Contact Rate Risers and Fallers for Week 6: Buy or Sell?

Welcome to Contact Rate Risers and Fallers! Our premium tools allow us to get out ahead of trends in player performance, including contact rate. Every Wednesday, we'll be looking at some players that have seen an increase in contact rate and some that have seen it decline.

Contact rate can foretell a player's batting average and general hitting statistics, and any drastic change could signal a shift in performance. Contact rate shifts often act as a precursor to hot streaks and slumps.

Here are some of the biggest risers and fallers in contact rate over the last seven days.

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Risers

Yoenis Cespedes (OF, NYM): 83% contact rate last seven days (+20%)

Other than his six home runs, Yoenis Cespedes had been quite awful during the first month. He had a .233 average, 38% strikeout rate, and 31% hard hit rate, all worse than his career average. He also had a whopping 59% flyball rate. Flyballs are good for home runs, but such a high rate is bad for batting average. The fact that he hit .233 is a small miracle given this batted ball profile. Based on his overall numbers Cespedes has a .208 xBA per Statcast leaderboards. But as Cespedes’ contact rate improved so did his numbers. He hit .348 while cutting his strikeout rate down to 15.4% this past week. Cespedes also had a 40% hard hit rate and 30% line drive rate. Other than the line drive rate these numbers aren’t far above what to expect for Cespedes. It would seem that Cespedes has corrected whatever issues he was dealing with in April and will go back to being his usual self when healthy.

Billy Hamilton (OF, CIN): 84% contact rate last seven days (+18%)

This is a welcome sign for Billy Hamilton, who had an absolutely atrocious first month to the season. After posting a .172 average and 33% strikeout rate were looking bleak for Hamilton owners. No one expects him to hit like Jose Altuve or even Dee Gordon, but if he can’t keep is average around .240-.250 Hamilton does more harm than good. He started to turn things around over the last seven days, hitting .400 with just one strikeout and four walks in 19 plate appearances. He also had a 28.6% hard contact rate, which, while below average is a massive improvement over the pitiful 7.4% he had in April. It would be foolish to say that Billy Hamilton is a good hitter now after 19 plate appearances, but there are signs of life here. He’s also improved his walk rate to 14.3% this season, giving him a .319 OBP which would be the second best of his career. His swing rate and chase rate are both slightly down so these walk rate improvements might hold, though probably not to this degree. He didn’t steal any bags over the last week and his overall numbers are still terrible, so now might be the chance to buy low on Hamilton.

Eddie Rosario (OF, MIN): 94% contact rate last seven days (+14%)

Eddie Rosario was a monster over the last seven days. He hit .452 with a 1.481 OPS and four home runs. He also raised his batting average by 60 points to .291 on the year. A lackluster first month was wiped away over the course of a few days. A lot of Rosario’s struggles during April look like rotten luck. He had a .273 BABIP, compared to a .323 BABIP for his career. Unlike Billy Hamilton and Yoenis Cespedes, Rosario’s batted ball profile wasn’t far off from his career numbers. He had a 34% hard contact rate, 23% strikeout rate, and 17.6% line drive rate. Part of this streakiness is inherent to free-swingers like Eddie Rosario. Players like Rosario live and die by their BABIP because the only way they get on base is with the stick. Rosario reminds me of a left-handed Adam Jones. They both swing a lot, don’t walk, and are prone to hot and cold stretches. Here’s a table comparing their career numbers.

They are eerily similar. While Rosario doesn’t have the track record of Jones, Jones-like production is probably what we can expect going forward.

Fallers

Gary Sanchez (C, NYY): 45% contact rate last seven days (-26%)

With the media spotlight on Giancarlo Stanton’s struggles, Gary Sanchez’s poor performance has flown a little under the radar. He was bad during the first month with a .202 average, but the bottom fell out over the last seven days. Sanchez is hitting .176 with nine strikeouts in his last 21 plate appearances. Sanchez’s struggles stem from two things, bad luck and selling out for the long ball. Sanchez has a .192 BABIP on the year, nearly 100 points lower than his career BABIP. Any way you slice it that’s unusually low for a player with a 91.7 MPH exit velocity.  But Sanchez's approach is contributing to his low BABIP. He has a 51.2% flyball rate, a massive jump from years past where he was between 34-36%. His line drive rate is 11%, which is the lowest among qualified hitters. Hitting like this we can’t expect him to maintain a .250 average or .300 BABIP. The power will be there, but there seems to be either a conscious effort to hit an extreme amount of flyballs or a mechanical problem with his swing.

Yasmani Grandal (C, LAD): 53% contact rate last seven days (-21%)

Regression hit Yasmani Grandal like a truck. He’s been hitless in his last 19 plate appearances and has struck out 42% of the time over the last seven days. He lost over 40 points on his batting average during that stretch as it dropped from .315 to .272. Grandal was playing over his head during April, so it’s no surprise to see him drop back to earth. He had a .364 BABIP during the first month, which is over 80 points higher than his career BABIP. Grandal’s owners will have to ride out stretches like this because he’s still one of the better hitting catchers in the majors and there isn’t going to be anyone much better available on waivers anyway.

Daniel Robertson (2B/3B/SS, TB): 50% contact rate last seven days (-19%)

The Daniel Robertson ride may be coming to an end. After hitting .333 with a 1.037 OPS during April, Robertson has just one hit over the last seven days. His strikeout rate skyrocketed to 35.7% and he didn’t hit a single line drive during that stretch. We knew Robertson wasn’t going to last forever, as much of his success was aided by a .432 BABIP, but some of the improvements he made have begun to regress. Granted, Robertson has only had 14 plate appearances over the last seven days, but this is regression we knew was coming. He has a .258 xBA per Statcast and he still has a .392 BABIP, so there might be a little more falling to come. His plate discipline was still good during this cold stretch, but that probably makes him an OBP specialist long term.

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