Red Sox: The disappearance of utility man Brock Holt

The fall from All-Star to solid bench piece to an offensive liability has been gradual for Boston Red Sox utility man Brock Holt. What happened?

In 2015, the Boston Red Sox sent a lone All-Star to Cincinnati: Brock Holt. Their breakout super-utility man was sporting a 123 wRC+ through June 2015, fueled by a .288/.379/.429 slash line while spending time at every position with the exception of catcher. He was an invaluable piece to give the regulars a day off without subtracting any value from the lineup.

However, those days seem to be long gone. Holt continues to provide positional versatility, but with the cost of offensive dead weight.

Since the end of June 2015, his slash line sits at .247/.314/.334, good for a measly 75 wRC+. It’s been even worse in 2017. Holt as been as automatic an out as they come, slashing an anemic .170/.282/.205. That makes for a wRC+ of 35, roughly 35 percent of the production of an average league hitter.

So what happened to the high on-base, slash hitter that resembled Dustin Pedroia-lite? Well, not much.

After poring through the data, there isn’t a major shift in the way pitchers threw to Holt or the way he handled those pitches. The biggest discrepancy between “good” Holt (for purposes of this article, we’ll define that from 04/09/15 to 06/30/15) and “bad” Holt (from 06/30/15 to present) is BABIP. “Good” Holt was finding success at a rate of .370 on balls put in play, “bad” Holt has been hitting gaps at a .297 clip.

There’s a lot that goes into BABIP, but the two main factors are luck and quality of contact. If a player hits the ball harder, it’s more likely to land for a hit, but sometimes a bloop falls or a dribbler finds a hole.

For context, the league average BABIP always hovers around .300, so “bad” Holt isn’t finding an extraordinary amount of bad luck here. What’s more feasible is that “good” Holt was striking gold at an unsustainable rate.

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There is a slightly noticeable difference in quality of contact, however. “Good” Holt made 19.1% soft contact, 51.0% medium contact, and 29.9% hard contact. Meanwhile, “bad” Holt sported a 20.4% soft contact rate, 56.5% medium contact rate, and 23.1% hard contact rate. Basically, some of that hard contact was converted into mainly medium and some soft contact.

The biggest discrepancies on the quality of contact side are his line drive percentage plummeting from 27.6% to 20.7% and his infield fly ball percentage ballooning from 4.1% to 8.8%.

These are noticeable differences, but they hardly explain a nearly 50-point drop in wRC+.

But what’s happening on the pitcher side of things? How have they been approaching Holt differently? Again, the answer is not very differently.

These heatmaps, taken from Fangraphs.com, show the percentage of pitches in specific locations that Holt saw (“Good” Holt is on the left, “bad” Holt is on the right).

There isn’t a lot going on here, which is significant. Opposing pitchers haven’t found Holt’s kryptonite; their approach has been largely consistent, which means whatever’s going on lies primarily with Holt.

These heatmaps, also from Fangraphs.com, show Holt’s slugging percentage in each of those locations (“Good” Holt is on the left, “bad” Holt is on the right).

Like most hitters, Holt was never able to master hitting pitches spotted on the corners of the strike zone. But he used to make his living feasting on the down-the-middle mistakes, an ability he has since forgotten.

The relationship between a hitter and a pitcher is a delicate one – if the pitcher hits his spots, he usually wins. But if he makes a mistake, that’s when the hitter is supposed to come out advantageous. When Holt steps up to the plate, there’s no thought of “if I throw it here, he’ll hit it”. Thus, there’s no need for an adjustment on the pitcher’s part.

It sounds simple, but the difference between being an okay hitter and capitalizing on mistakes and being an okay hitter and letting those opportunities slip is the difference between “good” and “bad” Holt.

Next: Red Sox holding out for a postseason hero to lead them to World Series

Brock Holt was never a particularly dangerous hitter, but he was a smart one. The pitch recognition he once had needs to come back, or the -1.0 WAR he currently sports will continue to dive deeper.