Matt Stanzione
DJ LeMahieu entered free agency coming off a torrid 2020 season. He finished 6th in all of baseball in rWAR, putting up 3.0 wins above replacement in just 216 plate appearances. He was also an American League MVP finalist, finishing third for the award. He was rewarded with a new contract from the Yankees, a pact for 6 years, and $90 million in a move that locks him up through the 2026 season.
But arguably LeMahieu’s biggest accomplishment of 2020 is that only three hitters in baseball produced a better wOBA than him: Juan Soto, Freddie Freeman, and Marcell Ozuna. Since all three of those mashers play in the NL, LeMahieu’s .422 wOBA was the highest mark in the American League in 2020. Keeping in mind that wOBA is scaled to OBP, that is an amazing accomplishment. But did LeMahieu deserve the AL wOBA crown?
To answer this question, we are going to take a look at xwOBA. The purpose of xwOBA is to more accurately capture what a hitter deserves rather than their final results. In order to do so, batted balls are treated differently from events like walks and strikeouts. Instead of the pure outcome, batted ball events are evaluated based on a Statcast model using measurable figures like exit velocity and launch angle. The final result is a metric that tells us about the expected performance of a hitter.
LeMahieu’s xwOBA was considerably lower than his wOBA. At .355, it is still a strong mark, as LeMahieu ranked 47th among MLB’s 257 qualifiers in xwOBA, but it certainly sheds some skepticism on framing LeMahieu as the 2020 AL wOBA king. In fact, the .067 difference between LeMahieu’s 2020 wOBA and xwOBA led the majors, suggesting that no batter in MLB was luckier than DJ. So what does that mean for his future and new contract? Has DJ LeMahieu’s New York success simply been a fluke? Did the Yankees make a mistake?
Not so fast. As our very own Peter Majors pointed out, there are not many 2020 statistics that can be trusted due to the brief nature of the pandemic-shortened season. So let's take a look at larger samples to see if LeMahieu has always been lucky, or if this was merely a 2020 anomaly. Below is the spread between LeMahieu’s xwOBA and his wOBA in every season since Statcast metrics have been in existence. Green differences represent a lucky season and red represents an unlucky season.
Interestingly enough, LeMahieu was actually underperforming his xwOBA for most seasons leading up to 2020. The chart leaves two takeaways: 1) LeMahieu has not relied on luck to get to this point in his career, but 2) he probably will not produce a wOBA above .400 again.
But the Yankees did not re-sign LeMahieu to be a .400 wOBA hitter, and with the average annual value of his new contract at $15 million, he isn’t being paid like one either. New York re-signed him for his ability to hit the ball very hard, very often. Since joining the Yankees in 2019, LeMahieu’s hard-hit rates have been 94th and 81st percentile in each of his first two seasons, respectively. Combine that with his extremely low strikeout rates which were 89th and 100th percentile, respectively, and we have a recipe for a hitter who will constantly crush the ball.
So why did LeMahieu’s xwOBA drop in 2020 if he continued to make that consistent, hard contact? Simply put, because LeMahieu beat the ball into the ground. DJ’s 2.3° average launch angle in 2020 ranked 138th of 142 qualified batters. His 56.6% ground-ball rate was well above the 42.7% league average and ranked 3rd highest among players with at least 150 plate appearances. LeMahieu’s tendency to hit ground-balls is the reason why his stellar hard-hit rate does not play as big of a role in his xwOBA as one might expect.
Another aspect of LeMahieu’s game that allows him to get lucky is his ability to hit the ball to the opposite field. DJ’s inside-out swing is one of the reasons he is so valuable to the Yankees. Yankee Stadium is known for its short porch in right field, measuring just 314 feet down the line. In his two years in New York, LeMahieu has been able to take advantage of this. Since 2019, among players with at least 500 plate appearances, LeMahieu ranks 1st in the majors with his 36.1% Oppo%. He became even more oppo-happy in 2020, upping his Oppo% an astonishing 43.4%, once again leading the league. Coupling that ability with Yankee Stadium’s dimensions will lead to some wall-scraping home runs, balls that would be flyouts in other ballparks.
Statcast’s Home Run Tracker allows us to determine just how extreme LeMahieu’s home run luck has been since joining New York. In 2019, LeMahieu hit 29 home runs for the Yankees but Statcast only expected him to hit 19.6. This 9.4 difference of HR-xHR was the fourth largest in the majors. A similar story can be told about 2020. LeMahieu hit 3.2 more homers than expected in the shortened season, third in the majors.
Above are two spray charts of every batted ball LeMahieu hit between 25° and 35° in 2020. The left is overlaid with Yankee Stadium. The right is overlaid with Wrigley Field, a stadium that allows home runs at a rate that is exactly league average. About 3 of LeMahieu’s home runs might have been flyouts if they were hit at Wrigley. The combination of LeMahieu’s batted ball tendencies and the dimensions of Yankee Stadium allow him to run into more home runs than he would playing for another team. As far as the Yankees are concerned, that is completely fine. All of LeMahieu’s lucky home runs count after all. But as a result, it is important to note that LeMahieu has not been the same animal on the road. His home/away wOBA splits are rather drastic:
The 2020 splits are especially mind-blowing, but, once again, the short nature of the season means we probably will not see such a dramatic difference going forward. Still, 2019 provides plenty of evidence that LeMahieu is not quite as dangerous away from Yankee Stadium. LeMahieu’s home productivity in New York explains why the Yankees ultimately paid him the most. Other teams were probably skeptical that LeMahieu would be the same player in their home park. The second-largest reported offer to LeMahieu was $78 million from the Blue Jays, a large offer, but still much less than what the Yankees committed to him.
When a hitter like LeMahieu gets lucky over a small sample like 2020, he can make a mockery of opposing pitchers. But the truth is, LeMahieu doesn’t need luck to be a productive hitter. He just happened to run into a lot of it and suddenly turned into a top-4 hitter in baseball. Will he ever reach that peak again? The evidence tells us no. But even without luck, LeMahieu remains a great offensive weapon. The fact that he will continue to call Yankee Stadium home bodes well for his productivity moving forward as well. LeMahieu has had his fair share of good luck, but he is also simply a very talented hitter.
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