Like Backstreet, Willy Adames is Back, Alright

Last year brought mixed results for Willy Adames. He was one of the best defenders in all of baseball, accumulating 16 Outs Above Average (OAA), sixth-highest for any position. He also ranked sixth in Defensive Runs Saved (DRS) among shortstops, with 8. Unfortunately, his bat couldn’t keep up with his glove; his .717 OPS was the lowest figure for any full season in his career. It wasn’t obvious why he struggled so badly, since his exit velocity and strikeout rates were in line with his career averages, but let’s take a closer look at what happened.

First, let’s dig into what sort of pitches he struggled with the most. While the pitch he had the lowest average against was the four-seam fastball (.195), he was able to make up some ground by slugging .436 and logging a hard-hit rate of 50% against them. The pitch against which he had lowest wOBA (.281) and xwOBA (.290) was the slider, the real bane of his existence in 2023. When you break down the sliders he put in play, it sort of makes sense.

This graphic shows all of the sliders that Adames put in play last season colored by exit velocity. As you can see, sliders that were left in the heart of the zone were hit pretty hard, but many of these pitches he put in play were down and away. Those are tough pitches to hit hard. Contrast this with the same graph for the four-seam fastballs he put in play last year.

Against four-seam fastballs, he kept a pretty tight strike zone, and even managed to knock a few high fastballs. It seems that he was simply fooled by the slider far more frequently, chasing pitches that should've just been taken. He had a whiff rate of 41.4% against the slider.

It may have mostly been the slider, but it wasn't entirely the slider. As stated earlier, his strikeout rate was around his career average (it was actually lower, by 1.6%), but his chase rate was the highest it’s ever been, at 31.8%. Here are all of the pitches he put into play in 2023.

So far this year, he’s stayed far more disciplined, and hasn’t expanded the zone quite as much. It’s a small sample size, but it shows promise that he’s started to make the necessary adjustments to his approach.

The numbers back this up, with his plate discipline numbers showing a marked improvement over last year. Again, it's a small sample size of just 40 plate appearances thus far, but being a Willy Adames redemption arc believer is fun, so let’s try it anyway.