What Mazara Can Learn from Odor to Add More Punch to His Swing
Nomar Mazara had a successful first year in the big leagues last season, hitting .266 with 20 HR’s in 568 PA as a 21 year-old rookie. Over the course of the season he garnered league-wide intrigue with glimpses of his raw power and was able to display in the batters box why many believe he is a future All Star, hitting homeruns like this one:
His average homerun exit velocity last season was 105.5 MPH, which wedged him in between JD Martinez and Gary Sanchez in the leaderboard and his average HR distance was 6th best at 417ft - putting him in elite company of power hitters. Mazara contrasts from most developed power hitters in that he only hit 29.7% flyballs last season. Despite the low flyball rate he was able to achieve a 16.4% HR/FB ratio – a batted ball profile not too dissimilar to other hitters like Christian Yelich, Paul Goldschmidt and Joey Votto early in their careers. Those players have now, of course, been able to optimize their flyball hitting efficiency so that they can hit for a high average whilst also hitting for power. It is still yet to be seen if Mazara wishes to strive to follow along these players path or whether he wants to redefine his approach as he matures and strive to become a pure power hitter. In 2016, he showed that he was still mastering his craft and struggled in some aspects for this category of hitter. In 2016, Mazara had the 2nd worst BABIP, Hard% and FB Hard%, and worst Soft% for qualified players with FB% less than 30% and HR/FB above 10%. He clearly still has some work to do to take his game to the next level.
When delving further into Mazaras’ 2016 statistics, one thing that jumped out was his home and away splits. Arlington, Texas is a favourable place to hit with its high temperatures and limited foul territory, and is especially favourable for a left-handed batter. According ESPN park factors, the HR factor for LHB was 1.065 last season vs. 0.985 for RHB. The park ranked 4th in both runs and hits last season and thus helps bread offensive production. Mazara had only a small difference in his home and away wOBA (.320 vs. .316) but how he was able to achieve these marks couldn’t have been much different.
As you can see in the table below, Mazara had far greater success hitting flyballs on the road than he did hitting at home. His FB%, remarkably, was the exact same at home and away, so clearly his approach at the plate remained consistent no matter which parking he was playing in.
At home he was able to find more success hitting groundballs and line drives than he did on the road. This helped him hit for a better average (.277 vs. .254) but also resulted in a .071 drop in his ISO (.117 at home vs. .188 away). To dig deeper, we see below that there was no difference between his home and away average exit velocity for all of his batted balls as well as for his homeruns and there was only a minor increase in his average launch angle and FB Pull% on the road. Despite no major differences in these metrics, Mazara’s HR/FB at home was 9.3% lower than it was when playing on the road. This of course is a bit surprising, considering Globe Life Park in Arlington over indexes on homeruns for left-handed hitters, with a LHB average HR/FB of 15.8% last season.
I found this a bit puzzling and wanted to see if I could chalk up his power struggles at home to bad luck or perhaps to a difference in plate approach. The most obvious player for comparison is Rougned Odor – another player with raw power under the age of 23, who hits from the left side, playing half of his games in Arlington. Odor has more experience at the big league level than Mazara and has had great success hitting homeruns at home, belting 17 long balls at an 18.9% HR/FB clip in 2016. There are obvious differences in these two hitters but they also share some similarities, so I wanted to see what Odor did better than Mazara last season that resulted in better power output at home.
Below we see that Mazara and Odor had the same average launch angle on homeruns but Mazara actually had a higher average exit velocity on his homeruns, yet had an HR/FB 7.2% lower than Odor. From the table below, we can clearly see that Odor tried to pull the ball more and hit more fly balls than Mazara attempted to do.
As I mentioned before Mazara had the 6th best average homerun distance at 417 ft, while Odor last season only averaged 397 ft but was able to capitalize on the short porch in right field.
When looking at their respective flyball outs last season, we see below that, Odor had more of them but that Mazara actually had 6 outs that were very close to being homeruns – all of which were to centre or left field. Odor was also hit most of his flyouts to the same part of the field more often than not, but had fewer flyouts that were almost homeruns. This perhaps would lend you to believe that Mazara was a bit unlucky at home last season hitting homeruns or maybe the reason Odor had more success hitting homeruns was his tendency to pull flyballs. It was probably a combination of both of these factors. If 3 of 6 near-homerun-flyouts ended up being homeruns his home HR/FB ratio would have been 16.4% - which is more likely an indicator of his true power and skill.
It is also worth highlighting in more detail, the differences in approaches at the plate for Mazara and Odor. In an article written by Eno Sarris back in July 2016, Mazara's name came up in an analysis of the most balanced hitters in the first half of the 2016 season. These were players who could handle pitches in most areas of the strike zone. Mazara had the third best balanced approach on fastballs, measured by the standard deviation in OPS on high, low, inside and outside fastballs. None of the other players in the top 15 would be considered elite power hitters (over 30 HR's). Eno goes on to elaborate further on Mazara's approach saying that Nomar told him that he looks to hit for power early in the count and looks to utilize all fields with 2 strikes. That is a pretty mature approach at the plate for a 21-year-old rookie who has incredible raw power. Perhaps he was concerned of getting sent back down to the minors if he failed to maintain a good batting average if he only tried to hit for power; an approach that pitted fellow top power prospect Joey Gallo during his time with the Rangers.
For the 2017 season, I am optimistic that Mazara will continue make adjustments at the plate to continue his power development. He still has competition for playing time in the Outfield as the Rangers depth chart and farm system is deep at the position. I hope he can learn from his teammates like Odor, to try to hit and pull more of his flyballs, especially when playing in Texas. If he can make some of these adjustments we should see a normalization in his home HR/FB ratio and an increase in his FB% overall, which of course is a recipe for more homeruns. Below details Mazara's possible HR outcomes based on 600 PA's and a 7.5% BB% and 19% K%.
He can hit the ball as hard and far as almost any hitter in the majors, it is now just a matter of refining his mechanics slightly to be able to hit for major power on a more consistent basis. For his second season in the big leagues, he should look no further than a few spots up in the order, to a player who has achieved success hitting homeruns in his second full season in the majors. If Mazara can emulate Odor's pull-happy approach then we should definitely see more punch in his swing in 2017 and for years to come.