The Power of Mike Moustakas is No Surprise

There aren’t many players who have had as interesting, or perhaps as volatile, a career arc as Mike Moustakas has. His last few seasons have featured him being demoted to the minor leagues, finally experiencing a breakout, tearing his ACL, and, most recently, the fact that he’s set to be featured in this year’s Home Run Derby. Having already set a new career high in home runs, and currently posting the highest isolated power of his career, it probably isn’t a surprise that we’ll see him participate in the event in Miami.

Even less surprising, though, may be the influx in power that we’ve seen from Moustakas. A player who gradually improved his ability to make contact, with rising Contact% figures that peaked across his 113 plate appearances in 2016, at 86.2, while also focusing more on taking the ball to the opposite field (30.8 Oppo% last year), resulted in him reestablishing value after it looked like he was a lost cause at the hot corner in Kansas City. This year, we’re continuing to see Mike Moustakas evolve, but in a completely different way.

The power game is something that hadn’t been particularly prevalent for Moose before this season. He hit 22 homers in 2015, the highest mark of his career, while the .260 ISO he posted last year before the injury was his highest such figure. Even in 2015, when he hit those 22 dingers, he still came in only at .186 on the ISO side. This year, however, represents a completely different take on both of those elements. Some other aspects of his offensive game have suffered as a result, but it may be less decline in some areas than changing the way he plays.

We’ve seen the increase in players focusing on launch angle. Increased home runs across Major League Baseball have become a focal point, with hitters accounting for over 1,100 home runs over the course of the month of June. Moustakas has obviously played his part there. And it’s not particularly surprising that he’s done so.

There are a few factors at play here. For one, Moustakas has been more aggressive than ever before, especially against one pitch type. For another, he’s hitting the ball into the air far more than he has at any point in his career. When you combine those two factors, the 24 homers and .290 ISO become far more likely outcomes.

The following represents Moose’s contact trends and tendencies heading into Wednesday’s action, with 2015 and 2016 numbers (albeit with limited PAs) added for a bit of context:

	Swing%	Contact%	GB%	LD%	FB%	Pull%	Oppo%	Soft%	Hard%
2015	47.2	85.0	39.9	18.8	41.4	39.2	27.4	19.5	31.5
2016	42.1	86.2	41.8	18.7	39.6	40.7	30.8	19.8	37.4
2017	56.9	80.5	36.5	17.2	46.3	48.2	20.4	21.2	33.5

There’s definitely a “selling out for power” element at play here. It’s not quite as drastic as we’ve seen with someone like Todd Frazier in the past couple of years, but it’s present nonetheless. That’s a rather dramatic increase in his swing percentage, while his pitches per plate appearance has dipped from 4.13 to 3.81 from last year to this year. Both his GB% and LD% have lost some, especially on the groundball side, with the remnants being transferred over to the flyballs. That opposite field effort seems to be eliminated altogether in favor of power, as he’s pulling the ball almost half the time.

The graphic below, courtesy of Brooks Baseball, indicates his increased Swing% against each of the three predominant pitch types:

He’s still managing to make hard contact because he’s attacking fastballs in an extremely heavy fashion. His Swing% against the hard stuff has jumped from 44.72% to 59.17%. That’s an absurd increase, but it really does speak to Moustakas’ ability to increase his power along with the increase in aggressiveness. It all culminates in a 21.2% HR/FB ratio for Moustakas. So we’re seeing him change the way he approaches and the way he hits, but it’s actually paying off for him. Which is extremely interesting to see given how he graduated to more of an opposite field approach in order to find success originally.

Here’s Moose’s launch angle tendencies from 2016, via Baseball Savant:

Measured against the same from 2017:

While it isn’t overwhelmingly dramatic, there’s a clear shift up in Moustakas’ launch angle tendencies. This formula, which features the increased aggressiveness against fastballs, combined with the flyball tendencies, is absolutely intentional, and is really the basis for the flyball revolution that we’re seeing throughout Major League Baseball.

So it’s easy to call Mike Moustakas a member of said revolution, because he really is. We witnessed him break out in a very different fashion, which featured a higher OBP and far more opposite field focus. But now we’re witnessing Moustakas break out in a different way. He’s returned to those extreme pull tendencies, but is hitting the ball harder and higher than he was when that approach was more similar to his current one.

To be clear, there isn’t anything wrong with how Moustakas is approaching the game right now, as it’s become quite common among Major League hitters. It’s just somewhat surprising to see such a dramatic shift over such a short period of time. But it’s working for him, and we’ll get to see that in play in Miami in less than a week.