A True One Hit Wonder: Domonic Brown

A True One Hit Wonder

            Looking through my archive of articles I started looking at my first articles I wrote when I first started.  Besides being embarrassed that how they look it made me wonder about some of the guys I wrote about early on and how I praised them.  So today I’m going to start looking at some of the guys I looked at last year and see how they’ve improved or regressed and today’s case is defiantly the latter.

            Domonic Brown was once the top prospect in the Philadelphia Phillies system but struggled in the majors.  Last year looked to be his break out season and he sustained a decent slash line but as we all know a slash line doesn’t say everything.  So lets take a look and see what differences Brown has between last year and this season.

	BB/K	AVG	OBP	SLG	OPS	BABIP	ISO	HR’s	wOBA	wRC+
2014	0.42	.217	.271	.323	.594	.245	.106	5	.260	59
2013	0.40	.272	.324	.494	.818	.287	.222	27	.351	123
Career	0.46	.246	.309	.418	.727	.271	.171	147	.315	97

            The first thing I noticed is how the BB/K has actually improved, ever so slightly, from last year.  In fact he has reduced his K% from 18% last season to 17.4% this year and his BB% is up .1% which is an improvement at least.  So ends the positives about these stats since everything else looks horrific.  The biggest thing to me is that drop in OBP since Brown isn’t a major walker and his career OBP is only .309 but a .271 is beyond unacceptable for a regular player.  Now you could claim that the lower BABIP could mean he’s hitting into some bad luck since there’s a 40-point difference between last season and the current season, this is a valid point.  Considering stats where going to be looking at next I don’t see him actually making up that difference.  The power is just gone flat out gone; a dip in ISO of over 100 points from last season and 71 from his career is just bad news when your main strength was you power.  His wRC+ is actually the lowest one I’ve ever seen from a starting player ever, currently hitting 41% worse than the league in scoring runs.  This kind of production coming from a guy that last year was the middle of the order guy.  Bottom line is this is nowhere near what anyone expected of him and I had pretty low expectations for him in the first place.  Lets move on and take a look at what kind of balls he’s actually hitting and see what answers we get.

            Batted Balls

	GB/FB	LD%	GB%	FB%	HR/FB
2014	1.87	16.6%	54.4%	29.0%	7.9%
2013	1.22	22.8%	42.2%	34.7%	19.3%
Career	1.39	20.7%	46.4%	33.3%	13.7%

            Like I hinted at earlier the type of contact Brown is getting has changed dramatically.  The GB/FB rate is just so different and really telling of what is happening to a guy that I just mentioned isn’t walking less or striking out more and it’s the bane of all power hitters, weak contact.  He’s not hitting with any authority and the lowered LD% and FB% are evident of that.  The GB% though is the big worry; while not a slow player by any means Brown isn’t a speedster either so that means he’s just hitting into a lot of outs.

Plate Discipline

	O-Swing	Z-Swing	Swing	O-Contact	Z-Contact	Contact	F-Strike%	SwStr%
2014	31.3%	71.8%	48.8%	68.3%	85.1%	78.9%	66.0%	10.0%
2013	31.5%	76.1%	49.9%	66.2%	86.7%	79.1%	57.2%	10.2%
Career	30.7%	73.0%	48.5%	66.7%	87.0%	79.5%	59.6%	9.7%

            Funny enough Brown doesn’t seem to have a vastly different approach to his at bats compared to last year.  The only real differences that he’s had is a small decline in Z-Swing, but not anything note worthy, and an increase in F-Strike meaning he’s gotten a little more aggressive first pitch.  Now comparing his numbers to the average puts him in a different light.  He’s swinging outside the zone nearly 3% more of the time but also makes contact 3% more as well.  These numbers however don’t show the quality of contact he’s having but we’ll get to that soon.  In general he is swinging more than the rest of the league but makes less contact, except outside the zone.  Brown swings a lot and it’s gotten him in trouble more than he likes.

Hot/Cold Chars

Contact:

0%(1)	67%(6)	60%(10)	64%(11)	100%(1)
75%(8)	76%(49)	87%(38)	86%(21)	75%(4)
90%(21)	90%(69)	90%(71)	89%(18)	86%(7)
88%(16)	80%(46)	76%(58)	79%(24)	75%(4)
0%(5)	71%(14)	14%(14)	56%(9)	25%(4)

            From this chart we can see how often Brown makes contact and we can see he much rather have the ball up in the zone or down the center of the plate.  Once you get lower in the zone then he has a harder time making contact.  Much like we saw in Plate Discipline he seems to be able to get to the outside of the zone but most of that success is coming from 1 spot on the chart, center section outside the zone.  Overall though he doesn’t make a lot of consistent contact from what this chart shows us.  This lack of consistent contact might be where his issues are stemming, less contact or solid contact and he hits into more easy outs.

            Overall its easy to see that Domonic Brown has struggled and in a bad way.  The real question though, is this the real Domonic Brown or was it last years?  Is he somewhere in the middle?  Well from what we’ve seen Brown doesn’t pan out to be a contact hitter and his Plate Discipline is a little below average so he’s not likely to improve his BB%.  However he has actually dropped his K% which is a decent sign and his ability to make some contact outside the zone could be improved if he got on top of the ball more.