Edwin Encarnacion and Yan Gomes: The Slow Starters

Edwin Encarnacion and Yan Gomes have started slow out of the gates for the Cleveland Indians. What can fans expect from the duo going forward?

It wouldn’t be April without baseball fans taking the opportunity to panic over slow starting players. The Cleveland Indians have a couple slow starters of their own in Edwin Encarnacion and Yan Gomes. We take a look at whether fans should be ready to hit the panic button.

Edwin Encarnacion

Of course the Indians’ biggest free agent signing ever has gotten off to a slow start. Encarnacion has a long track record of big time production, but that won’t prevent fans from worrying at least a little bit.

The red flag for Encarnacion is obvious: he’s striking out at a 31.2 percent rate. One of Encarnacion’s calling cards is he produces big power with only modest strikeout rates; he never posted a strikeout rate above 20 percent since he joined the Toronto Blue Jays in 2010.

The other, smaller area concern is that Encarnacion is hitting more balls on the ground. His fly ball rate is just barely over 40 percent, which would be a first for him since 2006. Both the strikeout rate increase and fly ball decrease are continuing trends that began in 2015, which could point to a player who is beginning to slow with age.

But nothing here trumps Encarnacion’s track record to the point that anyone should be concerned. The strikeout rate may seem alarming, but it is likely nothing more than a timing issue in the early going that will correct itself before too long. The decrease in fly balls is also small enough that it should not be a cause for concern.

Throw in the fact that Encarnacion is continuing to hit the ball hard (48.9 percent hard contact rate in 2017, 37.6 percent rate in 2016), and there is no reason to think Encarnacion won’t get things going before too long.

Yan Gomes

Injury and ineffectiveness has been the story the past two years for Yan Gomes. He’s essentially been unplayable on offense, but his defense is behind the plate is so strong that all he only needs to reach competence on offense to be a valuable contributor.

First, it’s difficult to be a good offensive player when you never walk, and Gomes does not take many walks. Even when he was swinging well in 2013 and 2014 he was only walking in about 5 percent of his plate appearances. Gomes walked even less in 2015 and 2016, about 3 percent of the time.

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The issue with taking so few walks is twofold. One is that the player becomes completely reliant on batting average to get on base. Two is that it means the hitter is swinging at a lot of pitches he should be letting go, which makes it harder to make quality contact.

It takes a gifted player to walk in less than 5 percent of his plate appearances and still be a valuable offensive contributor. Gomes hasn’t shown he’s that kind of player. It is encouraging to see him boost his 2017 walk rate up all the way to 9.4 percent thus far.

While it likely won’t stay up there, it’s critical for him to display some modicum of patience at the plate.

He’s also cut his strikeout rate from 26.1 percent in 2016 to 20.8 percent thus far in 2017. These may not seem like huge changes, but they are meaningful nonetheless.

Gomes’ BABIP will come up from .242, and he’s hitting the ball a little harder so far this year (32.4 percent hard hit rate). The problem is that Gomes is hitting the ball on the ground a ton. Over half of his balls in play have been worm burners, which is not good for a player with catcher speed.

Hitting the ball hard is nice, but since Gomes hardly walks, he needs to hit for some power to make up for his subpar OBP. To get back to his pre-2015 level, Gomes will have to combine the hitting the ball hard with lifting it in the air.

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Hitting the ball hard in the air is easier said than done, but it’s the best path for Gomes to rediscover his offensive value.