The Cleveland Guardians have a problem. Their starting catcher, Bo Naylor, has been one of the worst hitters in the American League to this point.
Despite having a solid spring and hitting well for Team Canada in the World Baseball Classic, he has slumped ever since the regular season started, hitting a highly disappointing .138/.206/.207.
Naylor has only eight hits in 19 games, and just two of those have gone for extra bases: a double and a home run. He has scored a meager run on the season as a whole.
Evidently, Naylor has to be better if he wants to keep his position as the starting catcher of the Guardians. His manager, Stephen Vogt, spoke about his struggles and said what he needs to work on to improve.
“Right now, Bo is cutting across balls a little bit,” Vogt said, per Paul Hoynes of Cleveland.com. “He’s been hitting everything to the big part of the field. Even when he’s hitting the ball hard, he’s hitting it to the deepest part of the field. He just needs to continue to work. He needs to continue to work to get the ball in the air to the pull side (right field).”
Vogt suggests that Naylor has been the victim of some bad luck, and he’s right. Heading into Saturday’s action, Naylor had an expected slugging of .439, way better than his .207 mark. His .322 expected wOBA is also comfortably higher than his .196 wOBA.
Expected wOBA evaluates hitters based on plate discipline and quality of contact, whereas wOBA just focuses on results. This means that Naylor has deserved better than the outcomes he has gotten to this point.
The Guardians have understood this and are being patient with their catcher. As Vogt explains, he isn’t hitting as many flies to his pull side as he did in the past, and once he does that, better outcomes will occur.
Maybe what Naylor needs is a bit more time to fully get his swing right. Cleveland needs the batted balls to start falling for hits, though. That will depend on the player’s skill, but the luck element is part of the final equation, too.
Baseball isn’t a perfect science, but these metrics suggest that Naylor is just a couple of adjustments away from breaking out of his funk.
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