LaMonte Wade Jr.’s 10 hardest hit balls of the season have ALL BEEN OUTS

15 comments

1. I posted this in another thread but I’ll put it here too: His xBA is actually .201. Still not great, but [higher than](https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/leaderboard/expected_statistics?type=batter&year=2025&position=&team=137&filterType=bip&min=1&sort=6&sortDir=desc) Chapman, Adames, and Bailey. Wade’s difference between his BA and xBA is -.105, [worst in the league](https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/leaderboard/expected_statistics?type=batter&year=2025&position=&team=&filterType=bip&min=q&sort=7&sortDir=asc) for all players with 40+ at bats.

2. Yea he had a pretty decent spring and I think he’ll eventually regress to his career .750ish OPS. I think it’s a mix of low BABIP and unusually high K rate that’s hopefully fixable

3. That’s not bad luck. That’s teams knowing where the ball is going to be hit. Analytics works. This is why it’s preached to hit more HR’s. You can’t shift a HR. This isn’t a case of players making great plays to rob Wade. They’re all positioned in a place where they think the ball is going to be hit and they’e not wrong.

4. Serious question. If it’s not a problem now, how long before it is? If he’s still hitting say .150 after 100 ABs or 200 ABs, would that raise your concern?

5. Just like me playing mlb the show

6. As another person posted, his xBA is .201, which wouldn’t be amazing, but wouldn’t be worthy of hand wringing either. To back that up, his BABIP is an absurdly low .125 (career norm ~.300, even post injuries).

   So, has his contact been so bad that this is not “bad luck”, but instead “bad hitting”?

   If we look at his contact, his barrel rate and hard hit rate are definitely down from his historic norms, and his bat speed is also down, which isn’t great news.

   HOWEVER, his chase rate, bb%, and avg exit velo are all right on his norms.

   So, in aggregate I would offer that: maybe he has lost a step, maybe he is just in a funk, but he has definitely.straight up been very unlucky with his balls in play and things aren’t nearly as bad as the results numbers would indicate. And he isn’t pressing, so one would expect things to pick up for him soon.

7. If your 10 hardest hit balls have all been outs, it means that none of them were hit hard enough to get over the fence.

   A lot of these balls would have been in the seats 2-3 years ago. I think he is not producing the same torque he used to, I think his power has gone down dramatically.

8. It does not matter how hard they are outs. He needs to be benched for a few games get his batting adjusted then comeback and get hits soft or hard he needs to get on base

9. If we know this, the team knows this and knows they’ll start falling soon. They’re not going to send him down to AAA in April.

10. thank you

11. Not entirely correct. He’s had a couple hard hit foul balls.

12. He’s had some hard luck.

13. You mean the 10 balls he’s hit this year?

14. When they start falling, look out. It’s baseball.

15. Bad luck. I hope he finds a lucky charm soon.