Is this Alex Rodriguez’s most impressive season?
By Will Osgood
Alex Rodriguez is doing things he hasn’t done in five years. But is it more impressive than any other campaign he’s had to date?
Alex Rodriguez is a no-brainer, first ballot Hall of Famer — at least he should be. But given the way the Baseball Writers of America have treated players in the “steroid era”, Rodriguez’s Hall of Fame candidacy is very much up in the air.
What isn’t up in the air is the fact 2015 has produced a hugely surprising bounce back year for Rodriguez. If you had told someone at the start of the year A-Rod would be the greatest All-Star snub in the 2015 season and on pace for 30-plus home runs and approximately 4.0 WAR, you would have been asked what you were smoking.
After missing all of the 2014 season, A-Rod’s career seemed over. How could a player who would turn 40-years old during the season recover from missing an entire baseball season?
Not only has Rodriguez made a comeback but he’s having one of his most impressive seasons ever.
In addition to the earlier numbers listed above, Rodriguez has 66 runs batted in, to go along with 69 walks and a .262 batting average.
Batting average, like runs batted in, is now almost universally thrown out. Instead, stat geeks favor BABIP (batting average on balls put in play) in conjunction with walk percentage and strikeout rate. In every case, the numbers for A-Rod are trending upwards this season.
Actually, he’s been .007 points less fortunate than 2013 when putting the ball in play. But the difference is negligible. His walk rate is up almost a point to 13.6 percent, while the strikeout rate is down to 21.6 percent—2.2 percent better than in 2013.
His ISO score (slugging percentage minus batting average) is .240, the third best mark of his career. He’s slugging .501—the best mark he’s had since 2010. And he’s getting on-base .368 percent of the time.
There are a lot of numbers there. What exactly do they mean?
In short, they mean even playing in his age 39-40 season, Rodriguez has found a fountain of youth. It’s not a stretch to say the designated hitter role is one he’s embraced, as he’s started 105 contests hitting off the bench and just six games in the field for the New York Yankees.
Not only has he embraced it, but it has rejuvenated him. Without standing in the field for nine innings, Rodriguez is afforded the opportunity to keep his body rested, get extra swings, watch video, or do whatever he needs to put together the best possible at-bat four to five times a game.
But is there anything to be discerned from the fresher mindset and approach?
One way to look at it might be to go to how hard he hits the ball when he makes contact—known in the new school Statcast-era terms as Exit Velocity. Rodriguez is 28th in baseball in exit velocity among hitters with at least 100 balls put into play. His average exit velocity is 92.02 miles per hour according to Baseball Savant.
The hitters above him are stars in the game —Mike Stanton, Mike Trout and Bryce Harper. Some of the guys below him, though, are guys you regularly hear touted for their abilities to routinely put good wood on the ball—Anthony Rizzo is down at 160, Kris Bryant at 111, Troy Tulowitzki at 104 and Adam Jones at 102nd.
Those four were All-Stars this season; A-Rod was not.
When looking at A-Rod’s career, we see his best power numbers have come when he is more pull-heavy. For instance, in 2007—his last MVP season—Rodriguez pulled the ball 52.5 percent of the time.
Each year after 2007 Rodriguez pulled the baseball less. It really was a downward spiral to a quite low 35.4 percent in 2013.
This year he’s back up to the pull percentages he had earlier in his career when he was routinely 45 percent or higher. It stands presently at 46.8 percent headed into Sunday’s games.
In the 2007 season he had a career high 54 home runs and a gaudy 156 runs batted, both incredible feats even if you belong to the camp who downplays RBI as a legitimate statistic. That season he slugged a career high .645 and had a 1.067 OPS (a career high).
Rodriguez isn’t even over the .900 OPS marker this year, which generally acts as the demarcation line between good and elite batters, much of his problems stem from his still solid on-base percentage. To compare, in that 2007 season he got on-base at a .422 clip, which was another career high.
It’s safe to say Rodriguez is not having a more impressive season than his 2007 campaign. Few players in baseball history will touch that season as an individual performer. At age 39-40 it would be ridiculous to expect Rodriguez to either.
But just because this isn’t his most impressive season, doesn’t mean it’s not impressive to see Rodriguez do some of the things he’s been able to do in 2015. As a hitter, he is fresher thanks less hampered down by injuries and is able to just focus on hitting. His hands are lighter, meaning he can get his bat through the zone quicker. It shows in the exit velocity, and it shows in the way he turns on pitches.
Of course it seems fair to add in the fact A-Rod has reached passed some of the great hitting milestones this year as well. Those should probably count for something if we’re debating whether this is A-Rod’s most impressive season.
He reached 3,000 hits by hitting a home run.
Strangely, based on what’s been said above, Rodriguez did so by taking a pitch on the outer half of the plate and slamming it to right field.
He took a similar approach last week when he hit a go-ahead grand slam at home against the Minnesota Twins.
Both were big-time home runs and great pieces of hitting, and both were monumentally large moments which only help repair his image among baseball fans, specifically those who root for the Yankees.
This has not been Alex Rodriguez’s most statistically impressive season. But it has been about as good as it gets given all the other factors and it’s probably the best season he’s had since his MVP season as far as his reputation is concerned.
Like him or not A-Rod is back and he’s not going anywhere anytime soon.