Ryan Braun & The Return of Power

This year baseball has seen the re-emergence of three outstanding power hitters: Alex Rodriguez, Albert Pujols, and Mark Texeira. Each player can reasonably claim that he’s one of the best stories in baseball. All three were counted out by just about everyone before the season started — and with reason. All three are old, stuck in long-term contracts, and on top of that they hadn’t performed well over the past few years. Some of the issues could have been caused by mechanics, others by injury, but perhaps most prominently by age. All of these players are well into their 30’s — one is in his 40’s — so it makes sense that expectations were low.

This year though each player is having a resurgence, especially in the power department. Pujols has the second most homeruns in the majors (30), while Texeira and Rodriguez aren’t far behind with 24 each (which is tied for ninth). So it seems that these sluggers have seen their power stroke come back.

Let’s now, however, examine Ryan Braun’s sudden return to form and whether his power has returned. Before the 2013 season, Braun had the reputation as one of the best sluggers, and players, in all of baseball. He was never the best defender — the defensive metrics never really cared for him — but boy could he ever hit and hit for power. From 2007 until 2012, Braun ranked seventh in all of baseball in ISO and fourth in wOBA.

But then came the 2013 season, in which Braun was not only suspended for PED use, but he also suffered a right thumb injury on June 10. It landed him on the 15-day DL and caused him to miss 28 days. The thumb injury — a nerve injury that eventually brought pain to his whole hand — affected his pre-suspended 2013 campaign and his 2014 season. However, Braun did have multiple cryotherapy procedures done since the end of the 2014 season and hasn’t had too many problems with it this year.

This may be one of the reasons for Braun’s improved power performance.

As seen above, while Braun’s power hasn’t fully returned to pre-2013 levels and is definitely not as pronounced as Pujols, Rodriguez, and Texeira, it’s still a notable improvement over the last two years. Braun has also never been a below-average power hitter, even his 2014 ISO was better than league average (which is about .140), but it wasn’t what Braun used to produce. It certainly didn’t look good for the Brewers, who have Braun under contract until 2020.

What could be even more encouraging is that Braun is hitting the ball extremely hard this year, and hitting the ball hard in every portion of the plate.

In fact, he owns the second highest exit velocity at 93.72 (min 100 ABs), just behind Giancarlo Stanton. Additionally, as Rob Arthur mentioned on the Effectively Wild podcast, hitting the ball hard makes a player better in just about all aspects of hitting, including power. He said, “Pretty much the harder the ball goes off the bat, the better the hitter is in every conceivable way. So the balls are more likely to fall for hits, their more likely to fall for extra-base hits, the player is even more likely to walk in other plate appearances, obviously; just presumably as a function that they have increased power.”

While Braun was battling his thumb injury last season, he noted that he fell into some bad habits mechanically, “I knew that I had gotten myself into some bad habits mechanically just because of where I was physically in dealing with the thumb thing, so I had to really kind of rework my swing and get back to a place where I felt like I was able to repeat it consistently.”

That being said, before rejoicing that Braun’s power is back, it should be acknowledged that he is 31 years old and obviously isn’t getting any younger. Also, if you are familiar with aging curves, you’ll know that Braun is embarking toward the downside of his career, where his skill sets start to wear down and he starts to lose power. He’s also not having the best month of July after going crazy in May, hitting 8 home runs, which was good for a whopping .563 slugging percentage. Overall, his slugging has decreased the last two months.

There’s obviously more to hitting than power. He’s swinging at, and chasing, more pitches than ever. And overall, he’s still having the second-worst hitting season of his career. But it will be interesting to see how Braun’s power plays out the rest of the way. It’s one of his main tools, and one of the reasons he has been not only one of the best players in baseball since he’s entered the big leagues, but also one of the most aesthetically pleasing players to watch play the game.

Braun will probably never go back to his MVP self, but he can still be a well-above-average player, if he’s able to maintain good power numbers. He has taken a step in the right direction this year.