Milwaukee Brewers: Justin Smoak Primed for Bounce-Back Season

After struggling during the 2019 season, the Milwaukee Brewers’ newly acquired first baseman, Justin Smoak, is primed for a bounce-back campaign in 2020.

One of the many moves that the Milwaukee Brewers made this offseason was signing free agent Justin Smoak to help fill the hole over at first base. And like many of Milwaukee’s free agent signings, the Brewers are hoping for a bounce-back season from Smoak.

Smoak put together a career year in 2017 when he slashed .270/.355/.529 with 38 home runs and a wRC+ of 133. Although in 2018 he would see his numbers dip a bit, his .242 average, .808 OPS, and wRC+ of 121 were still well above his career averages.

Unfortunately, this past season his surface numbers fell off a cliff. Smoak’s batting average fell to just .208, his OPS was at .748, and he would hit just 22 home runs over the 121 appearances that he made. But it’s worth pointing out that his wRC+ of 101 was still above league average.

However, the batting average, the OPS, and a number of the other stats don’t tell the whole story. It’s not as if Smoak was floundering every time that he was up to bat. In fact, he was putting the ball in play and hitting it quite hard as well.

Smoak’s hard hit rate in 2019 of 42.7 percent was higher than it was during the 2017 and 2018 seasons. His exit velocity ranked in the 72nd percentile, his xSLG was in the 76th percentile, and his xwOBA was in the 86th percentile. All of which were clearly above the MLB average for each of those respective categories and also in line with his performances from the previous two seasons.

It’s also worth noting that he struck out less than he did in 2018 and he walked a career-high 15.8 percent of the time. So Smoak was hitting the ball hard, striking out less, and finding his way on base, so where did it all go wrong?

Well, there are two big contributors, with the first being some bad luck. Smoak saw his BAbip fall all the way to .223 in 2019. Meaning some of those hard hit balls just happened to be hit right at a defender.

Another reason for Smoak’s low BAbip and overall lack of production at the plate was that he fell victim to the shift. Nearly 83 percent of the balls that Smoak put in play were either pulled or hit to center field. As a result, in 91.4 percent of his at-bats as a lefty, the opposing team used the shift. Moving forward, this is a tactic that teams will continue to deploy against him and it’s something that he will have to try to overcome in 2020 as well.

Now with the Milwaukee Brewers, Smoak is going to share some time at first base with Ryan Braun and he truly is a prime bounce-back candidate.

Although the numbers on the surface from last year don’t look very pretty, as we dig deeper we see that Smoak was much better than what some of his stats would suggest. And with a base salary of just $4 million in 2020, by mid-season this signing could look like an absolute steal.

All stats and information courtesy of Fangraphs, Spotrac, Baseball Reference, and Statcast