During a season that has been less than stellar for the veteran second baseman, Ian Kinsler continues to have problems hitting fastballs. As his abilities decline, his role with the team is becoming increasingly unclear and uncertain. 

Recently there’s been a lot of talk about Ian Kinsler because of his actions after hitting a key home run for the Padres against the Pirates. This is understandable, however it’s not really relevant to evaluating Kinsler’s performance objectively. The data shows that Kinsler is not the player he used to be, and struggling in many parts of his game. Once a gold glover at the keystone, he’s produced negative value defensively in 2019. His base running has also rated out negatively for the first time in his career. However the most concerning aspect of Kinsler’s profile has been his hitting this season, which has been dismal.

The primary issue with Kinsler’s hitting is that he just isn’t good at hitting fastballs at this point in his career. As Kinsler has aged, pitchers have thrown harder than ever before, and this has only further exacerbated his performance. This is evident because twelve of his twenty-four hits have been off of non-fastballs this season. Furthermore, Kinsler especially struggles with fastballs above 95 mph. He only has one hit this season on such pitches, which illustrates a part of why he’s hit so poorly thus far.

What’s even more interesting about Kinsler’s lack of hits against premium velocity, is that his only hit was a blooper that barely left the infield. Take a look at the awkward situation that unfolded in order for him to get a base hit on a ball hit at 49.1 mph:

Kinsler definitely got jammed, and just barely fought off the pitch with a defensive swing at the last minute. It’s pretty unbelievably lucky that the ball just barely dropped in between Canó and Alonso, right? This is probably the Padres’ luckiest base hit of the entire season thus far. Clearly Kinsler does not hit hard fastballs well, but there’s still more to talk about with regard to his troubles against fastballs.

Let’s look at some data on his numbers facing fastballs:

Pitch Type	Count	BAA	SLG	ISO	BABIP
Four Seam	253	0.186	0.322	0.136	0.184
Sinker	81	0.167	0.389	0.222	0.154
Cutter	34	0.111	0.111	0.000	0.200

Considering the fact that Fastballs are the pitches most hurlers center their arsenal around, it’s very concerning that Kinsler is hitting so poorly against them. This isn’t an issue with a small sample, as he’s certainly seen a sufficient number of pitches for us to be confident about his abilities when facing them. Although his BABIP is low across the board against fastballs, it’s not because he’s been unlucky on batted balls. His average exit velocity against Fastballs this season is 82.5 mph, which is underwhelming considering that the average exit velocity league-wide is 89 mph. The average distance on those batted balls is 159 feet, which is a mere foot further than the 158 feet from home plate where he positions himself at second base. That doesn’t bode well for his performance at the plate.

The issues Kinsler has with fastballs go beyond his weak batted ball profile against the pitches, though. It’s just as much an issue of making contact in the first place as it is a problem related to his less-than-ideal exit velocities when facing fastballs. Kinsler’s whiffs on fastballs thrown to him make up 48.9% of the pitches he’s swung-and-missed on in 2019. Why has he whiffed so much against the pitch? Taking a look at the pitch locations of the fastballs he’s whiffed on allows us to better understand the answer to this question. Here they are:

Obviously Kinsler has issues hitting outside fastballs, as this chart shows us. That’s a significant portion of the zone that pitchers often throw towards, where he’s whiffing quite often. This leads to the question of whether Kinsler has a weakness on outside pitches? Looking at the whiffs he’s had on all pitches, that certainly seems to be the case:

So he’s whiffed on the low and outside pitch quite often, which is definitely not ideal considering how often pitchers target the location. A significant issue for Kinsler is plate coverage, which the chart above illustrates. The final chart below shows the pitch locations of Kinsler’s hits this season, nearly none of which are in the zones shown in the previous two charts:

Well at least he can hit pitches thrown over the heart of the plate, which is somewhat encouraging for a change. Yet his low number of hits in the locations where he’s whiffed so often is quite disappointing and illustrates why the 36-year old has struggled so much. When the Padres signed Ian Kinsler, this is certainly not what they had in mind. Controversies aside, he’s been an objectively below average major league player this season. The data and charts above are enough on their own to justify letting the second baseman go. It’s now a question of how long the Padres are willing to wait for a 36 year-old veteran to learn to hit fastballs.

