.0% vs. 9.1%). The good news here is that the disparities across the board are not quite as severe as they were last season. It’s also important to consider that Bryant currently has about 40 more plate appearances on the road at this point than he does at home. So when those samples begin to even out, there’s a chance that they could level out to a degree.

Most importantly, though, are the power numbers. Kris Bryant is a player who makes his bones as a big power, high OBP threat. He’s reaching base consistently both at home on the road, but the real success story here is his ISO, which is reflected below:

ISO was where one of Bryant’s larger failures in 2015 took place. The mark was astronomical at Wrigley, but once he stepped foot on the road, he couldn’t find his groove in the power game. That hasn’t been the case at all this year, with an even dozen home runs on the road against nine at home.

Kris Bryant has experienced a great deal of success since he arrived in the bigs, and he’s only built on that. Coming into the season, he had already cemented himself among the top fantasy players at the hot corner. In that improving contact rate and his ability to perform out on the road, the two aspects in which he primarily struggled last year, we could be talking about him as a top two or three option at the position by year’s end.