Is there hope for Eddie Rosario?

Breaking down Eddie Rosario's 2023 and if the Atlanta Braves can expect improvement from the leftfielder

Eddie Rosario was a postseason hero in 2021 for the Atlanta Braves. However, since that point his has fallen off pretty hard.

A large chunk of last season can essentially be written off due to him having eye issues that eventually led to him need a procedure done.

That being said, he is healed this season and he is producing behind the plate at a below average rate. If you look at his adjusted OPS (OPS+), he has an 87 which is approximately 13.0 percent below league average.

What is Eddie Rosario struggling with?

The first area that draws the eye is that he is not drawing walks. In fact, his 3.3 percent walk rate is in the bottom 1 percent of MLB. For reference, Rosario had a 6.3 percent walk rate last year and that was his lowest since 2019. His 25.6 percent strikeout rate is also the second highest of his career. His worst was 25.7 percent way back in 2016.

One reason why Rosario seemed like a good extension candidate at the time of his extension, beyond him being a postseason hero, is that for his career he has hit RHP pretty well. He has a career OPS+ of 105 (5 percent better than average) against RHP and had a 113 as recently as 2021.

That has not been the case this year. So far he has an OPS+ of 82 against RHP. 88.1 percent of his at bats have been against RHP this year, so it makes sense why his overall numbers are subpar for him.

Since he is struggling against RHP, we can dig into the specifics.

We already talked about his strikeouts, but what is interesting is how they are happening. Rosario is struggling with pitches that are inside the strike zone. He has a swing and miss rate of 25.6 against fastballs thrown by RHP inside the strike zone, which is the highest of his career. In 2021 (the year prior to his eye issue) his rate was much lower at 16.7 percent.

It is the same story with off-speed pitches against RHP. He is swinging and missing 28.3 percent of the time at pitches inside the strike zone. This is the highest of his career. The last two seasons were 16.7 percent and 16.9 percent respectively.

Keep in mind, these are pitches that he is not even chasing outside of the zone. This has resulted in more strikes, which over long periods of time can put him in worse situations as a hitter. Whether that is more strikeouts, or having to be more defensive as a hitter due to being behind in counts.

Not only is he missing pitches inside the zone, he is also chasing pitches outside of the zone at an extremely high rate. In fact, his chase rate is in the worst one percent of MLB.

Since we are focusing on RHP and how he is struggling so bad against them, let’s look at how bad he is chasing pitches thrown by them.

He is chasing off-speed pitches 51.1 percent of the time. The only time it has been worse is in 2022, when he had his eye issues. He is chasing breaking pitches 49.2 percent of the time, and he is chasing fastballs 40.9 percent of the time.

So, not only is he missing pitches inside the zone at a high rate, he is also not being patient and swinging at bad pitches quite often.

Is there a glimmer of hope?

To be fair, when he does make contact with fastballs against RHP, he is hitting them well. His average exit velocity of 94.1 MPH against the pitch is the highest of his career, and he has a .311 batting average and .595 slugging percentage against them.

His fastball PutAway percentage, which is the percent in which that pitch is thrown to strike him out is a palatable 16.3 percent, which is much lower than the 27.3 percent on breaking pitches, and 23.5 on off-speed. Of course, that is not all on him because pitch selection from the opponents plays a part, as well. However, it is a good sign that it is not all bad news on fastballs vs RHP.

The same positive story cannot be said for breaking pitches or off-speed pitches against RHP, but at least he is seeing a fastball 45.2 percent of the time when facing righties.

A huge positive for Eddie is that although he has not faced LHP very often, he is hitting them very well.

His xwOBA on fastballs (.425), and breaking pitches (.274) are the best of his career, and his .445 xwOBA against off-speed is the second highest of his career.

This has resulted in an OPS+ of 153 (53.0 percent better than league average) against southpaws. Of course, 26 plate appearances is an extremely small sample size, but the underlying metrics show that it is no fluke.

Eddie Rosario is not having a terrible season offensively, but it is below average, and with his below average defense he has a -0.4 bWAR and -0.1 fWAR.

Hopefully he can figure out the adjustments he needs to make at the plate against RHP and get value into the positive category for the Atlanta Braves.

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