All data in this article was taken from Baseball Savant and Brooks Baseball.

Despite the fact that the Padres are above the .500 mark, the team has struggled to get on base with consistency. The team ranks 29th in baseball with a .286 OBP, with only the lowly Marlins having a worse mark of .281 in the same category. How is a team with Manny Machado, Eric Hosmer, and multiple other exciting young hitters struggling so much to have very many baserunners? Further exacerbating the team’s issues in this regard, is that the team sports the lowest walk rate, and highest strikeout rate in baseball.

On one hand we could say that this shows how much potential the team has offensively, in the sense that improving their plate discipline could drastically improve the team’s run production. On the flip side, these Padres hitters should have better plate discipline already. Players such as Manny Machado need to set the tone in the middle of the order, and simply aren’t making enough contact to get on base as often as they have previously. Machado is striking out at a rate of 21.1%, which is the highest of his career. As a player with seven seasons of big league experience in which he established himself as a superstar, he has to be better than this.

This isn’t just an issue with Machado, though. Franmil Reyes is striking out in 26% of his plate appearances, which is not ideal considering he’s batting second in the lineup in most games. Wil Myers is leading the league in strikeout percentage at 37.1%. The list goes on and on, but it isn’t the only issue for the team’s hitters. Equally concerning is the lack of walks being taken by the Padres’ batters.

Eric Hosmer hasn’t posted a lower walk rate (7.1%) since his rookie year in 2011. Sluggers Hunter Renfroe and Franmil Reyes are walking a combined 5.3% of the time, which is pretty dismal. The rookies aren’t doing any better, with Fernando Tatis Jr. only walking at a rate of 7.2%, for example. What does this say about the Padres’ team hitting as a whole?

It means this team is overly aggressive at the plate, which makes sense considering how little they walk, and how frequently they strike out. Here’s a look at the data of the team’s plate discipline thus far in 2019:

Swing%	O-Swing%	Z-Swing%	O-Contact%	Z-Contact%	Contact%
47.8%(5th)	31.6%(10th)	69.0%(7th)	58.1%(29th)	82.6%(28th)	73.4%(30th)

It’s very clear from the data above that many of the hitters in the Padres lineup would benefit from being more selective at the plate. Most concerning are the contact percentages the team has posted, which are largely due to the high swing rates they’ve had this season. Considering the talent this team has up and down the lineup, it’s surprising that they’re performing so poorly.

Perhaps this is simply the result of a team that is only really just getting started. Many of these players are young or relatively new to the team. Seven of the twelve position players on the active roster were not on the team prior to the 2018 season. Four of the Padres’ five infielders only just joined the team this season. Surely the Padres hope that it’s only a matter of time before the rookies and new acquisitions settle in and have more patience at the plate.

Eventually it’s likely that the Padres will improve their plate discipline as a team, largely because of how young the team still is. Two of the team’s best young hitters in Franmil Reyes and Fernando Tatis Jr. are only 23 and 20 years old. For example the 2015 Cubs and Astros teams posted the 29th and 30th contact percentages following the arrival of many of their top prospects. In many ways the Padres are at the same stage of their development as Chicago and Houston were four years ago.

There are players such as Franmil Reyes and Fernando Tatis Jr. who have already flashed enormous potential for the team. They’ve been key to the team’s success despite their low number of walks, and tendencies to strike out. If the two could slightly improve their plate discipline, the Padres would already be in a significantly better place than they are now.

Going back to the Cubs example, it’s worth noting that Kris Bryant struck out in 30.6% of his plate appearances as a rookie. His career strikeout rate is 23.4%, which shows that over time young stars can certainly cut down on how often they whiff.

Currently the immaturity of the Padres’ lineup is showing itself more than ever, and that’s fine. The lack of plate discipline showed by the team thus far is illustrative of a team full of ambitious young players. The team is winning more than they have since 2010, and that’s the bottom line here. What’s so intriguing is the potential the team’s lineup has, and how they’ve managed to be fairly successful already. In spite of having a rather underwhelming lineup, the Padres are playing very competitive baseball. To become true contenders, they’ll have to be more disciplined in the batter’s box.

All Data in this article is courtesy of Fangraphs.

