Atlanta Braves: Adam Duvall Struggling with the New Ball?
By Seth Carter
Take a look at Duvall’s performance against pitch types and barrel rates.
What does Statcast have to say?
Duvall’s average exit velocity is the lowest it has been since 2017.
While his 31.5% strikeout rate is in line with what he did in 2021, between 2014-2020 he only struck out 27% of the time.
Breaking Balls vs. Fastballs
Last season Duvall hit .260 off of breaking balls with 17 homers. This season, he’s hitting .157 with no homers. In fact, he has a .186 slugging percentage against breaking pitches.
He has actually improved his average on fastballs year-over-year. But again, he’s not showing much power with a .391 SLG.
Are the de-juiced balls affecting Adam Duvall’s ability to hit home runs?
Have the new baseballs drained his power or is he just not barreling the ball up? Well… let’s take a quick peek at his barrel rate.
What is a barrel rate?
A combination of exit velocity and launch angle, the launch angle can depend on the exit velocity. The idea is the ball must exit over 98 mph and the combination of the achieved exit velocity and launch angle would have a minimum average of .500 and an OPS of 1.500.
Historically, Adam Duvall has always been among league leaders in barrel rates. In the past two seasons, he ranked in the 89th and 90th percentiles, respectively. This season he’s residing in the 45th percentile.
Last season, Duvall barreled up 11.8% of his batted balls. This season he’s at a career-worst 7.4%.
To make things interesting, on the next slide we’ll take a look at how Duvall is still hitting the ball consistently hard (when he makes contact).