Maybe 2017 was the fluke for Atlanta Braves’ Ender Inciarte

Ender Inciarte had a solid season at the plate in 2017, reaching the 200 hit milestone and finishing with a .304 average. This season, however, Inciarte is scuffling at the plate and maybe we should have seen this coming.

“Inciarte is doing much of the same of the things he was doing last year, but this year he’s performing more how he is expected to”

Ender Inciarte deserves to be in the Atlanta Braves‘ lineup. He has a good chance at winning the Gold Glove Award for the third consecutive year and has been one of the better base-runners in the league, too.

His offensive production this season, on the other hand, has taken a dip even though his peripherals look fairly similar to last year’s. It might be more realistic to accept what Inciarte is now rather than expecting him to “return to form.”

In 2017, Inciarte finished the year with a .304 average and a .350 on-base percentage which are both respectable marks. What caught headlines, of course, was the fact that he registered the first 200-hit season for the Braves since Marquis Grissom did so in 1996.

An All-Star appearance, a Gold Glove Award, and 200 hits had a lot of Braves Country singing Inciarte’s praises – and for good reasons – but digging any deeper uncovers a stark reality that Inciarte is probably a lot closer to his 2018-self than what he did last year.

The Peripherals

Inciarte’s offensive profile is strikingly similar to what it was last year (and throughout his entire career). This season, he walks at an 8.3% rate which isn’t significantly higher than last year’s of 6.8% and doesn’t deviate much from his career walk rate of 6.6%. His strikeout rate (13.3%) is essentially the same as last year’s mark (13.1%).

This means that Inciarte hasn’t fundamentally changed his approach at the plate, or if he has, it hasn’t really yielded any different results. In the leadoff spot, Inciarte is looking to get on base in the best way that he can, which is to serve singles into the open space between the infielders and the outfielders.

The one real difference so far this year is that the percentage of balls he pulls has increased from 30.3% to 39.4%. The higher this number increases, the easier it is for opponents to put effective shifts on for a player.

Inciarte’s approach in itself was basically a ticking time-bomb if his ultimate goal is to have a high on-base percentage. His walk rate in the leadoff spot last year ranked 17th among players with at least 300 at-bats hitting first in the order.

So for Ender to reach base, it essentially had to be because a hit dropped for him and most of which were not of the hard-hit variety. Given this logic, his on-base percentage correlates greatly with his batting average on balls in play (BABIP).

His BABIP wasn’t legit

Inciarte’s .304 average and .350 on-base percentage last season came with a .339 BABIP. This figure was going to be hard to sustain.

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The higher the exit velocity on a ball that is put into play, the higher the chance it has to be a hit. Therefor, it is natural for power hitters such as Freddie Freeman or Aaron Judge to consistently have high BABIPs. Inciarte, on the other hand, is unlikely to have a high BABIP because he doesn’t consistently hit for power.

Among leadoff hitters last season, Inciarte was tied for 8th in BABIP with Michael Conforto. But Conforto’s slugging percentage was almost .150 points higher than Inciarte’s.  You see what I’m getting at?

According to Fangraphs and their attempt at creating an expected BABIP (xBABIP), Inciarte’s 2017 BABIP should’ve been closer to a .261 mark. While .261 seems fairly low, it should’ve been expected that his actual BABIP would decrease somewhat this year – and it did. Inciarte’s 2018 BABIP of .273 is the primary reason for his new batting average of .246 and on-base pct of .317.

Looking at the BABIPs from year to year is fair when assessing Inciarte because he’s still hitting the ball about as hard and high as he was last year. His dip in production can’t be rooted back to an injury or a problem with eyesight because then there would be a large discrepancy between the two seasons.

Inciarte didn’t hit the ball hard last year either

Inciarte’s batted ball profile breaks down like this:

Once again– strikingly similar.

So maybe we should’ve seen this coming. Inciarte’s expected stats from last year would concur.

Expected Stats

If you take nothing else away from this piece, at least never again doubt the accuracy of expected stats again. These stats can be found on baseballsavant.com and they predicted Inciarte’s 2018 season to a “T” (so far). Here is how Inciarte’s 2017 expected stats compare to his current season stats:

What it boils down to is that Inciarte is doing much of the same of the things he was doing last year, but this year he’s performing more how he is expected to. Balls that would drop in for a single last year are hit to a fielder this year more often (usually on the right side of the diamond).

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What’s scary is that Inciarte’s expected batting average, slugging, and weighted on-base marks for 2018 are even lower than his actual marks. However, we have seen him go on torrid hot streaks before and here’s to hoping that the upcoming All-Star break proves valuable for him so he can finish the season on another one of those (prolonged) streaks.