When you think about a power hitter like Giancarlo Stanton, it’s hard to think of any other player that can crush the ball the way he can outside of his teammate Aaron Judge. The two players are actually fairly different in reality, but that’s not the point here. There appears to be a young slugger who resembles Stanton in many ways, that everyone should be paying more attention to. This is a player who debuted in 2018, and is playing in his first full season in 2019. Meet Franmil Reyes, the 23-year-old Padres outfielder who has 13 home runs through his first 44 games this season. So obviously it’s pretty significant to compare any baseball player to Giancarlo Stanton, right? What’s awesome about this comparison is that Reyes stacks up with Stanton in almost every statistical category from the 2018 season. Take a look at how their offensive numbers compare to one another:

Name	BB%	K%	ISO	BABIP	OBP	SLG	wOBA	wRC+
Stanton	9.9 %	29.9 %	0.243	0.333	0.343	0.509	0.360	127
Reyes	8.4 %	28.1 %	0.218	0.345	0.340	0.498	0.360	129

As you can see above, Reyes and Stanton produced almost identically offensively last season. Of course Stanton produced over the course of a full season, while Reyes played slightly more than half of a season’s worth of games (87). Nonetheless, the similarities between their statistical outputs are remarkable. When we get into the Statcast numbers from the 2018 campaign, the two sluggers once again compare pretty well:

Player	Avg Exit Velo	FB/LD Exit Velo	GB Exit Velo
Stanton	93.7 mph	99.7 mph	91.4 mph
Reyes	92.3 mph	96.4 mph	90.1 mph

So with this data it’s clear that Reyes didn’t quite hit the ball as hard as Stanton. Despite their similarities statistically, Stanton definitely showed a better ability to crush the ball than Reyes did. We’re looking at the 2018 data because Stanton is currently hurt, but Reyes’ 2019 Statcast data has actually improved this season. Here’s how he’s performed in the same categories thus far:

Avg Exit Velo	FB/LD Exit Velo	GB Exit Velo
93.0 mph	96.9 mph	87.6 mph

Outside of his ground ball exit velocities, Reyes has started hitting the ball harder this season. Reyes is much younger than the 29-year-old Stanton, so there’s room for him to grow as a player moving forward. The current fly ball and line drive average exit velocities of Reyes in 2019 (96.9 mph) are almost identical to Stanton’s 2016 average on the same batted balls of 97.0 mph. Still, the issue of age difference remains. So let’s compare each of their first seasons in the big leagues. Here’s how they stack up:

Season	Player	Games	PA	ISO	OBP	SLG	wOBA	wRC+
2010	Stanton	100	396	0.248	0.326	0.507	0.356	118
2018	Reyes	87	285	0.218	0.340	0.498	0.360	129

It’s pretty impressive that Reyes produced offensively better than Stanton did during his rookie year in multiple categories, and shows how similar the two players are. In most of the statistics above, Stanton and Reyes produced at roughly the same rate. What’s interesting is that Reyes has continued to improve, as illustrated by his 2019 Statcast data. Reyes has a barrel percentage of 12.7% in 2019, which ranks third in baseball. MLB’s home run leader Christian Yelich is barreling balls at a 13.0% rate this season, to give you an idea of how well Reyes is performing. Stanton, by the way, has posted a career high of 14.2% in terms of barrel percentage in 2015. While his average exit velocities don’t quite compare with Stanton’s, Reyes has actually been better than the Yankees’ slugger in some aspects of his game. Additionally, these are two hitters who actually have fairly similar stances in the box, as you can see in this side-by-side comparison:

As you can see, they both stand off the plate so they can get extended on pitches in all locations of the strike zone. The stances of each player aren’t identical, but they certainly resemble one another. It’s easy to think that this is something very small, and that it doesn’t necessarily mean much as far as their performances are concerned. However, the two players have hit balls at nearly identical launch angles recently. Reyes’ average launch angle this season has been 11.3 degrees, while Stanton’s in 2018 (His most recent full season) was 11.6 degrees. That’s just another way that they’re remarkably similar, and makes the comparison between the two sluggers even more intriguing. Although Giancarlo Stanton is currently injured, a slugger named Franmil Reyes is now here to replicate his success. They both hit the ball harder than the vast majority of all major leaguers. Last season Stanton’s exit velocity was in the 99th percentile for exit velocity, while Reyes currently ranks in the 95th percentile among big leaguers in the same category in 2019. While Reyes’ 2018 performance put him on the map as a player, this is the year he’ll become a star baseball fans will talk about along with the other well-known mashers in MLB. All Data in this article is courtesy of Fangraphs and Baseball Savant.

