Who Is The Real Yan Gomes?

Since hitting homers in back-to-back games on April 23 and 25, Yan Gomes is in a 2-44 nosedive. In such slumps, it’s easy to start sitting around and asking what’s wrong with them? Whether something is ‘wrong’ with Gomes or he’s regressing or mightily struggling depends on a few different schools of thought. On one hand, you can point out his .179 BABIP, well below league average and his .303 career average. You can also look at his past BABIPs and assume it was unsustainable (.342 in 2013, .326 in 2014) and that his aggressive tendencies are catching up to him.

Much of his struggles in 2015 were blamed on Gomes’ leg injury that cost him almost two months after Rajai Davis slid into it at home plate. However, Gomes’ April last year was off to a bad start, with a .350 OPS and .385 May. After he came back, his BABIPs from May-September were around average levels despite Gomes not looking like the offense force he was in 2013 and 2014.

The bad

Last year, Gomes O-Swing% (pitching swung at out of the strike zone) rose from the 34% mark in 2013 and 2014 to 38% and now sits at 40%, so he’s chasing more bad pitches. While Gomes has always been more of a free swinger in terms of plate discipline, as his walk rates plummeted as he rose the ranks in the minors and the trend worsened against major league pitching.His O-Contact% has gone up, but resulting in weaker contact.

Overall, his swing% is up to 54.9% from 50.1% in 2014. Ironically his contact rate is up 3.1% from 2014 despite that his strikeout rate is up almost 3% from 2014 as well.

His soft contact rate is now up to 21.4%, a full 4% increase from 2014. His hard contact is down from 31% in 2014 to 22.9% now.

The good

Despite his struggles a year ago, Gomes was still worth 0.8 according to fWAR and bWAR. This year, he sits at an even zero for fWAR and -0.2 in bWAR. His defense still makes him a valuable asset. You can argue that if/when his BABIP normalizes, he will become more productive at the plate.

So what’s wrong?

It’s entirely possible that Gomes’ aggressiveness at the plate is being exploited better by pitchers. A player with K% and BB% rates like Gomes’ will tend to get him intro trouble and expose him to prolonged slumps. This current stretch could become frustrating and cause him to over amplify the problem by swinging more, which appears he is doing with the increased O-Swing%.

Gomes has also seen shifts in 22 plate appearances this season compared to 29 in 2015 and just 36 all of 2014. His average is .182 against shifts this year with a BABIP of .182. His pull% was down 16% last year from 2014 but is now back to over 45% in 2016.

Combined, more softly hit balls, swinging at more pitches outside of the zone (which was already a problem) and more shifting, you have a dangerous recipe for a slumping player. It’s generally safe to equate a higher or normal hard contact rate and a low BABIP as some bad luck. The higher frequency in shifts and lower hard contact rate suggest that there may be more to it than bad luck. Unfortunately, Gomes will be 29 and a chance in approach at the plate seems unlikely. We probably won’t see Gomes come near his 2014 production. What he was able to do after shaking off the injury last season looks more like the Yan Gomes the Indians might get from here on out.

To compare, Michael Brantley is less than a full percent off of his hard contact rate from 2014 when he was third in MVP voting and yet his BABIP is .265. His strikeout rate is up and his walk rate is right where it was in 2014 (though down from 2015, amazingly -10.1%). As long as his shoulder recovers better than it has recently, Brantley will be just fine. Although his O-Swing% is up to 31.3 from the 24% mark the last two years, Brantley can still be effective with that and it might go down as the shoulder becomes more comfortable.

Either way, the Indians need both to return to 2014 production or near it to have a realistic chance this season. Even more so with Gomes now that the safety net of Roberto Perez isn’t there for the Indians for the time being.