How Do We Know If Michael Brantley is “Back?”

Cleveland Indians fans have probably heard or wondered enough about the “is Michael Brantley back?” or “will he ever be back?” that we’ve heard over the last 11 months or so – since Brantley hit the DL after his first attempt to comeback from shoulder surgery in 2016.

15 games played by the former All-Star in 2017 obviously isn’t enough to say definitively one way or the other, but as he shakes off the rust of only playing only 22 games last year between the majors (11) and rehab games, gauging whether he is “back” is probably more easily monitored in chunks of time. Overall, he’s gone through some uncharacteristic struggles than we’ve seen from Dr. Smooth in the past and part of that could be explained by rust or possibly even affects of two surgeries on his lead hitting arm.

So rather than just looking at his numbers to date, Fangraphs rolling graphs can help us get an idea of how he’s adjusting game by game to shake off that rust and handling the day to day rigors of at bats.

Obviously because of small sample sizes, these fluctuated very early on but through three games, there seemed to be some struggles. At 15 games, Brantley’s strikeout rate dropped, contact rate went back up and his swing and miss rate also dropped back off.

For career comparison, Brantley’s K-rate is 7.8%, contact rate is 91.4% and swinging strike rate is 3.5%. So through 46 plate appearances he’s still a ways off of his elite rates in those areas. Again, it’s important to remember that 46 plate appearances don’t exactly make for a stable sample size. If he brings down his strikeout and swinging strike rates and gets his contact rates back up, it will probably be gradually over the season. Given how he started out and the adjustment he is making from time missed and any possible effects on his swing and talent level from the two surgeries, this is a good check into his progress in becoming Dr. Smooth fully again.

There are some other good indicators that don’t really require a sample size to point to Brantley’s progress back into an everyday player and regaining his All-Star levels.

Barrelled balls – classified by Tom Tango and StatCast as a ball hit 98mph with a launch angle between 28-30 degrees. Anything at 99mph and above is automatically classified as a ball where the hitter gets the barrel of the bat on the ball when struck with a launch angle between 25-31. As exit velocity fluctuates, the range of launch angles also change as to what classifies as a barreled ball. You can read more about barrels as well as these other terms here.

Brantley has five barreled balls on the year. The league leaders, Freddie Freeman of the Atlanta Braves and Brantley’s teammate Francisco Lindor both have 10 barreled balls. He’s also hit 17 balls above 95 mph. Even though his 87.8% average exit velocity is near league average, he’s his 40% of his balls put in play above 95mph, which is a great sign. In 2015, Brantley also hit 40.2% of his balls in play at 95mph and above, of course that was over 435 balls in play.

So the original question – is Michael Brantley back to the All-Star, top-3 MVP levels of Dr. Smooth pre-injury and surgery? Not exactly, but that’s not to be expected in late April given that he played just 20 games last year and basically never played any of them at 100% health.

Despite a .366 BABIP that’s going to drop his walk-rate is up near his 2015 levels (9.2% ’17, 10.1% ’15). You could also argue that as the season goes on and Brantley’s rust shakes off, his contact percentage on pitches out of the zone should come back up. He’s not swinging at any more pitches out of the zone than he ever was (24% compared to 23.8% in his career) but he’s only making contact 63.3% of the time compared to an 81.6%. His contact rate on pitches in the zone are still at elite levels and while they’re down overall, it’s Brantley’s ability to foul off tough pitches that may be near the zone but not in it, that have made him elite in that area over the last few years and now it may be accounting for his drop in contact coming back from injury.

It’s possible that the injury and two major surgeries might have changed his talent level. He wouldn’t be the first. At the current level he’s at, it would still be better than a lot of players baseline talent levels. Check back on these rates as he compiles more plate appearances to track his progress as his overall rates in these areas might not accurately be able to tell us if Brantley is “back”. The improvement will come throughout the year, which is why it’s good to check a rolling average in these areas to see if he is indeed making progress back towards pre-injury levels. Things seem to be trending in a good direction for him so far.