Kris Bryant doesn’t hit into double plays. It’s just not his thing. In 650 plate appearances this regular season, Bryant grounded into seven double plays. His 34.2 percent groundball rate is 14th lowest in baseball for players with at least 400 plate appearances. He’s also deceivingly fast and always busts it out of the box, so when he does hit it on the ground with a man on, he has a good chance of avoiding being doubled up.
Here at BP we even have a stat called NETDP, which is defined thusly: “The number of additional double plays generated versus an average player with the same number of opportunities. Negative NET DP indicates that fewer double plays than average were produced.” Bryant’s number was -9.54, good for second in baseball, just fractions behind Mookie Betts. So I’ll say it again: Kris Bryant doesn’t hit into double plays.
Sure enough, through three games in the playoffs, Bryant has grounded into two double plays and nearly did so a third time on Saturday night, but Kolten Wong was unable to make a throw to first.
“Too much on the ground,” Bryant said after I pointed out his jump in doubles plays. “Give them some credit, the guys had some pretty good sink on the ball and they’re doing what they’re supposed to be doing. So for me, I gotta figure out a way to reverse that. It’s just the cycles of the game. Obviously I had a really good August and September, really, really good. You kind of expect the valleys and the peaks, it just happens to be at this time. But guys are picking me up, which is nice.”
Here is the double play against Gerrit Cole in the first inning on Wednesday:
And then the one from Friday against John Lackey:
This is the near-double play against Seth Maness:
And just for kicks, another groundout against Jaime Garcia:
Looking at these images, some of these pitches look eminently hittable. But outside of the first one against Cole, these were pitches that were executed properly with movement that led to groundballs from Bryant. So should Bryant be doing something differently or is this just a case of pitchers doing their job?
“It’s a little of both; the game’s hard,” Bryant said. “Sometimes the pitch looks good and it just darts down. These pitchers are good. I think a little more fine approach, just kind of really swinging at what I want in certain situations is what I need to do. I have a lot of confidence that I’ll figure it out here soon. It’s just one of those things where I’m kind of down in a little valley right now, but I’ll pick myself up.”
To be fair, Bryant has pounded a couple pitches, but with nothing to show for it. He hit a hard line drive off Lackey in the first inning that left fielder Matt Holliday made a nice running catch on. In the fifth inning of Wednesday’s Wild Card game, Bryant also made solid contact on a Cole fastball, only to see it snagged by the shortstop.
But if there’s any pitch that Bryant could have back, it’s the second pitch in the seventh inning of Friday’s 4-0 loss. At the time it was a one-run game and Bryant was facing Lackey with a man on and nobody out. Lackey left a pitch right over the heart of the plate:
According to the TBS tracker, that pitch was right between those dark red areas above at center-center and center-down. It’s a pitch the Bryant normally crushes, instead he did this:
“Yeah, I fouled it off,” Bryant said, recalling the moment with me. “I fouled off a lot of pitches (the last two days). It’s kind of weird just to face these pitches three times because they do something different each time. The first time we faced Lackey he was kind of straight over the top with four-seamers, now he’s kind of down here throwing two-seamers, he’s throwing side arm. These pitchers, they’re finding ways out to change how we see them. It’s smart. It’s up to us to kind of adjust to that. Yeah, but that was one of the pitches I should have hit. I crush that pitch.”
So does he look at more tape?
“I think that’s a big enemy,” Bryant said. “I mean, it’s nice to look at what you’ve done, but you don’t need to sit there in front of the computer for an hour. Five minutes tops.”
How about more time in the cage working with hitting coach John Mallee?
“I don’t do anything different,” Bryant responded. “Really, what Joe’s preached at the beginning of the playoffs was don’t do anything differently. We stick to our same routines. If we take BP, take BP, if you don’t take BP, just do what you do. I think it’s important to do that, just to not make the games bigger than they are.”
So he’s not going to change his out-of-game routine, which is likely a very smart move. Bryant doesn’t want to over think things here. As Maddon has said all season: Do simple better. Bryant’s going to stick to that thought process. But outside of simply avoiding hitting the ball on the ground, what can Bryant do to help lead to better results?
“It’s just about refocusing my sights to right-center, just to kind of stay on the ball a little longer,” Bryant said. “I think there were some pitches that I could really drive over that way, but I kind of got out in front a bit. It happens. I hope for that to happen many times, because that means I’ve been in the game for a long time, but I take pride in making adjustments like that and hopefully I can do that.”
In July, Bryant struggled quite a bit, especially with the low strike, posting a .637 OPS for the month. Bryant made the adjustment to how pitchers were attacking him quicker than most veterans would, and the results were eye-popping, as he ended the season on a .323/.400/.567 tear in the season final two-plus months.
Bryant is 0-for-11 with four strikeouts and his fellow heart-of-the-order dweller, Anthony Rizzo, is hitless himself in his 10 at-bats. Maddon admitted that while the opponents are executing, his two stars aren’t being as selective as he believes they should be.
“You know, we’re just—we’re probably out of our zones a little bit,” Maddon said. “We’re probably playing to what they want us to swing at more than that we’re swinging what we want to swing at, if that makes sense. To me it’s expansion of zone, and we’re just not adjusting back to what they’re doing yet. That’s it. Also I think to a certain extent they’ve been pressing just a little bit. I think the 100 RBI gig for K.B. was in the forefront towards the end of the season, and actually once Riz went past that I thought he was going to be fine, too. But they’re both well and I have a lot of faith—all the faith in the world in both of them.”
But as each of Maddon, Bryant, and Rizzo pointed out on Sunday, the Cubs have still managed to win some games without their two biggest bats doing anything on offense. And Bryant has looked leaps and bounds better defensively than what we saw when he first arrived at Wrigley. As good of a pitcher as he is, Michael Wacha may just be the cure to what ails Bryant and Rizzo. It’s a small sample, but Rizzo has a 1.364 OPS against Wacha in 13 plate appearances, while Bryant has managed three hits in 10 at-bats against the Cardinals righty: A double, triple, and home run. As Bryant said, he has his sights set on driving the ball the other way. If that’s the case, it sounds like the fans in the right-field bleachers should be sure to pay attention when KB steps to the plate Monday night.
Lead photo courtesy of Jeff Curry-USA TODAY Sports