Where Has Michael Conforto Improved At The Plate?

The New York Mets have arrived at Monday’s off-day on a high note thanks to a complete team win to take Sunday’s rubber match against the Washington Nationals. Good pitching, solid defense, and enough hitting allowed New York to beat its division rival 4-0, and while a 9-8 record isn’t necessarily something to brag about, it has them atop the National League East standings for the time being.

There have been signs of life in different areas of the roster that have been mostly quiet for the season’s first three-and-a-half weeks. One example is Michael Conforto looking more like himself again, especially as he broke the longest home run drought of his MLB career over the weekend with his first dinger of 2021. After just one extra-base hit over his first nine games (a double), he’s collected four over his most recent seven games (three doubles, one homer).

We’re not even a month into a season that’s back to being the six-month marathon we’re used to witnessing. A lot of things can happen throughout the spring and summer, and Conforto has built up enough of a track record for us to expect him to eventually get right and be the hitter we’ve seen in the past.

Either way, slashing .214/.333/.339 with a 99 wRC+ through 66 plate appearances is a tough start. Especially since he’s playing on a team that’ll need him to perform, especially since he plays in New York, and especially since free agency is seemingly on the horizon. Even with him showing signs of life at the plate over the past week, some of his advanced statistics quickly show what exactly was going on.

Plate Discipline Has Been On Track…

The shortened 2020 campaign was of the breakout variety for Conforto because he put up the numbers many of us were waiting for. He slashed .322/.412/.515 with nine home runs, 31 RBI, and 40 runs scored in 233 plate appearances, which resulted in a career-best 157 wRC+. Within this performance, his plate discipline looked similar to years prior, as well.

Conforto posted a 10.3% walk rate, to go along with a 24.5% strikeout rate. It was the fifth straight season his walk rate was in the double digits, and it was also the third straight year his strikeout rate was south of 25.0%. When looking at his start to 2021, his numbers in these specific categories are within the same ballpark — he currently owns a 9.1% walk rate and a 22.7% strikeout rate.

That’s good to see, and it’s backed up by comparing his chase rate (27.7% in ’20, 26.6% in ’21) and swing rate on strikes (68.6% in ’20, 67.9% in ’21) to last year. Even as Conforto struggled through the start of this season, it doesn’t appear he tried doing too much with regard to his approach. That’s good to see, and it makes sense. While we’d all still notice this type of slump if it happened in the middle of July, it’s always a little more pronounced in April because stat lines are far from stabilized.

…But His Contact Wasn’t

After posting a career-low 11-degree launch angle last season, that number is currently sitting at 8.4, which shouldn’t at all be shocking since he currently owns a 53.7% ground-ball rate, a 24.4% line-drive rate, and just a 22.0% fly-ball rate. While Conforto ended 2020 with a career-low 28.0% fly-ball rate, we can be reasonably certain that these numbers will even out — he’s never finished a season with a ground-ball rate higher than 43.8%, which happened in 2018.

FanGraphs’ quality-of-contact metrics are saying the left-handed hitter isn’t far off from last year’s performance for soft-hit rate (14.5% in ’20, 14.6% in ’21) or hard-hit rate (36.6% in ’20, 34.1% in ’21). More specifically, though, there are two areas of Conforto’s profile that can explain some of his early-season struggles: the direction of his contact and how often he’s making contact in and out of the strike zone.

As Keith Hernandez points out repeatedly, Conforto is at his best when he’s spraying baseballs all over the field, and especially when he’s using left-center field. He did a great job of that in 2020, as his pull rate (32.4%), up-the-middle rate (39.3%), and his oppo rate (28.3%) were all on par with his All-Star performance in 2017. So far this season, he’s been much more pull happy (43.9% pull rate) and not using the opposite field nearly as much (19.5% oppo rate).

This could be a by-product of him pressing a bit and trying to make stuff happen. As he continues building upon the momentum he’s already created, good things will continue to happen.

Remember when I mentioned earlier that his chase rate and swing rate on strikes were on par with 2020? Well, his contact in those situations has been anything but similar. His 77.8% contact rate on balls is 20 percentage points higher than last year (57.8%), and it ranks among the highest rates in baseball prior to Monday’s games. Meanwhile, his contact rate on strikes is just 75.0%, which is nearly a 12-percentage-point drop from 2020’s 86.8% mark.

Headed In The Right Direction

Yes, we’re almost a month into the season, but it’s still very early. There are many statistics that need more time to stabilize so we can glean legitimate conclusions from them. Conforto’s contact rate outside the strike zone is absurdly high, but he’s also never finished a season with that number higher than 63.4% (in 2019). He’s also never finished a season with a contact rate on strikes percentage lower than 81.5% (in 2017).

Just looking at his past seven games, where he’s slashed .280/.357/.520 with a 143 wRC+, the things we’ve mentioned above have already begun experiencing positive regression. While his 52.6% ground-ball rate during this period of time is still high, he’s been going up the middle (47.4%) and the opposite way (26.3%) much more often. And, most importantly, he’s making contact within the strike zone (84.6%) much more often than he has been outside the strike zone (63.2%).

We all know the type of production Scooter is capable of providing the Mets. He just needed time to work out of his funk. It appears he’s climbing himself out, and to have that continue, the execution of his plate approach needs to remain similar to how it has over the past week.