What Went Wrong: Brian Dozier
Brian Dozier entered the 2018 season as one of the most stable power-speed options in the game. Among the 17 players with at least 50 HR and 50 SB from 2014-17, his 194 HR+SB placed him fourth behind only Jose Altuve (226), Mike Trout (216), and Charlie Blackmon (204). He only hit .254 during that four-year run, but 2016-17 were his two best seasons during the run and he actually hit .269 in those two seasons.
In 2016-17, Dozier had also shown a severe first half/second half split. In the two first halves, he had a .244/.331/.433 line compared to a .298/.369/.619 in the second halves. I mention that because it definitely bought him some leeway when he meandered through the first few months of 2018. He had just a .692 OPS a week into July, but rallied a bit just before the break to end the first half at .738 with 16 HR and 5 SB in 414 PA.
He couldn’t stay hot coming out of the break, but then he was traded to the Los Angeles Dodgers on the July 31st deadline. He opened with homers in each of his first two games as a Dodger and put up a .308/.438/.769 line in his first week of play (32 PA). I can’t imagine I was alone in thinking that was the beginning of his perennial second half surge.
Narrator: It was not.
He wouldn’t hit another homer for two weeks and ended his Dodger run with a .154/.268/.256 line after that first week. All told, he managed just a .182/.300/.350 in LA and .215/.305/.391 for the entire season. His 21 HR were a five-year low and his 12 SB were tied for the same. I can’t find a lot different within Dozier’s profile to account for the fall off. In fact, I can’t really find any tangible differences that would yield any sort of drop, let alone the cratering we saw.
| Year | PA | K% | BB% | SwStr% | O-Swing% | Contact |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 691 | 20% | 9% | 9% | 29% | 79% |
| 2017 | 705 | 20% | 11% | 9% | 23% | 78% |
| 2018 | 632 | 20% | 11% | 8% | 23% | 79% |
His plate skills were literally identical. There was absolutely no movement of consequence in his strikeout, walk, swinging strike, chase, and contact rates. I’d have expected to see something different in these skills when his OPS fell 160 points. Let’s take a look at his batted ball profile:
| Year | LD% | GB% | FB% | IFFB% | HR/FB% | Soft% | Med% | Hard% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 16% | 36% | 48% | 13% | 18% | 18% | 47% | 35% |
| 2017 | 19% | 38% | 43% | 13% | 17% | 16% | 50% | 34% |
| 2018 | 17% | 40% | 44% | 17% | 11% | 17% | 46% | 37% |
OK, we actually see a real change here. And no, it’s not the infield flyball rate. The 4-point jump there just isn’t that impactful. His 32 infield flies were a three-year high despite a three-year low in flyballs, but even if you give him the 2017 infield fly rate, it’s a difference of seven pop-ups. Give him hits on all seven of those and he’s still only at .228 so it’s not a crazy change. The HR/FB rate is where we see something.
The 6-point drop from 2017 to 2018 is worth about 10 homers. Even getting 5-6 of those would’ve helped his bottom line. One other major difference I didn’t put in either chart was his BABIP. I didn’t include it because it’s not as skill-based as the other aspects I chose to highlight, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention his 60-point tanking down to .240!
The infield flyball rate explains some of the BABIP drop, but there seems to be some plain old bad luck involved, too. There just aren’t enough changes in his profile to account for that kind of fall off in BABIP leaving me with little else but bad luck as a major culprit. I’d say maybe he played through some undocumented nagging injuries, too, but then why wouldn’t any of his major skill indicators show it?
I’m eager to see where Dozier lands this winter. I think his price tag will remain around his #2EarlyMock ADP of 85 and I’m buying there. I’m seeing something like .250, 25 HR, 15 SB and there’s still .270, 35, 20 upside with the SBs depending on his landing spot (hopefully he goes somewhere open to stealing).
Hopefully he goes to Colorado!
He has a history of irregular heartbeats, so i don’t think he would sign there
No way #FreeGarrettHampson
Colorado doesn’t care where someone’s natural position is. They’ll play dozier at catcher for all we know.
Firmly on the Garrett Hampson train!
