Thursday afternoon, the Indians lost another close game, which is the sort of thing I have to presume they find awful maddening. Among the few bright spots was Michael Brantley, who batted four times and wound up with a homer and a walk. Said homer was all of the Indians' offense, and it did come close to holding up. Brantley's been outstanding on a team that's underachieved.
Let's stick with the same baseball game for a moment. In the game, Matt Adams struck out swinging three times. Nick Swisher struck out swinging two times, and so did Roberto Perez. I don't bring this up to say anything about Adams, Swisher, or Perez. Rather, it just seems like an appropriate lead-in to this astonishing fact: Brantley has struck out swinging two times all season.
What's taking place for Brantley isn't a breakthrough. Brantley's breakthrough happened last year, following seasons of gradual development. He wound up a participant in the All-Star Game, and he finished third in the voting for the American League MVP. What's taking place is a continuation, a demonstration that Brantley doesn't intend to return to what he was before as an almost impossibly average ballplayer. Brantley doesn't have a single flashy skill. His team is threatening to drop out of the race before the season's half over. The ingredients are there for Brantley to become a forgotten star. Consider yourself urged to not forget him.
So far this season, Brantley has been a top-15 hitter, a hair behind Mike Trout and Joc Pederson. If you expand the window to the start of last season, Brantley's been the fifth-best hitter in the game, between Jose Abreu and Andrew McCutchen. There's nothing about his results that seems particularly unsustainable. His improved power is almost all to the same area, but in that way, Brantley is sort of an outfield equivalent of Kyle Seager. More than anything else, Brantley's been able to combine a quick and smooth swing with a smart approach. He hasn't meaningfully altered his swing. It just seems like he's always getting smarter.
There are a few things you can look at from this season's first several weeks. Brantley is sitting on four home runs, five strikeouts, and 13 walks. He owns baseball's highest rate of contact when he swings, whiffing about once per 25 attempts. Rob Neyer has written here and everywhere about what he's termed the Strikeout Scourge, and the league is aware of the pattern. Strikeouts have bordered on getting out of control, and the league wants to be able to rein them in. Brantley's trying to do it all himself. Brantley isn't impossible to strike out, but he strikes out about as often as players that now-dead people watched before they passed on.
Brantley, of course, has the league's lowest strikeout rate. I like that as a fun fact, but I like the next fun fact even more. It's evident that Brantley is tremendously skilled at taking the bat to the baseball. How might we best show off his bat control? I calculated in-play rate, which is the rate of hitting the ball fair with swing attempts as a denominator. For example, the league average is 42%. That means that, 42% of the time, when an average hitter swings, he hits the ball somewhere between the lines.
Third place right now? Andrelton Simmons, at 55%.
Second place right now? Angel Pagan, at 57%.
And first place? Brantley, at 70%.
The gap between first and second place is bigger than the gap between second and 61st place. No one's controlled the bat quite like Brantley. And while this isn't a leaderboard that's topped by all of the best hitters in the game, the thing about it is Brantley hasn't simply hit the ball fair -- he's hit the ball hard and fair, with incredible frequency. It's an unusual skill, and an increasingly desirable one.
Brantley, though, isn't just about his bat control. Ben Revere doesn't strike out very much, but he also doesn't walk very much, because he swings early and he puts the ball in play. Brantley is managing to draw walks while still swinging early when he feels like it's right. The message here being, Brantley's armed with a good and discerning eye. You can see it in his ability to work counts.
This is another fun fact. So far, of all the pitches Brantley's seen, more than 26% of them have come in hitter-friendly counts. The league average is about 17%. Not only is this, for Brantley, a step forward from a season ago, it's also the highest rate in baseball. Brantley has worked in good counts more than anybody else. Some would argue this is half of the hitting process.
And the reason it works so well for Brantley is that he goes up there hunting fastballs, so he's at his best in fastball situations. This season, every single one of Brantley's extra-base hits has come against fastballs, sinkers, or cutters. It's not that he's helpless against offspeed pitches, because he isn't. His numbers would look worse if he were. It's that he's able to get himself into situations that work to his advantage. Brantley can selectively hit for power because he has opportunities to look for pitches.
If you watch Brantley, he doesn't have the wow factor. That comes into play only when you take an objective look at all that Brantley is able to do. He was already outstanding a season ago, and this year he seems at least as good. Yet there are increasingly positive signs. He's getting into more hitter-friendly counts. He's hitting even more baseballs fair. He's hitting even more baseballs, period. Things have just clicked for Brantley, and we're to the point where he's not as far behind Trout as a hitter as your immediate reaction would have you believe. They don't share the same strengths, but it's tough to identify Brantley's weakness.
The point's pretty simple. Michael Brantley? Don't forget about him, no matter what the rest of his teammates do. Brantley's exactly the sort who could become the most underrated player in baseball. There's no good reason to just let that happen. I'd like to think we're all better than that.
