Is There Any Hope for an Aging Yuli Gurriel?

Longtime Houston Astros first baseman Yuli Gurriel is floundering in his age-38 season.

Yuli Gurriel has been an important member of the Houston Astros’ core throughout the greatest run of success in franchise history. He has helped them win four division titles, three AL pennants, and one World Series championship. 

From 2017 to 2021, Gurriel hit .295 with an .811 OPS. That’s especially impressive for a player in his mid-thirties playing Major League Baseball for the first time in his professional career.

Last year, at 37 years old, he played arguably the best season of his career, winning the AL batting title and a Gold Glove Award. He hit .312 with 10 RBI in the postseason.

The 2022 campaign, unfortunately, has marked a sharp decline. Gurriel has followed up his strong 2021 with the worst season of his career. He is batting .246 with a 92 wRC+. Those would be mediocre offensive numbers for anyone, and they are especially bad for a first baseman. 

Were Gurriel a younger player, it would be easier to write this season off as an unlucky break. Hitters don’t usually go from batting title champions to replacement level players overnight. At 38 years old, however, it’s hard not to think the Astros first baseman is simply running out of gas.

So, is there any hope for Gurriel? Are there any signs he might bounce back from this disappointing season, or he is on an ever-accelerating path to retirement? Let’s take a look.

Yuli Gurriel puts his arm around Houston Astros teammate Alex Bregman / © Troy Taormina-USA TODAY Sports

First things first, Gurriel still has his manager’s support. He might be struggling this season, but you wouldn’t know it from his playing time. Dusty Baker continues to start him regularly. Even with new addition Trey Mancini on the roster, Gurriel remains the everyday first baseman, and lately he has been the everyday two-hole hitter too.

Perhaps it is just stubbornness or too much veteran loyalty on Baker’s part, but for what it’s worth, the Astros’ manager clearly still believes in his veteran first baseman. 

In Baker’s defense, Gurriel has been on a good run as of late. In his past 14 games, he has 18 hits. He is batting .322 with a 122 wRC+. It has been a promising stretch. 

Even more promising, it’s not the only good run he’s had this season. Gurriel has had many 14-game stretches with above-average offensive numbers. In several short bursts, he has been able to replicate his success from years past.

The graph below shows Gurriel's performance at the plate in every 14-game period of the season. Each time the line goes above 100 represents a stretch of above-average production.

Yuli Gurriel's 14-game rolling wRC+, per FanGraphs / via FanGraphs

The plentiful hot streaks are a positive sign for Gurriel. Clearly, he hasn’t completely lost it at the plate. The problem, as the graph illustrates, is what comes in between those hot streaks. For as many good runs as Gurriel has gone on, he has gone into an equal number of slumps. 

Hot streaks don’t do much good when they’re always followed up by periods of utter ineptitude. And speaking of utter ineptitude...

Over the last month of the 2020 season, Gurriel fell into one of the worst slumps of his career. He hit .156/.176/.219 during the final 27 games of the year. His wRC+ was one. One. League average, keep in mind, is 100.

Following that dreadful performance, there were certainly some arguing Gurriel was dead in the water. Yet he bounced back the following year and looked as good as he ever had. Might he be able to do that again?

While it's not completely out of the question, the underlying numbers look very different now than they did two years ago. In 2020, Gurriel was the victim of a criminally low BABIP – the third lowest mark in the American League. He was hitting as many hard hit balls and barrels as ever, but they just weren't dropping in for hits.

In 2022, however, Gurriel's hard hit rate has plummeted, as has his average exit velocity. He is also swinging more (and missing more) at pitches outside the strike zone. Diminishing power and worse plate discipline are not a good combination.

Most significantly, his poor performance in 2022 has come over a much larger sample size. He already has 460 plate appearances this year, compared to 230 in the pandemic-shortened season.

While his 2020 struggles turned out to be nothing serious, it doesn’t look like the same can be said this time around. 

Gurriel, for now, still has his manager’s support, thanks in part to some hot hitting over a handful of good stretches. The cracks are starting to appear, however, and the first baseman is starting to show his age. 

The Astros veteran may be approaching the end of the line. And if he is, Gurriel has a pretty impressive career to look back on.  

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