Jordy Mercer has started the 2016 season on a pace unmatched in his career. But what has caused such a dramatic change for the shortstop? Can it last?
A quick look at the lineup the Pittsburgh Pirates put together for any given game will show you many players hitting over .300. Some of the guys hitting over .300 isn’t surprising; Josh Harrison finished at .315 two seasons ago and hitters like Starling Marte and Gregory Polanco for years have been projected to be very good hitters at the MLB level.
To many, the most surprising hitter that has found success this season is Jordy Mercer.
Mercer, who according to Baseball Reference, had a 2.8 WAR in 2014 and 0.3 in 2015, has already matched last year’s total in just one month of work.
Before we take a look at Mercer’s numbers in 2016 and see why he is doing so much better this year, let’s take a look at what he has done in the past. 2014 is the only season where Mercer had more than 500 at-bats, so we’ll start there. In 506 at-bats, Mercer slashed .255/.305/.387 and added 12 HR and 55 RBI. His BB/K ratio was 35/89. While the batting average was lower than what the team would have liked, the 12 long balls were certainly welcomed from a position that isn’t known for it’s power output.
[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”#000000″ class=”” size=””]Simply enough, one thing that Mercer is doing is walking more and striking out less.[/pullquote]Mercer’s 2015 campaign was not an improvement on what he did the previous year. While he did lose some time to a leg injury, his numbers overall were not nearly as good. In 394 at-bats – 112 less than in 2014 – he slashed .244/.293/.320 with only three home runs and 34 RBI. His 2015 27/73 BB/K ratio is similar to what he did in 2014 when adjusted for the fact that he had less at-bats.
In 2016 Mercer looks like a much different hitter. He has spent time at the top of the lineup when the Pirates face a left handed starter and then shifts back to the bottom of the lineup when a right handed pitcher is on the mound. Granted, it’s a small sample size and things can change, but through 79 at-bats Mercer is slashing .304/.380/.405 and has a home run (a 466 ft blast in Arizona, although Bob Walk begs to differ on the distance) and has driven in 13 runs so far this season.
That home run deserves to be re-lived.
[mlbvideo id=”615382383″ width=”400″ height=”224″ /]What has Mercer done this season that is making him look like a completely different hitter?
Simply enough, one thing he is doing is walking more and striking out less. In 2014 and 2015 Mercer had a 6.3 percent walk rate in each season and so far this season he has improved to 9.5 percent. His strikeout percentage has dropped to 13.7 percent from a high water mark of 17 percent in 2015.
Now, if we take a look at some of the PITCHf/x data, it becomes a little harder to see how Mercer has improved on his last few seasons of work. His O-Swing rate, which is a percentage of pitches a hitter swings at outside the strike zone was 30.2 percent last year and is 33.5 percent this season.
His Z-Swing rate, which measures the percentage of pitches a hitter swings at in the strike zone dropped from 58.2 percent last season to 54.8 percent this season.
These changes make it very difficult to make a case that these changes could be lasting over a full season.
If we take a look at the PITCHf/x data for Mercer’s contact ability, they also don’t show much of a difference. His O-Contact rate, which is the percentage of pitches a hitter makes contact with outside of the strike zone that he swings at, was 67.1 percent last season and is 65.7 percent this year.
His Z-Contact rate, which measures the percent of pitches a hitter swings at and makes contact with inside the strike zone went from 91 percent in 2015 to 92.6 percent so far this season. Like the stats listed in the paragraph above, there isn’t that big of a difference in either of his swing percentage or contact percentage. So what is causing this uptick in Mercer’s stats so far this season?
Unfortunately some of Mercer’s success early on is probably being aided by luck. Mercer’s BABIP, or batting average on balls in play, was .285 in 2014 and .290 last season. This year it has skyrocketed to .343. It’s highly unlikely that Mercer is going to keep this pace up all season but it’s clear that he has made some adjustments at the plate. If he can be even a little better than he was last year, and the pace he is on right now indicates that is a possibility, the Pirates could receive much more production from Jordy Mercer than expected entering 2016.
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