SABR Talk: Why Travis d'Arnaud is Perfectly Fine.

UH OH guys.....d'Arnaud is only hitting .154 AVG thru the first 14 games of the season. HOW COULD THIS BE!!? He was supposed to be the gem of the Dickey trade. A can't miss prospect who was traded for NOT 1, BUT 2 Cy Young pitchers. Since he's been a Mets he's only hitting .188 with ONLY 2 HR's. WHERE'S THE POWER!? WHERE'S THE HIT TOOL!? WHERE'S MY XANEX!?

Alright let's chill out for a second here folks. YES, d'Arnaud is only hitting .154 so far this season and is striking out at a 20% clip. However, anyone who's been watching every at bat of every game will tell you that not only is Travis d'Arnaud fine.....but he's actually performing better than last year. 

How can this be? Well here's where mixing traditional stats with advanced sabermetrics really shows its worth. 

2013

Last season, d'Arnaud had a .202 AVG on a .244 BABIP which is well below the MLB average. A normalized BABIP of .280 would've given him a .232 AVG in 2013. His Line Drive % rate, a good indicator of how often a player is making solid contact, was a below average 17.7% (MLB Average: 20%). Of the 28 fly balls he hit, only 1 left the park giving him an extremely low 3.6% HR/FB ratio (MLB: 9.5%).

Discipline wise, last season d'Arnaud swung at 24.5% of pitches outside of the strike zone and make contact on 69.5% of them. When the ball WAS in the zone he was only swinging at 64.8% of them including taking 1st pitch strikes at a 62.5% rate. Overall he's whiffing on 8.6% of all pitches he saw.

2014

So far this season, d'Arnaud has a .154 Avg on a .172 BABIP. When normalized, d'Arnaud possesses a .237 AVG. His Line Drive rate so far this year has increased to a solid 24.1%. His HR/FB ratio has also increased to 7.7% which, while still below the MLB average, is a welcome improvement.

Discipline wise, d'Arnaud is swinging at less pitches outside of the zone (23.1%). He's also covering more of the plate with his swing with a 73.3% contact rate on pitches outside of the zone. He's swinging 4% more at balls IN the strike zone and making 5% more contact as well. Lastly, he's become a bit more aggressive, taking only 50% of 1st pitch strikes. Overall he's swinging and missing on only 6.3% of pitches this season.

	2013	2014	YOY Change
AVG	0.202	0.154	Worse
BABIP	0.244	0.172	Worse
Normalized AVG	0.232	0.237	Better
Hard Contact (LD%)	17.7%	24.1%	Better
Driving Power (HR/FB)	3.6%	7.7%	Better
Swinging @ Balls	24.5%	23.1%	Better
Swingin @ Strikes	64.8%	68.8%	Better
Aggressiveness	37.5%	50.0%	Better
Overall Whiffing	8.6%	6.3%	Better

Overall, you can see above that while the batting average is still not ideal, d'Arnaud actually is in fact improving. He's driving the ball better and being more aggressive. If he can cut down on the K's and just continues doing what he's doing and the balls will start dropping. That's the name of the game, You gotta hit em where they ain't and right now Travis is just getting unlucky.