Who would have thought that of the Nats Big Three core players CJ Abrams would be the only one not having a second half slump? If you’ve been tuned in to the Nats at all through the post-Davey/Rizzo era, and I wouldn’t blame you if you haven’t been, you’ve definitely noticed the troubles MacKenzie Gore and James Wood have had. If the Nats are going to have any hope for building a contender any time soon they’re going to need these two to figure things out fast.
For Gore, the main problem has been a steadily declining strikeout rate going from 37 percent in May, to 22 percent in June, to an awful 17 percent in July. Fewer strikeouts means more hitters getting on base which means more runs scored when someone gets a big hit, leading to his 131 DRA- in July.
The decline in strikeout rate is being driven by a decline a whiff rate (swing and miss) against not just one but all of Gore’s pitches. Gore’s most dangerous pitch is his fastball which at 95.4 MPH with an induced vertical break of 17 inches can be a nightmare for hitters at the top of the zone. Induced vertical break is one measure of how much a pitch defies the natural forces of gravity. A positive value is a pitch that falls at a slower rate than it would just due to gravity, a negative value falls at a faster rate, with a league average of 15.8 inches.
IVB alone is not enough to fool hitters, the true key measure is the Vertical Attack Angle or VAA. Zach Crizer at Yahoo has a great explanation on VAA with discussion from players and executives, but here are the basics: the vertical attack angle measures the vertical angle the ball makes when it crosses the plate. These values are all negative since an overhead pitch must fall, however just like IVB, some pitchers can better manipulate the VAA so that it drops less or more than the average fastball. VAA is a function of the velocity, IVB, and vertical release point of the pitch. Pitchers that release a fastball from a lower height are more likely to have a lower VAA as well as they’re not imparting as much downward trajectory with their throwing motion. There are two ways to be successful with VAA, one is to have a value around -4 degrees and live in the top of the zone, the other is to have a value around -6 degrees and live in the bottom of the zone. The average pitcher’s fastball has a VAA of -4.7 degrees, but Gore has an elite VAA of -4.3 degrees which allows him to live in the top of the strike zone generating more whiffs and weak contact as hitters swing under the pitch.
At least in theory that’s what should be happening and it is what happened early in the season. Gore rode his fastball to a high whiff rate (21 percent) and poor expected wOBA on contact (.362). Since a poor outing against the Dodgers on June 20th, he’s had much less success with a whiff rate of 15 percent and xwOBAcon of .412. The characteristics of the pitch have changed a little, his release point went from 5.7 inches vertically at 44 degrees to 5.6 in at 41 degrees, his IVB dropped from 17.3 in to 16.6 in, and his velocity dropped from 95.4 to 95.1 MPH, however his VAA is exactly the same at -4.3 degrees. And the change in vertical release point is likely intentional to help Gore maintain a great VAA, in the graph below you can see that he has been steadily dropping his vertical release point since 2024, likely due to the work he’s done with Sean Doolittle, who is a VAA expert both as a player and now a coach.
The change in fastball release point is also being followed by similar changes in his other pitches, so it’s also unlikely that he’s made it easier for hitters to pick out which pitch is coming that way.
One possible issue is his location. This chart shows the average vertical location of his fastball by month, with 3 feet being around the top of the strike zone, which is where Gore wants his fastball to go.
I will exercise some caution with this though as the drop for his one August game is pretty steep and slightly oversells how much lower July is. July’s 2.87 feet is nearly identical to April’s 2.86 feet and Gore had a 21.5 percent whiff rate on his fastball in April.
There is one other thing that could explain a sudden across the board drop in whiff rates and increase in hard contact despite his pitches not changing and that could be tipping. However, I checked some video from Gore’s July 30th start against the Astros and his glove position, arm, wrist, stance, and initiation all looked identical between his fastball and curveball and I would be surprised if he was tipping that the Nats would not have figured it out by now. I only include this to be as comprehensive as possible.
For Wood the problems are simpler, he’s swinging at more pitches out of the zone (32.6% in July vs. 24.3% in June), making way less contact in the strike zone (71.9% vs. 83.8%), and pounding the ball into the ground when he does make contact (56.5% ground balls vs. 47.7%). All that together had led to a startling spike in whiffs (40% in July) and strikeouts (also 40% in July).
What’s interesting is that despite the increase in swings out of the zone, Wood has not increased his swing rate in the strike zone at all (55.5% vs. 56.1%). So this is not the case of a hitter becoming more swing happy and suffering for it in his contact rates. Wood somehow is only doing worse in out of zone swings and in zone contact rate without impacting each stats’ opposite pair.
This year MLB has released bat tracking data for the first time giving us an opportunity to look at more granular changes like with Gore’s fastball release and shape. By averages, Wood has not had any drastic changes month-to-month in any of his swing metrics that would explain such a sudden slump. His bat speed, swing length, attack angle (the vertical angle the bat is relative to the ground when it would make contact with the ball) and attack direction (pull, opposite) all have stayed steady around his season average. However, looking specifically by pitch type a big difference pops up.
Against fastballs Wood’s attack direction increased by 3 degrees in July to 13.8 degrees. A typical range for an MLB hitter has a maximum of 10 degrees to the opposite field, at 13.8 degrees it suggests Wood is now often late on fastballs. That could be what is leading to his higher whiff rate and lower in-zone contact rate. The fastballs he’s facing don’t seem any harder than before, with a minimal difference in velocity (94 to 93.7 MPH) and average VAA actually getting easier going from -4.6 degrees to -4.9 degrees.
One last piece of data could complete the puzzle. So far in August, Wood’s out of zone swing rate is down to 20 percent. It’s possible that the extra swings and the contact rate issues were not occurring at the same time but in fact the former caused the latter. If Wood started the month swinging at extra pitches out of the strike zone, he could have attempted to solve that by waiting longer to decide to swing. That solves the swing issue but now makes him later on fastballs which is something he could not afford with an already opposite-heavy fastball approach. Now Wood needs to right the ship and find the balance he found early in the season of making swing decisions fast enough to time up fastballs while avoiding overswinging at pitches out of the zone.
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