Is Myles Straw horrible, or is he, possibly, adequate?
Myles Straw was a really, really bad hitter in 2020. Which line is Straw’s?
| Player | Age | G | PA | AB | R | H | 2B | 3B | HR | RBI | SB | CS | BB | SO | BA | OBP | SLG | OPS | OPS+ |
| A | 25 | 33 | 86 | 82 | 8 | 17 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 8 | 6 | 2 | 4 | 22 | 0.207 | 0.244 | 0.256 | 0.500 | 37 |
| B | 26 | 35 | 90 | 77 | 11 | 19 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 7 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 10 | 0.247 | 0.272 | 0.286 | 0.560 | 54 |
Ok, the stolen bases give it away (and the age, of course, if you look it up). Player A is Straw. Player B is 1992 Tom Glavine. Glavine was a “good hitter, for a pitcher”, meaning he was bad (really, really bad) but often didn’t completely embarrass himself – he actually had five years with as many plate appearances as 2020 Myles Straw, and a better OPS+ than Straw’s 2020 results. Chicks may dig the longball, but things are not off to a good start if I am comparing Myles Straw’s hitting to Tom Glavine’s. Granted, Glavine only had one career stolen base…
What the heck happened to him in 2020? Up until a couple days ago, I only mildly cared – I had no intention of drafting him in any fantasy draft this year. But he seems the odds-on favorite to be the starting CF for the Astros in 2021, and I found myself without a surplus of SBs in my most recent NFBC Draft Champions draft, so I pulled the trigger on Straw in the 22nd round (pick 318 – recent ADP has him at around pick 309). I did enough research prior to the pick to remind myself that pre-2020 Straw was a limited, but ok player, and possibly a viable source of OBP and SBs. Here is his acceptable batting line from 2019 (stats are from Baseball Reference – especially with the limited samples sizes, I am not getting more complicated than that… yet):
| Age | G | PA | AB | R | H | 2B | 3B | HR | RBI | SB | CS | BB | SO | BA | OBP | SLG | OPS | OPS+ |
| 24 | 56 | 128 | 108 | 27 | 29 | 4 | 2 | 0 | 7 | 8 | 1 | 19 | 24 | 0.269 | 0.378 | 0.343 | 0.721 | 92 |
That’s not bad. If that dude led off for a season, one gets 40 SBs and 135 runs, for pity’s sake, plus some chip-in RBIs and an acceptable batting average. That is more like a 1992 Vince Coleman than a 1992 Tom Glavine. Obviously, the runs total is a small-sample mirage (and also propped up by 14 pinch runner appearances), but you could knock down that total by 30% and still have a good number.
Which small-sample Myles Straw, 2019 or 2020, is the more real version? Can we tell? Probably not. But we can dive a bit into the stats to see what happened to Straw in 2020. To do that, let’s first hop over to Fangraphs to look at his plate discipline metrics.
