Nolan Gorman Might Be Better When He Swings Less

[Henderson]

Nolan Gorman is streaky. We all know this by now. But what if I told you that the St. Louis Cardinals sluggers streakiness seems to be linked to another aspect of his game?What is that aspect,  you may ask?Call it what you want  plate approach,  swing decisions,  aggressiveness,  etc  but its his swing Nolan Gorman swings a lot,  he slumps. When he keeps the bat on his shoulder,  he goes on a heater. Its as simple as that. Or,  at least,  it has been this that Ive given you the punchline up front feel free to stop reading! But for those of you that want to continue with me its time to show you what I is the keyI want to start with a graph. The red line you see on the graph is tracking Nolan Gormans swing rate on a 15-game rolling average. The blue line is doing the same except its tracking Gormans wOBA. And those red and blue dotted lines you see are showing the league average swing rate and wOBA,  s one thing you should take away from this graph - when Gorman is swinging a lot,  hes slumping and when he dials back his aggressiveness,  hes crushing the ball. You can see that when the blue line wOBA) peaks Ryan Tepera Jersey,  the red line swing rate) craters and when the red line peaks,  the blue line isnt just a one year thing either,  even if it is a bit more pronounced this s that same graph for Gormans 2023 season: Youll notice that this time we see the same trend for Gormans extended hot streak during the middle of last season and we also see it before that https://www.gamedaystlouiscardinals.com/collections/cardinals-custom-jersey,  though its not quite as clear cut. It was only after July that we really saw this trend start to does Gormans 2023 season complicate the narrative Absolutely! And thats not a bad thing. Hitting is complex. But based on what weve seen when Gorman is streaking,  he may be better off practicing patience at the does this make senseYou might think that sluggers like Nolan Gorman are better off swinging more often because when they connect,  they can absolutely crush the ball. By that logic,  it would be better for Gorman to swing more and not s the problem with that theory - hitters perform better across the board when they swing than when they don can look at run value for support here. When hitters swing,  the batter run value per 100 pitches is negative 2.2. When they take,  that figure rises to positive 2.,  that doesnt mean that hitters should never swing. After all,  they shouldnt just stand up at the plate and take 3 strikes and then walk back to the dugout. But what it does mean is that the typical hitter is better off working the count by limiting his can think about it this way. Taking balls is valuable because it puts the hitter in a better count where he is more likely to walk or more likely to get a pitch that he can handle. Obviously this math changes depending on pitch location,  though. Like I said earlier,  its not as simple as hitters just going up and taking every pitch because takes have better run values on average than swings. Batter RV/100 By Pitch Location LocationBatter RV/100 - TakeBatter RV/100 - Swing LocationBatter RV/100 - TakeBatter RV/100 - Swing In Zone -4.8 -0.7Out of Zone 5.1 -5.9 When the ball is thrown in the zone,  the run value of takes craters,  which makes sense because takes on pitches in the zone and almost always called strikes. At the same time ,  swinging becomes more valuable because the hitter is swinging at a pitch that is easier to exact opposite is true when pitches are thrown out of the zone. Hitters really hurt themselves by swinging and really help themselves by area for improvementBut we already know this. Generally,  hitters should swing at strikes and not swing at balls. So why did I bring this up? I brought this up to highlight an area of improvement for Nolan far when looking at his rolling average wOBAs,  weve only looked at his swing rate. What we havent done is broken that down into chase rate and in-zone swing is the same graph from above but this time with plots for in-zone and out of zone swing rates instead of overall swing rate: The blue line is still showing wOBA here but now the red line is now showing out of zone swing rate and the yellow line is showing in zone swing rate. What you should notice is that the yellow and red lines are basically connected here. When one goes up so does the other and when one falls,  the other one follows means that Gorman is simply changing his level of aggressiveness; not improving his ability to distinguish balls from fact,  so far this year,  Gormans chase rate has increased 2.5 percentage points from last season while his in zone swing rate has decreased 5.2 percentage s not the movement we want to see from a player like while Gormans streakiness may be connected to his level of patience at the plate,  he also should be striving for improvements in pitch recognition to help him make the most of his ability to crush the ThoughtsIll be curious to watch the rest of Gormans season and see if his wOBA and his swing rate continue to show an inverse relationship. Its hard to do anything more than simply point out the correlation at this point since its difficult to determine if it is the swing rate that is actually causing the wOBA to increase and decrease so that said,  the correlation certainly is interesting and while I dont have much more to say about it at this point,  its something worth for reading.<br/><br/><br/>