Collette Calls: Divergent Paths

During the peak of draft season, Randy Arozarena and Adolis Garcia were but a few picks apart in the average draft position, with Arozarena at 50.7 and Garcia at 57.6. Both outfielders were going as early as the third round of a 15-team league and no later than the sixth round, as Garcia went as late as the 80th overall pick while Arozarena never went later than 68th in Main Event leagues.

There was good reason for this, too, as the two Cuban ex-pats have been extremely similar in their careers. Both fled Cuba, both are former St. Louis Cardinals' outfield prospects and both have played in a World Series in recent years. Both outfielders were 10-win players by fWAR over the past three seasons, with Garcia gaining the slightest of edges, while Arozarena has been the better overall offensive player from 2021-2023 in real baseball (but closer in fantasy baseball) in nearly an identical amount of plate appearances:

These two players appeared to be on similar paths to fantasy stardom in 2024 looking at that body of work. However, the two players have taken divergent paths so far this season. Garcia is still producing above league-average numbers, while Arozarena needs a telescope to envision what league-average production looks like on the horizon. As play began on May 30th, these are those same numbers for the two players:

Where does the journey go from here for the beleaguered Arozarena? Truth be told, his troubles started long before the 2024 season began. What if I were able to tell you the precise date Arozanena's demise began? How about July 1st, 2023, when he was selected for the Home Run Derby?

Arozarena wanted to be in the derby, and had earned his spot with 15 homers at that point in the season alongside a healthy .288/.401/.484 slash line with 51 runs and 57 RBIs in 344 plate appearances. For those of us who watch him on a daily basis, Arozarena was as close to his 2020 postseason peak as possible, particularly with his plate discipline. He was finally more accepting of his walks and wasn't expanding his strikezone to force the action as he had done to close out 2022 and was instead letting the action come to him (green line represents mid-point of 2023):
 

Arozarena would go on to hit .218/.323/.361 from July 1st until the end of the season with just eight homers. The walks were still present, and his strikeout rate didn't change much, but the results took a turn south and have mostly gotten worse since. Arozarena owns a .193/.295/.340 slash line since July 1st of 2023 with 16 homers, an 11.1 percent walk rate and a growing 26.2 percent strikeout rates. Let's look at a year by year breakdown of things.

2021

Arozarena feasted on fastballs in his first full season at the big league level but was susceptible to breaking stuff and offspeed but still had enough plate coverage to hit near league average against both pitch types.

2022

Arozarena did not feast on fastballs as the gap between his actuals and expecteds closed, but he did not exactly go hungry. Still, he was living the good life and striking fastballs with more exit velocity and overall improved launch angle.

2023

Arozarena had his best season yet adjusting to offspeed pitches and continued to do well with fastballs, but the offspeed issue once again reared its ugly head and he struggled to get those pitches safely into play.

2024

This is how bad things have become for Arozarena. His best chance of getting a hit is to see something with a wrinkle in it, as fastballs and changeups have become lost causes for him. Ironically, the league has yet to adjust to this, as they continue to throw him fastballs anywhere from 51 to 53 percent of the time in recent years when the data shows a simple fastball/changeup approach could get the job done. 

To date, Arozarena is swinging and missing at fastballs at a rate not seen since his brief cup of coffee with St. Louis in 2019:

You may recall a few weeks ago, I discussed some hitters suffering through power outages and how Spencer Torkelson, in particular, seemed to be in between things on his timing. Since that article, Torkelson has homered four times, but he continues to struggle overall with a .167/.214/.379 triple-slash line since that article ran while striking out 27.1 percent of the time. Arozarena is in the midst of a similar issue as his ability to make loud contact has been trending in a terrible direction:

The new bat tracking data doesn't give us a previous baseline to compare to, but Arozarena is still generating above average swing velocity across the board. However, he has become extremely pull-heavy these days and he continue to attempt to work his way through this elongated slump:

I have watched somewhere near 90 percent of the baseball games Arozarena has played in his major-league career, and he's at his best when he's working gap to gap, an approach that has rarely been visible this season. In Friday's game, this sacrifice fly off a 101 mph heater from Mason Miller may be a positive sign to look for, as it's the first time the ball has sounded good off his bat in a while. Note that it was in that gap-to-gap area:

My personal fandom and fantasy portfolio is invested in Arozarena, and it would be nice if that sac fly was a sign of things to come, because most of his at bat these days appear to be attempts to catch up to fastballs which leave him looking like this on non-fastballs more often than not:

I am no hitting coach, so I cannot tell Arozarena or Chad Mottola how to fix this, but I can only advise you to watch him to see if he begins to back away from this extreme pull approach he has employed for most of this season. We absolutely have to adjust our seasonal projections and expectations for Arozarena, but it does not mean we should be blind to what could be better days ahead because we have seen what can happen when Arozarena gets on a heater.