| Season | Team | Level | O-Swing% | Z-Swing% | Swing% | O-Contact% | Z-Contact% | Contact% | Zone% | F-Strike% |
| 2019 | HOU | MLB | 20.50% | 55.50% | 35.60% | 80.30% | 91.90% | 88.10% | 43.20% | 56.30% |
| 2020 | HOU | MLB | 28.60% | 62.10% | 43.20% | 73.70% | 88.40% | 82.90% | 43.50% | 66.30% |
Well, that was easy: he swung more, in-zone and out-of-zone, and missed more, especially out of the zone. Pitchers also came after him more on the first pitch (First Pitch-Strike rate climbed from 56.3% to 66.3%), which possibly helped lead to his swinging more. This approach change (a combination of pitchers’ approach to him, as well as his approach) led to an increase in Straw’s K-rate (18.8% to 25.6%), and particularly led to the cratering of his walk rate (14.8% to 4.7%). Straw has always been a walker, back to his MiLB days, and nothing in his history resembles his 2020 plate discipline results:
| Season | Team | Level | PA | BB% | K% | SwStr% |
| 2015 | HOU | R | 248 | 11.70% | 20.60% | 21.00% |
| 2016 | HOU | A | 307 | 9.40% | 18.90% | 6.40% |
| 2016 | HOU | A+ | 90 | 12.20% | 18.90% | 5.80% |
| 2017 | HOU | A+ | 533 | 16.30% | 13.10% | 3.50% |
| 2017 | HOU | AA | 54 | 13.00% | 16.70% | 5.60% |
| 2018 | HOU | AA | 294 | 11.90% | 14.30% | 2.60% |
| 2018 | HOU | AAA | 304 | 12.50% | 19.70% | 4.00% |
| 2018 | HOU | MLB | 10 | 10.00% | 0.00% | 0.00% |
| 2019 | HOU | AAA | 313 | 10.20% | 16.00% | 4.70% |
| 2019 | HOU | MLB | 128 | 14.80% | 18.80% | 4.20% |
| 2020 | HOU | MLB | 86 | 4.70% | 25.60% | 7.40% |
Before going any farther, here is the obligatory “Small Sample Alert”! Well, I read somewhere that “With respect to sample size, it’s important to know that K% and BB% tend to “stabilize” in a relatively low number of PA. You don’t need more than about 60 PA for K% or 120 PA for BB% before the numbers start to become meaningful.” (K% and BB% | Sabermetrics Library (fangraphs.com)). Oh… So Straw’s 2020 K% was pretty stabilized, and his BB% rate was getting there. Is this predictive? In my opinion… maybe? The diagnosis is pretty simple: he wasn’t feared, so pitchers filled the zone (his zone rate was in the 82nd percentile of batters with at least 80 PAs), but especially on the first pitch to try to get the edge on him; and he swung too often outside the zone (61st percentile in O-Swing%), and not enough at pitches in the zone (25th percentile in Z-swing%). Basically, he was a mess. But he wasn’t a mess in 2019 (in a slightly bigger sample), and he was great in MiLB. Without taking the time to fully explore pitchers’ approaches to him in 2020 versus 2019, it seems like he can combat the approach changes he faced – his overall zone rate was the same in 2020 as in 2019, if he just swings at first-pitch strikes a bit more often, and at pitches out of the zone a bit less often (his contact rate, especially in-zone, was still very good in 2020). Easier said than done, of course, but if he does accomplish it, is there a reason to think this won’t work? Yes, because in addition to his plate discipline being worse in 2020, his batted ball metrics also took a bad turn.
| Season | Team | Level | Events | EV | maxEV | LA | Barrels | Barrel% | HardHit | HardHit% |
| 2019 | HOU | MLB | 85 | 84.7 | 102.8 | 8.9 | 1 | 1.20% | 14 | 16.50% |
| 2020 | HOU | MLB | 60 | 87.4 | 102.6 | 15.9 | 1 | 1.70% | 13 | 21.70% |
Wait. Straw’s average exit velocity increased from 84.7 mph to 87.4 mph, and his StatCast HardHit% went up. We need to get a bit more granular to explain the badness (the clue is in the launch angle gong from 8.9 degrees to 15.9 degrees). Generally, I love a hitter with an average launch angle of around 15 degrees. Freddie Freeman, as an example:
| Season | Team | Level | Events | EV | maxEV | LA | Barrels | Barrel% | HardHit | HardHit% |
| 2015 | ATL | MLB | 320 | 90.7 | 110 | 14.4 | 33 | 10.30% | 145 | 45.30% |
| 2016 | ATL | MLB | 423 | 91.3 | 114.6 | 17.2 | 55 | 13.00% | 190 | 44.90% |
| 2017 | ATL | MLB | 347 | 89.7 | 109 | 16 | 45 | 13.00% | 145 | 41.80% |
| 2018 | ATL | MLB | 492 | 89.1 | 109.6 | 14.5 | 45 | 9.10% | 196 | 39.80% |
| 2019 | ATL | MLB | 472 | 89.7 | 112 | 14.3 | 55 | 11.70% | 200 | 42.40% |
| 2020 | ATL | MLB | 177 | 92.4 | 109.3 | 17.2 | 26 | 14.70% | 96 | 54.20% |
| Total | – – – | MLB | 2231 | 90.2 | 114.6 | 15.4 | 259 | 11.60% | 972 | 43.60% |
Myles Straw is not Freddie Freeman. But that isn’t fair. At all. Freeman isn’t a monster of exit velocity, but nearly nobody hits the ball hard enough at around an ideal launch angle as much as he does. So how abut another of my favorite 15-degree LA players, a lower-power guy, Whit Merrifield:
| Season | Team | Level | Events | EV | maxEV | LA | Barrels | Barrel% | HardHit | HardHit% |
| 2016 | KCR | MLB | 241 | 88.2 | 107.1 | 12.2 | 6 | 2.50% | 84 | 34.90% |
| 2017 | KCR | MLB | 507 | 87.6 | 110.5 | 16.4 | 23 | 4.50% | 149 | 29.40% |
| 2018 | KCR | MLB | 526 | 87 | 106.4 | 16.9 | 22 | 4.20% | 163 | 31.00% |
| 2019 | KCR | MLB | 559 | 87.1 | 104.8 | 15.6 | 19 | 3.40% | 163 | 29.20% |
| 2020 | KCR | MLB | 216 | 86.1 | 105.8 | 15.8 | 11 | 5.10% | 59 | 27.30% |
| Total | – – – | MLB | 2049 | 87.2 | 110.5 | 15.8 | 81 | 4.00% | 618 | 30.20% |
Merrifield is pretty low power, but he has a lot more power than Straw, and as I detailed here, to hit home runs Merrifield has to pull the ball. Even if Straw manages to hit a few balls in the air at 95+mph, does he pull it when he hits it in the air? No. Here is his 2019-2020 spray chart for batted balls greater than 15 degrees (with Merrifield’s for comparison):
If you like numbers better than pictures, according to Fangraphs, Straw pulled exactly 1 of his 49 flyballs in 2019-2020. So, to cut to the chase (after that meander, I appreciate it if you are still reading), we could have just looked at this:
| Season | Tm | PA | GB/FB | LD% | GB% | FB% | IFFB% | HR/FB | IFH% | BUH% | Pull% | Cent% | Oppo% | Soft% | Med% | Hard% |
| 2019 | HOU | 128 | 1.67 | 22.90% | 48.20% | 28.90% | 4.20% | 0.00% | 10.00% | 0.00% | 22.40% | 41.20% | 36.50% | 17.60% | 50.60% | 31.80% |
| 2020 | HOU | 86 | 0.84 | 22.00% | 35.60% | 42.40% | 4.00% | 0.00% | 14.30% | 0.00% | 31.70% | 30.00% | 38.30% | 10.00% | 63.30% | 26.70% |
Straw’s GB/FB ratio went from 1.67 in 2019 to 0.84 in 2020. Flyballs are very nearly automatic outs for Straw – four doubles and three triples in 50 batted balls (and a few flair singles) in the > 15 degrees sample, and one of his 2019 triples was with Jorge Soler in right field and the other was with Domingo Santana, and both could have been caught (probably should have, at least in the Soler case). If you delve through StatCast, you can find that Straw generally does great up through 19 degrees launch angle. Whether by design, or just being “off,” Straw hit too many balls at higher than that launch angle in 2020.
So, yeah, Straw was a horrible mess in 2020, both in his plate discipline and his batted ball metrics. And the two may well have gone hand-in-hand. But in 2019, and in his MiLB career, I think Straw has shown just enough hitting ability to make his skillset work. Hopefully with a full Spring Training, Straw gets the needed reps to get his approach locked in with an average launch angle around 10 degrees, and can then make the necessary adjustments to attack pitchers pounding the zone on him in 2021. If so, Straw could be at least adequate in 2021, and my 22nd round Draft Champions pick could pay off.
Jay Stellmach's Fantasy Baseball Musings 