Over his career he has averaged 16 SB a season. He will be 32 next year. I’m not sure I see any reason to project a bounceback to 15 SB given historically he was a 50-50 bet to steal 15 bases. He has also only hit 250 twice in 6 years. I would rather go with someone young who is probably not in the decline phase of their career.
Yes, he’s averaged 16 and just went 12/15. Unless you think he repeats a .305 OBP, I don’t see why he wouldn’t swipe 14-16.
Being young doesn’t inherently make a player better. I just didn’t see anything in Dozier’s profile to suggest he’s truly in his decline phase, though, that was kinda the gist of the piece.
This is maybe too anecdotal, but it seems speed/stolen bases is one of the first things to decline on players, particularly those who aren’t true burners. I think the 250 and 25 HR are good projections, just if I had to take O/U for SB I would take under 15. I guess that might vary depending on the team he signs with but on average I like the under for a player who will be 32 and doesn’t have great track record of larger stolen base totals.
I suspect he’ll come cheap on draft day if he remains in the AL. Unless he was playing through some unannounced injury I don’t see him running enough to get double digit steals. I can see him smacking 25 HRs though and hitting .250.
Doziers batted ball authority was much worse last year based on his 288 xwOBA. The knee injury he was dealing with might have had something to do with it.
Interesting. Doesn’t show in his batted ball profile as his hard rate was actually higher, but that’s just achieving a threshold of mph, it doesn’t say where those hard hits went so I can see how it’d still not net results
Without actually looking, I wonder if his angle distribution changed. Dozier’s power has always relied on a very strong pull into the shortest part of LF. If he’s hitting those same balls to left-center instead the batted-ball numbers you’re looking at wouldn’t change but the results (and the xwOBA) would.
Dozier definitely lost a lot of pop in 2018 (the hard % is up because it was up all across MLB). 2018 FB+LB exit velocity was 91.7 and max velocity was 104.8 compared to 94.4 and 111.8 in 2017 and 94.1 and 107.7. The 104.8 max velocity was abysmal – every major league regular except Dee Gordon, Mallex Smith and Billy Hamilton hit a ball harder than Dozier in 2018.
Great stuff, I figured there had to be something I was missing.
FWIW BIS’s Hard% doesn’t directly take batted ball velocity into account anywhere, it’s based off “hang time, location, and general trajectory”. And it’s frustrating because it’s a black box formula we don’t have any insight into.
I’ve weaned off using the hard/medium/soft contact stuff as a result. It doesn’t correlate as well as you’d think with exit velocity.
What about the de-juicing of the ball between 2017 and 2018? Seems like a smaller player who relied on pulled fly balls to skim past the LF wall would be a good candidate to have suffered a HR/FB drop-off partly for this reason, and as far as we know, the ball isn’t getting re-juiced.
Except that he averaged 31 HR from 14-16.
That .288 xwOBA looks pretty meager compared to his .349 And .325 from the previous 2 campaigns, especially when you consider the idea that xwOBA may have been generous in 2018 based on the readings from the juiced balls of 2017 #bringbackthejuice. His 86.7 mph exit velocity also was a nadir for dozier (going off of what’s publicly available, ofcourse). But to your point, Paul, he def seems like a worthwhile gamble.
With all the data mlb teams have, it will be interesting to see what kind of contract he gets as we all know they’re looking at super-granular data.
I saw plenty of Dozier’s AB’s with LA and it just felt like he had 1 or 2 strikes against him before he even stepped in the box.
Statcast data may be useful here:
Barrel %- 2016: 8.3 2017: 8.4 2018: 6.3
Hard Hit %- 2016: 36.2 2017: 34.7 2018: 28.7
Shifts- 2016: 34.9 2017: 35.2 2018: 44.2
*All numbers cherry-picked to highlight my bias that he is not likely to bounce back.
Was he maybe always a guy overperforming his raw pop due to an extreme flyball pulling tendency and now is coming back to earth? He never was a moonshot guy but always hit a lot of second rowers to the short part of the park.
Would love to see the Twins bring him back on a one year deal. Promise to trade him to a contender if they’re out of it again. It’s not like it was a bad breakup.