ASU Baseball: Kole Calhoun 2020 Breakdown
Baseball in 2020 has been an interesting ride. The season was shortened by more than 50%, and some teams were forced to take more than week-long hiatuses due to COVID-19 outbreaks. Some players struggled with the new format while others flourished, and then there is former Sun Devil and current Arizona Diamondback, Kole Calhoun, who proves 60 games could lead to some confusing stat lines.
When Calhoun was last visited, we talked about how statistically unlucky and inconsistent he had been through about 63% of the season, and I was expecting some type of tear to fix the “matrix” in some way… and it happened, in a good way too. In Calhoun’s final 22 games, he put a line of .247/.340/.597 and was awarded National League Player of the Week honors when he hit .458 with a 1.750 OPS before the final week of the season.
Through 54 games, the outfielder accumulated a 1.8 fWAR, set a new career-high in walk percentage (12.3%), and lowered his strikeout percentage from the year prior (25.6% to 21.9%), all while also putting up the best defensive numbers of his career. The former Devil also continues to show positive changes with his ground ball rate decreasing (37.5) and the fly-ball rate increasing (38.9). The batting average on balls in play conundrum did not end but did improve. Also, Calhoun’s fly-ball-to-home ratio improved to 28.6%, which is absolutely insane. 2020 saw the 2015 Gold Glover go to the opposite field only thirteen percent of the time, which has been years in the making, all while seeing his pull percentage skyrocket to 59%.
Will Calhoun’s success be repeated? I believe so.
Calhoun’s return for year two of the three-year deal will be a big test to see if these power numbers can hold up for 102 extra games, but if indicators such as the aforementioned fly ball rate and strikeout to walk ratios continue to improve, it becomes much harder to bet against him. The team around him may look different in some capacity after what was a very disappointing season for the snakes who went 25-35 in what was primed to be a much more competitive season. The Dbacks offense as a whole struggled this past season with an OPS+ of 87, good for fifth-worst in the MLB. Expect Calhoun to be a bright spot for Arizona next season.