MLB: 8 hitters poised to bounce back from ugly 2020

5. Nolan Arenado

Nolan Arenado is the mystery man of this group. Why, you may ask? It’s simply because he won’t be playing 81 games in Coors Field anymore. Arenado hasn’t had a season with a wRC+ below 121 since 2014, and a good reason for that is because he’s played his entire career up until this point in the ultimate hitter’s ballpark.

Now that he’s been traded to St. Louis things are going to change for him. Add in the fact he’s coming off a year where injuries limited him to a career-low 76 wRC+ and you have reason to wonder what his actual mean is to accurately project out his 2021 season.

ZiPS only projects him to have 109 wRC+ in 2021, which even without Coors Field is extremely low considering he’s still really good on the road. He’s had a wRC+ of at least 116 four times from 2015-2019 on the road alone. It’s also not too crazy to say it won’t take him that long to get adjust to his new ballpark considering he plays there every year and has had plenty of success.

So what is bound to change for him in 2020?

For starters his quality of contact should go back to his usual average health provided. He’s only had one season with a barrel rate below eight percent and 2020 was the first time he’s had a hard hit rate below 37 percent since 2015. Those numbers reverting back to his average will play even outside of Coors Field.

His launch angle has always hovered around 17 degrees but it jumped to nearly 20 percent in 2020, which may not not be a recipe for success without the thin Colorado air.

He was able to lower his whiff rate last season, but that was partly because he got very selective at the plate and wasn’t swinging as much especially at pitches that were in the zone. You could attribute that to the shoulder injury he was dealing with so in reality he should go back to swinging at pitches at his normal rate this season.

We’ll see how he does playing an entire season outside of Coors Field this year.