Stephen Drew makes all his money in right field

There is an inherent opportunism to writing that I occasionally find a bit uncomfortable. Often I find myself cheering for specific outcomes because they would make a long-standing idea of mine become timely. If I’m dying to write something about Alex’s Rodriguez’s opposite-field power and he puts one out to right field it won’t make or break a story, but it’s a nifty jumping off point.

More often that not this is a harmless exercise, hoping players perform a certain way rarely feels wrong. Sure, if they have a writer-friendly downturn it might cost them a little bit in arbitration or on their next contract, but most ball players are getting by alright.

The case of Stephen Drew is a little bit different. Drew’s season offensively has been fascinating if unimpressive, and I think there is a lot of interesting things to say about it. For this reason I was hoping the second baseman would get in the news for some reason so that he’d be top of mind for readers. Unfortunately, right now he is.

Drew continues to battle concussion symptoms from an incident earlier in September and looks to be done for the season. At the moment there is concern for “Stephen Drew: Human Being” as well as “Stephen Drew: Professional Athlete”, because lingering concussion issues can be life-changing and aren’t fully understood just yet. That’s not to say Drew won’t be fine in a couple of days, or a couple of weeks, but there are some pretty nasty potential outcomes on the table.

For this reason it feels a little bit petty to write about Drew’s baseball exploits this year, especially with a tone that’s inevitably going to be at least somewhat critical given his poor season. Simultaneously, it is the perfect time to talk about his year. Not only does it appear to be complete, but he is a player of interest right now. Moreover, Baseball Prospectus tends to skew more “statistical quirks in baseball” than “professional/potentially personal issues of athletes”. That’s just the way it is.

With all that out of the way, let’s talk about Drew’s 2015. It was a season where he hit 17 home runs with above-average walk and strikeout rates and was still borderline-disastrous offensively, even for a middle infielder. Seasons like that don’t come around very often.

Earlier in the year one of the reasons I examined for his struggles with the bat was his inability to hit anything that wasn’t a fastball, but there is another that helped drive his incredibly low .201 BABIP. Batted-ball data doesn’t go far back enough to make any definitive statements, but it would appear that Drew was one of the worst non-pull hitters of all time.

There are many players infamous for yanking the ball almost exclusively, Brian Dozier comes to mind despite recently hitting his first opposite-field home run, but Drew is in a league of his own. His pull rate of 47.0% ranked 17th this season among players with at least 400 PA, but it wasn’t the quantity that was astounding it was how reliant he was on hits to right field. The chart below shows all 34 of his extra-base hits in 2015, it’s not hard to spot the pattern.

Drew did not go to center or left with any kind of authority this year. In theory that’s not entirely surprising as he’s not abnormally strong, or known as a great power hitter. However, the extent of his inability to use two-thirds of the field is fairly astounding.

Most hitters post their best numbers when pulling the ball, but the difference for Drew between his pull statistics and those to other sections of the field is unmatched in baseball.

These numbers are jarring, and it’s important to contextualize them. Among the 115 players who pulled the ball in play at least 150 times in 2015 Drew’s wRC+ ranks 44th between Carlos Beltran and Brandon Crawford. He’s been legitimately good when the ball goes to right field-although he has got some help from Yankee Stadium. According to the ESPN Home Run Tracker he hit four home runs there that would leave three or fewer parks.

Going to center field his cool zero wRC+ is worst among hitter who went that direction at least 100 times. Curiously the second worst number belongs to Victor Martinez with 18. Going the opposite way he ranks 200th of 205 hitters with at least 50 plate appearances. Admittedly, the plate appearance cut-offs are tailored to Drew, but the numbers are still pretty staggering.

There’s a confluence of factors that leads to an awful offensive season like the one Drew had, but this issue might be the most significant. If you are only a threat in one-third of the field that makes you pretty easy to defend. It is most certainly a fact in posting an incredibly low .201 BABIP.

This year will certainly go down as a lost one for Drew, and if he wants to find himself in 2016 he’ll need to spray the ball more effectively. It would be hard to do it much worse.

(Photo: Tim Heitman-USA Today Sports)