Is it time to start panicking about Chase Headley?

We’re creeping up on the end of the first trimester of the 2016 season, and a slow start is no longer just a slow start. Carlos Beltran had a slow start. Dellin Betances had a slow start. Chase Headley is having a bad season. But is it due mostly to bad luck or bad process?

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THE BAD

How bad has Chase Headley been this season? Among all qualified MLB third basemen, Headley ranks last in True Average. His mark of .213 would have placed him last among all qualified MLB third basemen last season as well. Yes, it would’ve been one spot lower than Pablo Sandoval, and two spots lower than…himself, from 2015. Actually, if we take a look at a few statistics over the last five seasons, it really shows a pronounced trend, and it isn’t a good one.

2014 sees a slight bump in overall value compared to 2013 because that was the year Headley was traded from the Padres to the Yankees, and Baseball Prospectus’ FRAA loves his defensive work with New York, while it consistently hated his work with San Diego. However, as we can see from the table, Headley’s offensive production has been in a five-year decline. And at age 32, he isn’t getting any younger. It’s possible that his bat speed is sapping away, and his best days are behind him. That’s the doom-and-gloom behind his numbers.

THE NEUTRAL

According to Brooks Baseball, Headley’s average exit velocity is down from last season, but only marginally so. It’s almost identical, and his exit velocity on grounders is up, which should theoretically improve his BABIP. In other words, the answer to his struggles isn’t in his exit velocity.

Next, let’s take a look at his batted ball distribution, if we divided the field into equal thirds.

Whoa. This is the first significant change we’ve come across, in terms of process, and this is a pretty drastic change. Now what exactly does it mean? That’s less certain, and it’s why I included it in the neutral section. There isn’t an ideal batted ball distribution for offensive production. Obviously, a player that pulled 100% of his batted balls would make himself very shift-able, thereby drastically reducing his production. But for actual realistic distributions, there’s no consensus on what the ideal distribution is, and it probably differs depending on the individual, anyways. But what can we learn from this data, or at least logically conclude from general intuition? Using the middle of the field is what hitting coaches usually preach, and not only should it preclude Headley from suffering too much from opposing shifts, but it should also lead to a higher BABIP. (As we’ll see later, though, that hasn’t been the case this season.) However, the middle of the field is also the biggest part of the park, and the pull side is where most hitters’ biggest power is, too. So a near-10% drop in pull percentage likely explains the disappearance of Headley’s power.

Taking a look at what the projection systems have to say about Headley, Baseball Prospectus’ 50th percentile projection has Headley at a rest-of-season slash line of .256/.338/.399, .265 TAv and 1.4 WARP. Since we’re close to the one-third mark of the season, that projection equates to a two-win player over the course of a full season. If we’re to believe the projection, it means that Headley is at or slightly below league-average for a starter in this league. Depending on how much you consider the going market value for $/WARP is, this projection means that Headley likely has little-to-no surplus value over his current $13 million salary. On the bright side, though, it also means that the projections don’t buy into his terrible start, and they also think he’ll be better than last season as well. A two-win player is still a very useful player, which is great news for Yankees fans, considering that the Bronx Bombers have him under contract through 2018.

THE PROMISING

Now, let’s get to the optimistic news about Headley’s work so far this season. Headley’s balanced hit distribution and line-drive approach has always served him well in the BABIP department, as he has never sported a BABIP below .300 in any of his full MLB seasons, ever. In fact, his career BABIP is a very healthy .326. Last season, it was .317. This season, it’s a paltry .255. As we talked about earlier, his exit velocity is still similar to last season, and he hasn’t really done anything else that’s more BABIP-unfriendly. That .255 mark is going to improve, and it’s going to improve a lot.

The second piece of good news is his strikeout and walk rates. These are from the last three seasons:

Among the last three seasons, his walk rate is at its highest mark, while his strikeout rate is at its lowest. The peripheral plate discipline stats back up this data, too.

Basically, Chase Headley is doing everything right in terms of pitch recognition. He’s swinging at a higher percentage of pitches in the zone, while swinging at fewer pitches out of the zone. He’s also making more contact at pitches within the zone. All of these changes are minuscule, but they do add up. The only one of those four that may not be positive is the stronger out-of-zone contact rate. Why? Making contact on pitches out of the zone usually results in weak contact. This is obviously good when a hitter has two strikes, because even weak contact is usually better than a strikeout. However, with less than two strikes, it’s often more beneficial to swing through a pitch than put it in play weakly, because the hitter would otherwise have at least one more chance to drive the ball with authority or work out a walk. This increase in O-Contact percentage, while subtle, helps explain Headley’s lower strikeout rate and lesser power output.

CONCLUSION

I just wrote 1000 words about Chase Headley, and to be honest, I’m still not sure what conclusion I came away with. It seemed to me that there was more good news than bad. The lack of balls hit with authority is frightening, especially considering that Headley is entering an age that most people consider past prime. However, ignoring power, which was never a huge part of Headley’s game to begin with, none of the peripheral stats indicate or forecast the collapse in offensive production that we’ve seen so far this season. As with most things in baseball and in life, the outlook on Chase Headley’s future is more nuanced than black-and-white. He will almost certainly improve, but we already knew that. He won’t be as good as he was in his peak years, with San Diego, but we already knew that. He will undoubtedly land somewhere in the middle, but we already knew that. Sorry that I wasted your time, friend.

Photo: Joe Camporeale / USATSI