Is Yan Gomes 2015’s Version of 2014 Jason Kipnis?

2015 will go down as one of the more disappointing seasons in Cleveland Indians history. A season that began with incredibly lofty expectations ended sadly with a 81-80 record, still good, but no where near what fans had hoped. Despite some outstanding performances from players like Jason Kipnis, Michael Brantley, and the rookie Francisco Lindor, a number of players failed to live up to their expectations for this season. Yan Gomes was one of these such players and his down season was a major reason why the Indians were one of the more inept offensive teams for a large part of the year.

Gomes’ struggles this past year could be attributed to the knee injury he suffered in the first home stand of the season against the Detroit Tigers. Unfortunately, understanding the full effect of injuries on a player’s performance is a difficult task. Often times it is unknown how healthy (or unhealthy) a player is since many athletes are too proud to admit they aren’t playing at 100% and those who do refuse to let that stop them from playing. Last season is a prime example of such an occurrence; many worried if perhaps Jason Kipnis‘ down season wasn’t the product of injuries but rather, inabilities. Kipnis certainly proved the proponents of that theory wrong this season with a tremendous year at the plate and in the field. This year we must ask the same question about Yan Gomes, was it injuries that drove his down year in 2015 or is Yan Gomes not the hitter we thought he was?

In 2013, when the Indians acquired Gomes as a seeming throw-in a part of the Esmil Rogers–Mike Aviles trade, not many fans knew he’d end up being a cornerstone of the Indians’ lineup and one of the best hitting catchers in the American League for nearly two seasons. However, this season Gomes was far from one of the league’s best, and an argument can be made that with the emergence of Roberto Perez, Gomes wasn’t even the Indians’ best hitting catcher this year.

Taking a look at Gomes’ performance over the past three seasons, we see a more detailed explanation of some of the reasons Gomes’ performance did not meet expectations. A few of the more concerning statistics of Gomes’ season were the declining walk rate and increasing strikeout rate. I personally got the sense that Gomes was pressing after his return from injury and trying to make up for lost time in one at-bat. The extremely low walk rate lends some credence to that inclination. Gomes has never been a patient hitter, but such a low walk rate does signify that he’s being even less patient than before.

Further proof that Gomes may have been a little to eager can be seen when looking at his Swing Rates.

Compared to last season, Gomes swung at nearly 3% more pitches, including a near 4% increase in pitches in the strike zone. While batters should always strive to swing at strikes if they are going to swing at anything, it’s not always the best thing for a hitter to swing at a pitch even if it is a strike. Some strikes just aren’t hittable for some hitters and therefore shouldn’t be offered at.

Interestingly, despite the increased strikeouts this season Gomes also made more contact than he did during his Silver Slugger winning 2014 season.

Z-Contact % represents the percentage of times Yan Gomes made contact with a pitch thrown inside the strike zone. His 2015 rates exceeded his tremendous short season in 2013 when he first exploded on to the scene. But this begs the question of, if he made more contact why didn’t he have more hits? The answer can accurately be summed up through one of baseball analytics favorite stats, BABiP.

In 2013, Yan Gomes had what most considered an unsustainably high BABiP of .342. In 2014, he proved that perhaps it wasn’t as unsustainable as some may have though when he produced a .326 BABiP over a full season. Roughly two seasons worth of batted balls give an accurate measure of where a player’s BABiP will end up each season. This allows analysts, both amateur and professional, the ability to predict with much more accuracy whether or not a player’s batting average is due to regress to the mean in an upward or downward manner. Yan Gomes’ 2015 BABiP was .285, about 40-50 points off of what it was expected to be if 2013 and 2014 are in fact true estimators of Gomes’ future BABiP.

This is a positive indicator for the Tribe in 2016 and those wondering what Gomes’ chances of rebounding are next season. Taking into account Gomes’ lower than normal BABiP, his potential injury problems which could have plagued him far after he returned from a stint on the DL, as well as the collateral consequences attendant to his DL stint, there is strong reason to believe that 2016 will see a return of the Yan Gomes that we came to know and love in 2013-2014.