Is Patrick Dorrian a Valuable Sleeper for the Brewers Infield?

Acquired by the Brewers in a trade with Baltimore for cash in June 2022, Patrick Dorrian had gotten off to a really poor start in Triple-A Norfolk, sitting at a 43 wRC+ through 46 games. In the 48 games he played for the Sounds after the trade, he had a 126 wRC+ and showed some very interesting power flashes, making him a player to watch in 2023.

Dorrian’s final numbers in 2023 don’t have the look of a post-hype breakout, at least at the surface level. He finished the season with an 89 wRC+, struck out in over 30 percent of his plate appearances and walked only 8.4 percent of the time. That strikeout rate placed him in the 6th percentile of Triple-A hitters with at least 200 plate appearances. The walk rate was in the 15th percentile. When taking only those surface-level numbers into account, it would be fair to wonder if Dorrian is even deserving of a Triple-A roster spot. Instead, I am going to explore whether or not Dorrian could make an impact at the highest level in 2024.

First, Dorrian’s season-long stats can be broken down a bit to account for an extremely slow start and a poor ending, as well. He began the season on the Developmental List, before being activated Apr. 13. From that point through the end of April, Dorrian amassed 41 plate appearances, and came out of the month with a wRC+ of 8. His September was not much better, posting a wRC+ of 17 in 61 plate appearances. If you remove those 102 plate appearances, and only take his four-month stretch of May through August, Dorrian’s numbers look much better. In the 305 plate appearances he had during that stretch, he struck out at a 28.5% rate (rough, but theoretically livable) and had a wRC+ of 115. He also hit 20 of his 21 home runs during that period. His slow start and finish can’t be thrown out entirely, but it does add some context to his final numbers.

Now that we have that additional context, let’s take a look at Dorrian’s splits in 2023 and see if anything pops out. A left-handed bat, he appears to be a definite platoon candidate, posting an .845 OPS against right-handed pitchers to go along with a 30.3% strikeout rate. Conversely, Dorrian put up a measly .513 OPS against southpaws, with a 34.9% strikeout rate.

While the preference would certainly be for every player to be platoon-proof, teams like the Tampa Bay Rays have shown that there are ways to work around big splits like Dorrian’s. Take a look at the below heat maps for Dorrian showing how he slugged against right-handed pitchers and left-handed pitchers. (All heat maps and charts are courtesy of TruMedia.)

                           SLG vs RHP                                                    SLG vs LHP

Looking at those maps, it seems that while Dorrian can make a lefty pay when they make a major mistake, any semblance of execution will lead to very poor results. Against right-handed pitchers, though, there is a much wider range of red and green. He seems to struggle with low pitches, especially those that are low and away, but he does a lot of damage against pitches that are thigh-high and above and can cover both sides of the plate pretty well when the pitch is up in the zone.

It seems clear (both from his surface level stats and the heat maps) that for Dorrian to be at his best, he will need to be facing right-handed pitchers as often as possible. Thus, we are only going to look at things from that perspective for the rest of this article--beginning with the quality of contact Dorrian has shown against righties.

Now that we have honed further in on a certain split, the qualifier for any stat that is given will be based on a minimum of 150 plate appearances against right-handed pitchers. Among the 385 hitters who qualified, Dorrian stood out in a number of categories, especially when it comes to hitting the ball with authority. According to TruMedia, Dorrian’s average exit velocity of 91.2 was in the 95th percentile for qualifiers. Just as importantly, 54.1% of his batted balls were 95 MPH or higher, which was in the 97th percentile. 

Hitting the ball hard is always a good thing, but it’s a lot better if you’re combining that exit velocity with the ability to lift the ball. A TruMedia Barrel is defined as “a batted ball with an exit velocity >= 95 and a launch angle between 10 and 35 degrees.” Dorrian excelled in that regard as well, coming in with a 24.2% barrel rate, which placed him in the 88th percentile. He also led all 385 qualifiers with an average fly ball distance of 356 feet. When Dorrian hits the ball, it is often hit in a way that will bring him a lot of success. Even on a lot of his outs, he was hitting the ball well. He finished in the 98th percentile in “Hard Outs,” which is an out recorded on a ball hit at least 95 MPH and with a launch angle between 3 and 45 degrees.

