Despite What You've Heard, Mechanical Changes are a Huge Factor in Andrew Vaughn Brewers Breakout

[Matthew Trueblood]

Image courtesy of © Katie Stratman-Imagn Images

When the Chicago White Sox optioned Andrew Vaughn to their Triple-A affiliate in Charlotte this May, top baseball decision-maker Chris Getz said there were two areas in which they hoped to help Vaughn make key adjustments. The first, perhaps obvious one was swing decisions. Vaughn had only walked seven times (against 43 strikeouts) in 193 plate appearances before his demotion; his approach was broken. However, Getz also made specific mention of some mechanical changes the organization anticipated trying to make: syncing up his upper and lower halves.

It's easy to dismiss them, because they didn't bear big-league fruit until after the Brewers traded Aaron Civale to Chicago for Vaughn (and, a few weeks later, promoted him to replace the injured Rhys Hoskins), but the Sox did make some of those changes while Vaughn was in Charlotte. In addition to some fairly immediate changes in his exit velocity, Vaughn made quick progress in controlling the strike zone after being sent down. He walked as often as he struck out (10 times each) in 67 plate appearances for Charlotte, before being shipped to Nashville. There, he had 13 strikeouts and seven walks in 65 trips to the plate before getting the call to Milwaukee. With the parent club, he's fanned 19 times against 12 walks in his first 134 plate appearances, in addition to the fireworks we've seen when he puts the ball in play.

Swing decisions play the biggest role in walk and strikeout rates, of course, but there's much more to Vaughn's story as an emerging slugger for the Crew. The mechanical changes he's made have gotten far less publicity than the fact that he's swinging at better pitches, but how he swings might be just as important a driver of his enormous success as how often he does so, and at which offerings.

Let's start by looking at what Vaughn's swing was like while he was still with Chicago. Here's a first-pitch heater on the inner half from Freddy Peralta, on which he geared up and took what qualified, then, as an 'A' swing for him.

On a pitch like this one, of course, getting beat doesn't have to mean a whiff. Vaughn got a pitch to hit to start a plate appearance and attempted to tee off. You can even see his head turn toward left field, where he'd hoped he was hitting the ball. He was so late, though, that he lifted a can of corn to right, instead. (Enjoy, while you're here, the lead-in shot of Connor McKinight, Chicago Sports Network reporter and Appleton product. Like Danny Jansen, he went to Appleton West, but nobody's perfect.)

That's because, at that point, Vaughn wasn't in sync. As Getz hinted, when his foot came down in his leg kick and he triggered his swing, he wasn't on time with his hands. That rhythm is everything. When a hitter doesn't have it, they're lost.

Here's another example of Vaughn deep in that struggle. This one is a meandering cutter that found plenty of the plate and didn't have Peralta's zip, so he wasn't late—but nor did he find the barrel. Instead, the ball comes off the end of his bat, even though it's not on the outer half of the plate. Different direction, but same result: a flyout on a hittable pitch.

The thing to notice here is not only that he's not perfectly in sync when he starts his swing, but the way his leg kick and the drive off his back leg don't quite achieve the energy they're meant to create further up the chain. He bends his back leg, to be sure, but he doesn't truly sink into it. Between that and the lack of timing in the sequence of his swing, a lot of possible energy gets lost on the way to the baseball.

Finally, here's Vaughn chasing a pitch he simply shouldn't have swung at. He didn't even touch it, but the truth of the matter is that he had no chance to. The right thing to do with this offering was not to do anything with it at all.

Vaughn actually had a flatter-than-average swing while with Chicago, but on that kind of heater, there's practically no way to work up through the ball and get on plane with it. Certainly, his relatively stiff upper half didn't permit him to do so at the time. Ideally, he'd have recognized the pitch as being that high sooner and laid off.

Now, let's get to the fun part. Here's Vaughn, who moved closer to the plate and opened up his stance slightly as part of his suite of changes while in the minors, getting plenty of barrel to a pitch on the outer half during Milwaukee's trip to the suburbs of Atlanta.

How many swing adjustments can you spot right away? (Don't worry; this is an open-book test. You don't have to figure them all out yourself.) Firstly, Vaughn is sinking into and driving off that back leg much more substantially—what hitters call "getting into his legs" more. That's part of a more aggressive lower-half move, overall. Here's the animation, from Statcast, of Vaughn's stance and stride for April, with Chicago.

 Compare that to the same animation for August, as a member of the Brewers.

He starts more spread-out, which automatically invites him to engage his core more and get deeper into his legs. As you can see, though, the leg kick is also much bigger. He's drawing back and launching himself forward more, which gets the upper and lower halves in sync and generates lots of force, moving forward into the hitting zone. This is why Vaughn's swing speed is up a bit over 1 mile per hour since coming back to the majors. It also means he can get the barrel out and through pitches on the outer portion of the dish.

Here's Vaughn expanding the zone (you were told he doesn't do that anymore; he does, just not as often, and far more productively) and getting good wood on a ball down at his shins, against the Nationals.

Protecting the zone with two strikes, Vaughn chased slightly, but because he was starting early, it was still a strong swing. This change isn't fundamentally about plate discipline; it's about the fact that his hands get moving right on time with the front foot coming down, giving his swing an adaptability and power that was missing before.

Here he is expanding in the other direction, again with two strikes. This pitch is akin to the one on which we saw him strike out, above, but it's a bit more hittable, and he hits it.

Let's do a quick still-frame comparison. Here are screenshots that capture the moment when Vaughn's foot landed in two of the videos above—one with Chicago, and one with Milwaukee. I've added a white line over his bat to show the orientation of it at that instant. Better one?

Or two?

At the optometrist, all you have to do is answer honestly; there's no right answer. Here, there is one. Vaughn's barrel is en route to the baseball sooner now than it was before he was demoted, then dealt. Compound that with better bat speed, and you have a hitter who's a whole lot more dangerous.

Now, when a pitcher does make a mistake middle-in, you can pretty much forget about it.

It's fair to observe that his swing decisions have greatly improved since coming to the Crew, but it's reductive to pretend that they're the only (or even the main) thing that has changed. It sounds and looks like Vaughn might have done some of his mechanical fixing before the Brewers even acquired him, let alone brought him up to the majors, but either way, this swing is significantly different than the one he had when he rode the junior circuit. His stance has changed. His contact point has changed. He's swinging faster, and he has a 32° swing tilt this month, up from 28° in April and May. That last is a huge difference that only sounds small; it's representative of a major mechanical alteration. We've seen how that was implemented, and why it works.

None of this guarantees that Vaughn's success will continue unabated, any more than his much-discussed improvements in plate discipline do. Vaughn is a whole new hitter, and thus a new puzzle for the league to figure out; they'll come up with some things that force him to counteradjust quite soon. The reason his success has lasted so long and been so thunderous, though, is that it's not (by any means) just a matter of getting his pitch. He's also doing a whole different set of things with the pitches he gets.

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[SF70]

He looks like a #3 pick in the draft to me. Hitting talent is starting to show itself. I’m going to assume we now have a power bat in the middle of our lineup for the next 2+ years — fixes our biggest roster hole (big bat) and at a price we can afford.

What a time to be a Brewers fan.

[Jake McKibbin]

[WAN2]

Looks better at the plate than Hoskins or Bauer.  

[Samurai Bucky]

Nice work, Matt!

I did notice his hand location at toe touch and the route his hands took have changed a little bit, too.  That is probably attributed to the wider stance and foot location at toe touch -- less movement and a more consistent swing.