Photo Credit: Joe Camporeale, USA Today Sports.
In the second installment of the deep dives, the people voted for a “Nelly Nukes” dive. The slugger has started hot with a mix of good power with a good contact approach, but is it sustainable? Well, let’s get into it.
As always, let’s start with the basics. Nelly’s slash line so far this season is .333/.385/.521 for an OPS of .905. That is great for a player who some tabbed to regress to the mean after a scorching hot start with the Royals last season. However, as we dive deeper into the numbers there are concerns that are hiding in plain sight.
Taking a look at pitch tracking, Nelly has slaughtered fastballs with a .458 average and a .750 SLG. which is great, but then we look to the other pitches. Against breaking pitches he is batting .222 with a .333 SLG and with offspeed pitches he is batting a paltry .167 with a .167 SLG. Now this was similar to last seasons numbers, but it is concerning once pitchers start throwing more non-fastballs to him.
The reason it is concerning is because even with this hot start Nelly has been the definition of boom or bust swinging. So far on the year, he has whiffed in 42.6% of swings taken. This is higher than last seasons whiff% of 33.7 and there is a key reason. Of the pitches he has faced this season, three pitches have over a 66% whiff rate. The curveball, sweeper and changeup. If we combine his average and slugging for all three pitches he has a .000 average with a .000 SLG. Let’s keep in mind he sees these three pitches 28.8% of the time.
That is concerning that over a quarter of the pitches Nelly sees is whiffed on at least two-thirds of the time. Nelly almost has a C- minus on these pitches and in this case C’s don’t get degrees. Speaking of degrees, let’s discuss Nelly’s launch angle this season. His average LA this season is 7.4, which is concerning. Currently, his main issue is grounding out 50% of the time.
Another issue, sort of, is his barrel rate being slightly below league average at 6.7%. The reason this isn’t a huge issue is because he has offset it with a rise in his sweet spot%. Last season he had a 31.3 sweet spot% and he has gotten it to 40% this season. To continue with the conflicting numbers, let’s look at his plate discipline numbers.
This is going to get ugly quickly, but here we go. This year Nelly has swung the bat less at 43.7%, compared to 50.1 last year. Let’s add detail to this by looking at zone swing% and zone contact%. Nelly’s zone swing% is nearly 10% lower this year at 62.8% with a zone contact% of 81.5%. This is really good for a slugger like Nelly, but then we get to the chase and contact rates. Nelly chases pitches out of the zone 31% of the time with a contact rate of 25%, thus leading to a bloated whiff% of 42.6.
One last note on this is the Nelly has also seen a 7% decrease in contact rate from last season. So, to sum up all the percentages, Nelly is good at swinging at pitches in the zone but when they are outside the zone he can’t hit anything.
Alright, as is always the case with the deep dives, there is some positive light. While he has conflicting numbers almost everywhere, the expected numbers like him and he has a good hard hit rate at 50%. Another key number is his splits against righties and lefties, specifically the lefties split. Last season he hit lefties at a slash line of .184/.259/.449 for an OPS of .708. This year, so far, he has hit .333/.385/.500 for an OPS of .885.
Another split he has done well in is with runners on-base and in scoring position posting a wRC+ of 128 and 142 in those categories. To finalize the numbers, his defense probably won’t be anything special but he hasn’t been a big detriment out in the corners posting a 0 DRS and -1 OAA.
Nelson Velazquez is off to a hot start with a ton of conflicting numbers, and he is a case where he might post a very odd analytical season if this continues. Even with a weird data set, Nelly Nukes is producing for the Royals. He is also making JJ Picollo look smart for the Jose Cuas trade.