While that may sound like Dorrian simply had a lot of bad luck in 2023, and while he actually did, there is still more to it than just that. Given the strikeout rate issues mentioned earlier, you may have come to the conclusion that Dorrian has some swing-and-miss issues, and you would be correct in that assumption. His in-zone whiff rate of 29.5% was in the 2nd percentile. His swinging-strike rate of 19.1% was also in the 2nd percentile. Not only are they well below where you would hope a hitter would be, there simply aren’t many (if any) hitters who can succeed with that much swing-and-miss in their game.

So what is giving him so much trouble? Is this something that can be fixed? In order to find the issues, we can look a bit deeper at his heat maps and break them down by pitch type.

                                                            SLG vs RHP only (by pitch type)

Looking at these heat maps, we see that Dorrian has quite a bit of red on three maps, in particular. He seems to be able to make solid contact with four-seam fastballs in all quadrants; he does very well with mistake changeups; and he does similarly well with curveballs in the zone. The two that stand out as concerns would be the two-seam/sinker and the slider. Cutters may give him some trouble as well, but the heat map isn’t as damning for that pitch as the other two.

Based on those slugging heat maps, we now know which pitches he often does his damage on. Where does the whiff trouble come from? Let’s look at contact rates for those same six pitches.

Interestingly, the amount of contact made for Dorrian does not correlate very well with the quality of contact or the results. Dorrian actually does a pretty good job of making contact on sliders and sinkers, but he didn't slug much against either. He doesn’t make very consistent contact on changeups or four-seamers, but slugs quite a bit against both. The only pitch that lines up all the way around is the curveball. He does not miss curveballs in the zone and he does it with hard, elevated contact as well. We can see all of the stats laid out in the chart below and that gives more context to what we see in the heat maps.

What we see in this chart is that, despite the lower slugging numbers, Dorrian actually makes hard contact against both sliders and sinkers. The issue for Dorrian against sinkers is that he is pounding them into the ground. His Barrel rate of 12.1% is well below his average, and well below average for qualified hitters in Triple A. When it comes to the slider, there’s actually reason to believe he was pretty unlucky in 2023, posting a very strong Barrel rate of 23.5% and hitting the ball at the ideal launch angle between 10 and 30 degrees 41.2% of the time.

Overall, there is reason to believe in Dorrian’s ability to hit all six of the main pitches. There is also some reason to worry with the majority of them. He will need to be able to elevate two-seamers, and he will need to be able to make more consistent contact with the four-seamers and changeups. Given the fact that he also fared well against velocity (.802 OPS against FB 95+ MPH), it’s hard to come away from this deep dive thinking that Dorrian would be incapable of hitting against MLB pitching, as long as his platoon splits are managed carefully.

All of this is not even to mention the versatility Dorrian provides defensively. He spent at least 15 games at all four infield positions in 2023. The concern with him falls into the “Jack of All Trades, Master of None” category. He has pretty good hands; his range is good enough to handle the middle infield in a pinch; and his arm is average or better. But he doesn’t really excel at any one spot, and expecting even mediocre shortstop play at the MLB level would probably be pushing it. Luckily for him, a utility player often only needs to be serviceable at multiple spots, and he should be able to handle that.

Dorrian may or may not help the Brewers in 2024. He’s certainly got his flaws. But he also has a lot of interesting characteristics that, if utilized correctly, could make him a useful player for the big-league club. Dorrian is a good reminder of why it doesn’t make much sense to complain about minor-league moves, especially based on a couple months of results. If Dorrian does end up making an impact, the replies to this Adam McCalvy tweet announcing the trade could be fun to look back on. Even if he never does impact MLB, he has shown that there was plenty of reason to take a shot on him.

What are your thoughts on Dorrian? Do you believe he could impact the Brewers roster in 2024? Let us know below.

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