What is going on with Ozzie Albies?
The Atlanta Braves just escaped the month of May in which they went 15-14, but still were able to maintain a 3.5 game lead in the standings.
There is reason to be excited for the Braves, but seeing them barely play over .500 in the month of May is a bit concerning. Although there have been quite a few bright spots on the roster, there are some old friends who are struggling this year.
What is going on with Ozzie Albies?
Ozzie Albies is an extremely fun player to watch, and his teammates seem to love being around him. He also is on one of the most team friendly deals in the entire league. So, if we look at dollars spent vs production, it is safe to say that the Braves are in the green.
However, in terms of what we are used to seeing from Albies, his numbers are down this year.
His career slash line before this season was .271/.322/.470. This equates to an OPS+ of 106 (6.0 percent better than league average). He also has 23 career defensive runs saved (DRS), 13.8 Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR), 17 Outs Above Average (OAA), and 12 Runs Saved Above Average (RAA). Just as a refresher, a 0 in OAA, UZR, DRS, and RAA would all be considered league average.
He has also been good on the base paths for his career. If you look at Ultimate Base Running, which factors in all base running outside of steals, he had a career 14.1 prior to this season. Again, a 0 would be league average.
He also had a career average of 3.7 Wins Above Replacement (WAR) per 150 games played before this season started.
So far this season, he is on pace for 2.67 WAR per 150 games. That’s a full 1+ WAR drop-off. So, what is causing it?
Defense matters
First, his defense has taken a huge hit over the past two seasons. We are seeing drop-offs almost across the board on defense. As far as DRS goes, he has fluctuated between -1 and 1 every year since 2020, so that is not anything new. However, he did have 9 DRS as recently as 2019 and 13 in 2018.
His main issue has been his range. Prior to 2022, he had a career UZR of 15.2, and now he has a career 13.0. He has accumulated a -2.2 UZR in his last 120 games. To put that in perspective, he has lost 14.47% of his total range value for his entire career in less than a full season worth of work. Another way to look at it is over his career he averages 3.4 UZR per 150 games. In 2022 he averaged -5.6, and in 2023 he is averaging -2.3.
Remember, the limits on the shift did not start until this year, so we can’t blame the shift for his drop off in 2022.
OAA and RAA have been bad for him this season as well. Prior to 2023, he has 17 OAA, now he has 11 career OAA due to already accumulating -6 (that is not a typo). For reference, he had 4 OAA last season, even with his bad range. He has only had one other season with negative OAA, and that was -3 in a full season in 2019.
RAA also rates him bad at -4. Same story as OAA, this is only his second season with a negative output.
Base running
Base running is hard to see with naked eye as to how well a player is doing outside of steals, or the occasional base running blunder. There is more to it besides speed as well.
UBR helps us see how a player is doing in comparison to his peers on all base running outside of just steals. So far this year, Albies has a UBR of 0.9. This is above average, but it has dropped-off from the last two years. In 2021, Albies had a whopping 4.1, and in only 64 games in 2022 he had a 2.1. Again, Albies is not a bad baserunner, but we are seeing a drop-off.
Hitting
We already pointed out his career slash of .271/.322/.470 (106 OPS+) prior to this season. This year it has dropped-off to a .251/.294/.465, which equates to an OPS+ of 102. In terms of adjusting for offense across the league, Albies has seen a 4.0 percent drop off in production.
So, what is causing this? From a very high level, we can see right off the bat (no pun intended. Okay, just a little) that Albies is struggling to get on base. A .294 OBP is bad. Ever heard of the Mendoza line for batting average being .200? OBP’s version of that is .300.
To put it in perspective: we can see that of all qualified hitters, Albies is ranked 145th. That’s right, 144 qualified hitters are getting on base more often than Albies.
Albies has always had massive platoon splits. For his career he has hit lefties .337/.363/.580, which is good for a 137 OPS+ (37 percent better than league average). But, against RHP he has generally struggled with a career .244/.304/.429 and 86 OPS+ against them.
In 2021 (his last full season), it looked like he may have turned things around against RHPs with a .237/.296/.454, which was good for a 104 OPS+. However, this season has been bad.
This season, Albies is having the biggest platoon split gap of his career. He is hitting lefties at an elite level of .424/.433/.773 which equates to a 215 OPS+. For reference, Aaron Judge, who leads MLB in total OPS+, has a 195. However, Albies is struggling mightily against RHP with a .175/.238/.329 that is good for a 57 OPS+. That is 43 percent below league average.
This may not seem terrible because he is crushing lefties. However, there are a considerably larger amount of RHP in MLB than LHP. In fact, only 29.0 percent of Albies’ plate appearances have been against lefties this year.
In a nutshell: for less than a third of his plate appearances, Albies hits at an MVP level, but for the other plate appearances you could grab just about any MLB hitter across the league and odds point to them having more success.
If we break it down even more specifically, it is because he is having his worst year against the fastball vs RHP in his career. He currently has a batting average of .203 and slugging of .359. He has never had a batting average lower than .237 against them. As far as slugging goes, he has never had one below .486.
What is interesting is when you see this, it may be easy to think “he must be chasing the pitch more”, or “he must be swinging and missing more”. Neither of these are the case. In fact, at 23.8 percent of the time, he is chasing fastballs against RHP at the lowest rate of his career. In terms of whiffing, he is swinging and missing against the same pitch 18.6 percent of the time, which is the second lowest of his career (2020).
What it really comes down to is he is not making quality contact. Barrel percentage is a good way to measure quality contact. Against fastballs from RHP, Albies has a barrel percentage of 5.6 percent, which is the second worst of his career.
To put this in perspective, from 2020-2022 he had barrel percentages of 21.9, 10.7, and 9.1 respectively.
The difference between 9.1 and 5.6 is a 38.5 percent drop-off.
To sum it up
Albies has two specific areas that has really hurt him this year. First, his range defensively has decreased drastically. Second, his splits against RHP have gotten so bad, that it almost is not even worth playing him against them.
If Albies can figure out how to make quality contact against the fastball against RHP, there is some hope that we can see the Ozzie of old (at least with the bat).
Here is to hoping that Ozzie Albies can return to All-Star form.
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