Ever since his 2016 call up to the Pittsburgh Pirates, Josh Bell has been delighting fans with his bat. He has almost single-handedly carried the Pirates’ offense in recent games this season.
A Tantalizing Debut and a Hidden Swoon
Bell joined the Pittsburgh Pirates on July 8, 2016 and hit for a respectable slash line of .273/.368/.406 last season. Although he did not hit for much power, his eye at the plate made him a dangerous hitter and a true on-base threat. He walked more (21) than he struck out (19) and even then he rarely struck out swinging.
However, hidden in these numbers is a September where Bell started to decline.
At the end of August, Bell’s OBP was .457 – by the end of the season it had dropped all the way down to .368. His batting average also dropped from .317 to .273. He was getting just as many walks as before, but in September, more of his batted balls went for outs as his BABIP (batting average on balls in play) fell off a cliff to .276 in August before rebounding somewhat to .291 in September. Both figures were below National League average.
Pitchers also started to figure out that Bell liked to hit the ball to the opposite field., In 2016, he hit 42.9 percent of balls in play that way against only 22.3 percent to the pull side. It wasn’t long until pitchers accordingly started pitching him inside with fastballs.
Bell kept trying to hit them the other way and this often resulted in soft contact or pop-ups. If you look at his at-bats in early September 2016, you will see a lot of this.
Hitting Doldrums in Early 2017
In early Spring Training and early April 2017, it looked like the down trend was continuing.
In the Pittsburgh Pirates’ Spring Training sessions, Bell hit for only a .116 average in 43 plate appearances. Although Spring Training is usually not a good leading indicator, Bell went on to slash .156/.250/.219 in his first batch of regular season games (through April 16).
Pitchers went after him in ways he hadn’t seen before.
His great eye at the plate seemed to have disappeared as we watched him wave at bad pitch after bad pitch.
Knee Problems?
One complicating factor is that Bell had surgery on his left knee on Feb 1, 2017 and was barely ready to play opening day.
The player and his manager claimed it was not an issue, but the data says otherwise.
Bell is a switch hitter and he has quite a platoon split working so far in the young season. His slash line versus right handed pitching is .299/.390/.507 which is spectacular. His slash line against southpaws is much lower at .192/.276/.423.
Granted, he only has 93 at-bats total in the season so far and only 23 of these have come against lefties, but these numbers tell us he has struggled early on from the right side. His left knee is on his “stride” leg from that side of the plate, so it’s possible that the lingering pain from the surgery was affecting him. Another smoking gun is that Bell grounded into a grand total of four double plays all last season. This year, he has already hit into six. This speaks to both his approach at the plate and his lack of speed on the base paths, which could have been affected by his knee.
However, whatever might have been bothering him early on seems to have faded away. Since April 16th, Bell has increased his on-base percentage almost 100 points to .368 and his batting average has elevated to .269. Most apparently, he is starting to hit for more power with eight extra base hits in this time frame versus only two in early April games.
Getting some Pull
Even though his knee was probably an issue, the main explanation for Bell’s resurgence at the plate for the Pittsburgh Pirates in the second half of April is his commitment to be a pull hitter when the situation calls for it.
[perfectpullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Bell has shown he can adapt and ultimately, this is his greatest asset as a hitter.[/perfectpullquote]MLB pitchers are very good and when they identify a weakness in the hitter, they exploit it – every single one of them. Bell was getting inside fastball after inside fastball in and seemed bewildered by it, even though this is how he was mostly pitched to in the closing month of the 2016 season
Somewhere along the line, his approach changed. He must have decided to start with the mentality that he is going to see a pitch in and he needs to pull that pitch. It’s no coincidence that his slugging percentage and home run power have increased as he has adopted a pull hitter mentality. His five home runs, all hit after April 16th, are tied for the team lead and even his outs are much louder than in the early part of the April.
His percentage of balls in play hit to the pull side has increased dramatically to 48.6 percent, almost double his percentage from 2016. On top of that, his slugging percentage is up to .484, well above the .406 he posted last year. He has shown that he can adapt to what pitchers are giving him, and even more impressively, has shown it from both sides of the plate.
What to Expect from Bell
For Pittsburgh Pirates fans, Josh Bell will be a fun hitter to watch the rest of this season.
Pitchers will start to figure out that he is now crushing inside fast balls and will switch to some other tactic in the ongoing cat-and-mouse game that makes baseball fascinating to watch. The most logical approach would be off-speed pitches away for this kind of hitter, but a pitcher will never be able to throw a curve ball that breaks away from Bell and he has already shown he is adept at going to the opposite field.
It will be a matter of adapting to what the pitcher offers and executing. If this occurs, his slugging percentage will go down, but his batting average and OBP should go up as he starts hitting the ball to the opposite field more often. Bell has one more advantage in that he does have a good eye at the plate. He would rather strike out looking on a bad call then swing at a pitch that is not a strike. He already sees 4.11 pitches per plate appearance, making him one of the top 20 choosiest hitters in the National League. This is a long term advantage and, as his reputation grows, he will get less and less marginal calls against him.
Bell has shown he can adapt and ultimately, this is his greatest asset as a hitter.
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