It truly is amazing how quickly things change. In the case of Wil Myers, he’s gone from the face of the Padres’ franchise to a player who doesn’t even play every day. Obviously the signings of Eric Hosmer and Manny Machado have made shifted the focus of the media away from Myers, which is unrelated to his performance. Yet the reality is that Myers has shown the ability to be just as valuable as the aforementioned players, but simply hasn’t performed very well offensively since his 2016 all-star campaign. Above all else, his failure to hit with consistency has resulted in his decreased role in 2019. This season, his hitting has only worsened due to a sharp decline in his ability to make contact at the plate.

Taking a look at the data across his entire career, it’s very clear that something is up with Myers. Here are his contact percentages this season compared with his career contact numbers up until 2019:

Season(s)	Outside Contact%	Zone Contact%	Contact%
2013-2018	61.2%	85.1%	76.7%
2019	57.0%	74.1%	67.9%

Especially on pitches in the zone, and on pitches overall, Myers has struggled mightily to make contact in 2019. What have been the consequences of this lack of contact? To start, it’s resulted in Myers posting the highest strikeout rate among all qualified hitters in baseball at 36.8%. Further exacerbating the 28-year-old’s troubles has been an increase in pull percentage on his batted balls. When Myers is at his best, he’s known as a player who can hit the ball where it’s pitched. That’s another thing he’s failed to do well this year, and has hurt his production as well.

Here’s a spray chart of Myers’ hits in 2018, compared with the same chart of hits in 2019:

So clearly Myers needs to hit more pitches thrown on the outside part of the plate. Continuing to pull the ball will only make it easier for pitchers to attack him, and for teams to employ the shift against Myers.

These heatmaps illustrate the pitch locations of Myers’ base hits in 2018 and 2019, compared side-by-side:

Unfortunately for Myers, he’s had a tough time hitting the ball in the upper and lower parts of the zone, which is a part of why he’s slumping at the plate. There’s only a small area in the heatmap on the right where Myers has had success, which is noticeably different than on the left. As a hitter, he hasn’t ever looked worse in his career than he does right now.

It hasn’t been all negative for Myers this season, though. He has seen a good amount of time in center field, as well as left field. While earlier in his career he rated out negatively as a defender, Myers has shown himself to be a very capable defender of late. He’s been worth 2.4 runs defensively according to Fangraphs, which ranks as 22nd best among all defenders in baseball. The Rays’ defensive extraordinaire Kevin Kiermaier has been worth 2.6 runs, to put Myers’ defensive performance in perspective.

Looking at his Statcast numbers, Myers has been among the best outfielders in all of baseball thus far in 2019. Let’s start with the outs above average leaderboard. He ranks fourth behind Byron Buxton, Lewis Brinson, and George Springer with a 94% catch percentage. This is because Myers has rated out as having very good speed according to Statcast. His sprint speed of 28.6 feet per second is in the 88th percentile of all major leaguers. Myers’ speed is certainly an asset, especially if he can provide the Padres with strong outfield defense and base running.

If there’s anything we’ve learned about Wil Myers over the years, it’s that he’s a player with a wide range of outcomes. The Padres have moved him all over the field despite him being one of the most important hitters on the team, during the 2018 season. His performance has also been all over the place though.

What is most intriguing about Myers is that he has never put it all together. When he’s hit well in a given year, he hasn’t been very impressive defensively. In his 2016 all-star campaign, he was playing average-at-best defense at first base. His lack of hitting in 2019 has been contrasted with his excellent fielding as an outfielder. Given that he’s now 28 and hasn’t done so, it’s unlikely he’ll ever play particularly well in each facet of his game.

However, the possibility of Myers potentially being a five-tool kind of player is not as far-fetched as one may think. As the Padres become increasingly relevant, there’s never been a better time for someone like Myers to break out. With more talent around him than ever before, it’s also reasonable to expect him to perform as a star player with the Padres sometime soon. Among the many players with high potential on the Padres, Myers is one of the X-factors on the team who can push the team towards the playoffs if he plays well.