NEWSLETTER
Over his first 19 games (74 PAs), Michael Busch was one of the hottest hitters on the planet: .328/.405/.656 (190 wRC+), including three doubles, six homers, and nine walks. But in the seven games and 29 plate appearances since, he’s completely vanished: .154/.172/.192 (0 wRC+) with just one extra base hit (a double), no walks, and 12(!) strikeouts.
In all likelihood, this is just a typical slump for an otherwise good hitter and nothing to actually worry about. That’s a small sample and he’s had a lot more pressure on him to produce with Cody Bellinger and Seiya Suzuki both out injured. But Busch is still a rookie and this apparent league-adjustment (and his eventual response) is actually a really critical moment for him. I think, because of his age and how hot he was to start the year, we took for granted that Busch isn’t some established veteran working through normal ups-and-downs en route to an obviously amazing season.
So while I still absolutely *believe* he’ll be just fine eventually, I am definitely curious as to what’s going on. So here’s what I can see.
Plate Discipline
Arguably the most troubling aspect of this seven-game slump is the changes to his swing decisions and the overall issues with plate discipline. When Busch first broke out with the Cubs, his plate disicipline appeared to be borderline elite. But lately, he’s been pressing, and it’s very easy to see in the data.
Out-of-Zone Swing%
In-Zone Swing%
Before his slump, Michael Busch was barely offering at balls out of the zone while swinging at more strikes than the average big league hitter. But during his slump, he’s below average in both categories, quiet significantly in terms of how many balls he’s swinging at.
Meanwhile, he’s actually making slightly MORE contact on pitches out of the zone. Which is not good, because contact on pitches out of the zone results not only in fewer balls (and, thus, fewer walks), but also more weak contact when he does connect. And just to put a perfect little bow on this, Busch is also making less contact on pitches in the zone during this stretch than he was before.
Just a perfectly terrible plate discipline cocktail during this small sample: More swings at balls, more contact on balls, fewer swings on strikes, less contact on strikes. If that’s not the profile of a guy searching and pressing and adjusting, I don’t know what is.
Contact Quality
But just to demonstrate that it isn’t all theory. Check out the quality and type of his contact in the good stretch versus the slump:
First 19 games: 93.7 MPH EV, 18.2 Barrel%, 47.7 hard%
Last 7 games: 82.5 MPH EV, 12.5 Barrel%, 25.0 hard%
Meanwhile, his line drive rate has fallen (from 27.9% to 18.8%), his groundball rate has risen (from 23.3% to 31.3%) and the percentage of soft contact went from nearly never (6.8%) to 1 out of every four balls in play (25%).
So What’s Changed?
But this all begs the question, what’s actually changed? Are pitchers attacking him differently? Does he have a particularly exploitable weakness? Or something specific to work on? Well, I’ll let the Cubs worry about those second and third questions, but I can definitely say pitchers have been attacking him differently lately.
In his first 19 games, Michael Busch saw a lot of fastballs (47.3%) and plenty of fastball velocity (94.2 MPH on average). But since then, he’s gotten a much more steady diet of curveballs and changeups.
First 19 games: 7.5 CB%, 12.3 CH%
Last 7 games: 20.0 CB%, 16.7 CH%
And that’s not really a surprise. In case you forgot, we observed that pitchers were throwing Busch a whole lot of fastballs early on this year (a common approach against rookies who haven’t yet established themselves), and he hit those pretty darn well: .257 AVG and .486 SLG on four-seamers this year with a 53.8% hard-hit rate.
But look at his results against curveballs and changeups for the whole season:
The one caveat here is that although he hasn’t yet found success against changeups (in terms of results), the expected statistics are actually quite strong: .288 xBA, .806 xSLG (42.9 hard%). So maybe he’s having his most trouble identifying and connecting on the hammers (which tracks with more swings on pitches out of the zone).
Either way, it’s clear: Once pitchers realized he can hit fastballs just fine, they moved onto the offspeed and breaking stuff. And so far, Busch hasn’t quite figured it out yet. This certainly isn’t unexpected – in fact, this adjustment was always coming – but you do hope Busch can start making better decisions sooner than later. Once he does, opposing pitchers will be forced back into the zone, where he can do more damage. And hopefully, once he starts spitting on more balls, he’ll start walking again, too. His eye and overall talent is way too good to struggle for long. But like I said, with Bellinger and Suzuki out (while Morel, Happ, and Swanson all slump simultaneously), the pressure on Busch to succeed remains high.
For the record, I will accept all credit for Michael Busch going 4-4 tonight with a double and a homer off a curveball.
