Nolan Arenado Doesn’t Hit Lefties on the Road

Isn’t it nice when things work out? At the height of draft season, Nolan Arenado was elevated into the top 50 despite career-highs of 18 HR, 61 RBI, and 133 games played (and not all in the same season). It was a calculated gamble on someone who hadn’t exactly done it for a full season yet. He showed a ton of promise as a high-contact power hitter (13% K, .173 ISO coming into ’15) who also had the security blanket of Coors Field.

Of course, we now know that it really couldn’t have gone better and being drafted 50th was actually a bargain by season’s end as he finished as the 5th-best player overall. Arenado blasted an NL-best 42 HR and drove in an MLB-best 130 runs in 665 PA as he missed just five games all year. His strikeout rate was a career-high 17%, but that’s still better than most power hitters. Of the nine hitters who popped 40+ HR, he was third to only Albert Pujols (11%) and Jose Bautista (16%).

And yet… (yep, I actually have something to complain about within his excellent season)

Arenado has an .859 career OPS against lefties, 56 points better than his work vs. righties. There isn’t anything shocking about a great right-handed hitter who beats up more on lefties, in fact it’s probably somewhat expected given the heights he has reached, but when I was diving further into Arenado’s profile, I found a weird flaw: he doesn’t hit lefties on the road.

Like, at all.

It’s not just that he’s better against them in Coors, which again won’t shock anyone, but rather he completely falls apart when facing southpaws on the road:

He’s essentially Bryce Harper when facing lefties at home, but Alcides Escobar on the road by OPS. It was the worst yet this year as he managed just a .542 OPS against LHP on the road in 80 PA. Sure, Rockies struggle on the road generally speaking, but even Carlos Gonzalez – known Coors Hangover sufferer – still does his best against righties and plays at top-50 player level (.805 OPS on road v. RHP in 1143 PA). Why does Arenado meltdown against left-handers when he’s not at Coors Field?

He falls apart against all pitch types except the curveball which looks more like a “normal” Coors-based drop:

The fastball classification includes sinkers and cutters so it’s essentially all “hard” stuff. Adding up the CH, CB, and SL as “soft” stuff yields a .927/.530 split. I’m surprised that his difference is sharper with hard stuff since we routinely hear about how breaking pitches lose some of their effect in Coors. In fact, I rarely hear or read anything about the effect of Coors on fastballs. This excellent piece by Jeff Sullivan earlier this year dove into pitch selection a bit, but focused more on breaking and off-speed stuff.

Considering that we worry about movement in Coors, maybe fastballs are being even more affected than we think. We don’t talk a ton about fastball movement in general, but the fact is that 95 MPH by itself won’t fool many hitters for too long. It’s all about being in the mid-90s with life that elevates a pitcher’s game (or even low-90s for that matter; movement can trump velo at times). But I don’t know if that’s at play for Arenado.

He obliterates lefty heat in the lower half at home (1.503 OPS in 68 PA) while looking a bit more pedestrian up in the zone (.782 in 59). On the road, he has a .581 OPS in 48 PA on lefty heaters in the upper half and a .691 on those in the lower half (66 PA). The pitch distribution for those samples is 55%/45% upper/lower at home and 46%/54% on the road.

By the way, I understand that isolating lefty-only work from a guy with 401 games played is already a little small and so parsing it further obviously enacts all the necessary small sample caveats, but I think it’s still worth looking into since it has been an issue all three years for Arenado.

What about breaking balls? Looking at the location information, we see that lefties have a 38%/62% upper/lower splits versus Arenado at home and that jumps to 22%/78% on the road. The upper half samples are 16 and 8 PA home/road so they’re totally useless, but for those curious he has a .543/.268 OPS split. In the lower half, his home OPS is .956 in 43 PA and then it drops .598 in 35 PA on the road.

In the case of breaking balls, using upper/lower half might be a little deceiving since it incorporates the middle of the zone which likely means a lot of hangers. Let’s divide the zone by thirds and look at those percentages again. The up/mid/low distribution for lefty breaking balls at home against Arenado is 25/30/45. My guess is that a large portion of that 30% in the middle is supposed to wind up much lower. It breaks down in a 13/24/65 split on the road.

I’m still not sure we’ve found anything close to a good reason why Arenado has fared so poorly against lefties on the road. It has only been 207 road plate appearances against lefties so far. Or maybe it’s the competition he’s seeing when he leaves Coors and not just a small sample fluke. He has faced 70 different lefties on the road in his three seasons. Twelve of those have gotten 4 or more cracks at him accounting for 47% of the sample and include the names you probably thought of immediately: Clayton Kershaw, Madison Bumgarner, and Hyun-Jin Ryu.

You probably aren’t aware of his 0-for-11 against Patrick Corbin. Or 0-for-4 with three strikeouts against Aroldis Chapman. He hasn’t failed against all 12, but when you see the full list, it’s not that surprising that he has a .652 OPS against them:

However, I was kind of surprised to learn that he’s actually quite a bit worse against the other 58 lefties he’s faced on the road in 109 PA. He has just a .553 OPS with an 18% K rate. That strikeout rate doesn’t stand out against the crazy rates we’ve seen across the league, but it’s a significant jump from his 15% career mark. There are plenty of great starters within that sample of 58 including Dallas Keuchel, Cole Hamels, and Cliff Lee, but it’s really the relievers that have held Arenado in check.

These are the relievers who have faced him 1-3 times, so Chapman’s dominance is removed. He is hitting .147 with a 24% K rate in 42 PA against them. It’s not exactly a who’s-who lefty studs: Andrew Chafin, Manny Parra, J.P. Howell, Tony Watson, Travis Blackley, Wesley Wright, Ian Krol, Craig Breslow, Luis Avilan, Scott Downs, Justin Wilson, Jake Diekman, Cesar Jimenez, Mike Dunn, Dan Jennings, Sean Marshall, James Russell, Pat McCoy, Oliver Perez, Alex Torres, Sam Freeman, Neal Cotts, Jeremy Affeldt, Adam Liberatore, Brad Hand, Javier Lopez, Eric O’Flaherty, Drew Pomeranz, Travis Wood, Matt Marksberry, Antonio Bastardo, and Josh Osich.

It’s also 42 PA, so I get that we can’t get too freaked just yet. By the way, he hits .340 with a 14% K rate against lefty relievers at home in 56 PA. I still can’t exactly figure out why his overall numbers versus lefties on the road have lagged so far behind his home numbers. I get that Coors plays a role, but then why hasn’t it hampered him as much against righties? Is it just the small sample mixed with some pretty fierce competition? If so, the sample will obviously grow, but I’m not sure the competition will loosen. Kershaw, Bumgarner, and Corbin aren’t going anywhere.

This doesn’t deter me from Arenado either way, though. The fact that he was able to do so much damage this year despite this flaw in his game for 80 PA can’t help but make you think there might even more in the tank if he can fix it. He took a massive jump on the road against righties this year (from .717 to .920) which of course had a great impact in 251 PA.

He doesn’t even need to reach those heights to make an impact on his bottom line. Even a .750 OPS against road lefties would work as it would likely include 3-4 more homers. That could offset some regression that could be coming after a career year or maybe he keeps all of the 2015 gains and adds some capability against lefties on the road en route to a potential 50-HR season. Either way, Arenado is a lock first-rounder in 2016.