Caleb Durbin Is Finding His Short King Swing

[Jason Wang]

Image courtesy of © Patrick Gorski-Imagn Images

Ever since he arrived in Milwaukee, Caleb Durbin’s player profile has been intriguing. A 14th-round pick out of Division 3 Washington University in St. Louis, making it in the sport of baseball has never been easy, given his relatively small stature. Now that he’s in the big leagues, the challenges have only just begun. One of his biggest struggles this year has been hitting the ball with authority, and it’s a topic that @Jack Stern dove into recently.

Durbin must be a Brewer Fanatic lurker because since then, his numbers at the plate have taken a turn. In the last seven days (all stats listed are prior to Friday, May 30), he has slashed .308/.367/.462 with four doubles across 30 plate appearances. He’s also coming up in big moments, most recently walking off the Red Sox with a cool sacrifice fly.

This all begs the question: Is he hitting the ball harder than usual, or is it just a small sample? It’s a good question, especially since the walk-off to center field was in shallow enough center to make the play at the plate exciting, even with a speedy Sal Frelick on third.

Let’s use the publication date of Jack’s article, May 20th, as the cutoff for this analysis. A quick peek at average exit velocity before and after shows that he isn’t scorching balls any harder than he has been all year, averaging just 81-84 mph off the bat. However, generating power can mean much more than just measuring exit velocity. For example, it’s easy to see how a 120 mph batted ball straight into the dirt could be less valuable than a double to the corner at 95 mph. Furthermore, pulling the ball in the air can add even more distance for guys who don’t possess the natural pop.

In Durbin’s case, pulling the ball has absolutely been a major contributor to his recent success. Of the five doubles he has logged across our nine-day sample, four were pulled. Just two of his ten total hits were to the opposite side. Of his 12 pulled balls in play, six had an exit velocity of 90 mph or above, a significant step up from his average exit velocity this season of just 84.2 mph.

Another issue he has had all year has been his suboptimal launch angles. His launch angle sweet spot rate of 28.3% places him in the bottom decile of qualified hitters. His fly ball rate of 28.3% is nearly 5% higher than the league average, and his pop-up rate of 14.2% is double the league average. This is further corroborated by his Statcast quality of contact data, which shows that 36.3% of his batted balls are considered “under,” meaning he’s hitting balls in the air but softly. After May 20th, it appears that Durbin began to level out his swing and maintained his launch angles within the sweet spot, between 8 and 32 degrees.

At this point, we have enough data to assume that without Mark McGwire’s offseason program of milk and hard work, he’ll never be a home run hitter. He has never had a minor league season with more than ten home runs, but by pulling the ball more consistently and getting flatter launch angles than he currently does, he could still be an effective hitter. His average attack direction is already six degrees to the pull side, and he gets an ideal attack angle more than two-thirds of the time, meaning the swing is actually in decent shape.

Even without the ability to rack up hard-hit doubles and home runs like his more physically imposing peers, Durbin has already shown that he can be a formidable force at the plate, even if over a small sample. By leaning into what he can improve in his quality of contact and getting his walk rate out of the bottom decile, he could end up being the third baseman the Brewers have been after for years.

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[Jake McKibbin]

Quote

this point, we have enough data to assume that without Mark McGwire’s offseason program of milk and hard work, he’ll never be a home run hitter

Bro 😂😂😂😂

[Ron750]

I hope we have patience with Durbin. He’s showing progress similar to Frelick and Turang. He’s a ballplayer. 
I’m on the fence with Ortiz. He’s  regressed, but he hit .239 last year.   .220 is acceptable for a shortstop. I don’t think Turang should be moved to shortstop because it hurt his shoulder last time they tried that. 

[Snoebird]

The third baseman the Brewers and their fans "have been after for years" is Brock Wilken. Matt Arnold's first draftee after replacing David Stearns projects to be a slugging cornerstone who could wake up the echoes of Eddie Mathews. Brewer fans have waited far too long for the Stearns-Arnold regime to start drafting and developing corner infielders for us to buy stock in Caleb Durbin. 

[Jason Wang]

6 hours ago, Jake McKibbin said:

Bro 😂😂😂😂

[Jake McKibbin]

10 minutes ago, Jason Wang said:

So good. Top reference