Could the explanation for this offseason be as simple as JHONK?
I have tried to make sense of the Guardians trading their cleanup hitter after an ALCS appearance and only adding a 39 year old to replace him and I’ve come up with this simple answer: “Yes, Virginia, the Guardians believe there is a Santa Claus.”
When you think about Jhonkensy “Big Christmas” Noel’s 2024, you can neither dismiss his 162 wRC+ from June-August nor can you pretend his 0 wRC+ in the month of September never happened. You can’t ignore his incredible homer in game three of the ALCS or hand wave his 8 strikeouts in 24 plate appearances during the Guardians’ playoff run. You shouldn’t forget that he won’t turn even 24 years old until July, but you also should remember that his Triple-A wRC+ for his career was only 96. In other words, he’s a hitter of extremes.
What reason have the Grinches of Scrooges of the baseball world to doubt our beloved Big Christmas? Well, it’s pretty simple – he chases too much and he whiffs too much. He had an out-of-zone swing rate of 44.6% and his swinging strike rate was 17.2% in the bigs last year. There is basically one major league hitter who can chase that often and still be above average: Salvador Perez. So, this is a narrow path for Papa Noel to sleigh, so to speak.
Why might the Guardians believe in the magic of Big Christmas enough to fill up the Believe-o-Meter on their flying sled to that World Series trophyland in our dreams? Well, let’s look at the few viable hitters who are in the range of Noel’s chase rate: Perez – 103 wRC+, 43.5%, Yainier Diaz – 120 wRC+, 43%, Nick Castellanos – 103 wRC+, 38.9%, Luis Robert – 110 wRC+, 38.6. The good news is that Noel’s 50.6% out-of-zone contact rate isn’t horrendous (third in this group outside of Perez at 56% and Diaz at 57%) and his 82.4% in-zone contact rate is close enough to league average to make the idea of sustaining his chase rate feasible.
The separators for Noel, and why visions of sugar bombs may be dancing in POBO Chris Antonetti’s head when he thinks about him, are that Jhonk swings incredibly hard and hits balls incredibly far by pulling them in the air. For their fly-ball/pull-rate and infield-fly ball rates, these unicorn chase-yet-produce batters fall like this: Perez 43.7 FB/46.8 PR, Diaz – 30.3/41.6, Castellanos – 38/41, and Robert 41.4/34.7. Meanwhile, last season Noel was at a staggering 48.7 FB/53.8 PR. Noel also leads this entire group in average bat speed at 78.1 mph (he’s also second in sprint speeds in the 70th percentile!). So far, Noel has not consistently squared up baseballs (his pop-up rate is an unsustainable 22%), but if he improves there… look out. He gets the barrel to the ball at a rate around 90th percentile so just a little more launch-angle sweet spot will dramatically increase his results.
If you are going to chase too much and not walk a lot, you have to absolutely smack the tinsle out of the balls you do hit – that’s exactly what Jhonk does. He swings as hard as he can and hits the ball (pulled and in the air) in the optimal way to produce home runs. I can’t help but wonder if part of the Guardians being in no hurry to add middle-of-the-order hitters this offseason has something to do with the front office wanting to see what Noel (and DeLauter, Brito, and Valera) have to offer. Now, join me in a seasonal carol
“I’m dreaming tonight of a place I love / even more than I usually do / and though I know it’s a narrow path there / I promise youuuuu / We’ll have home runs from Big Christmas / You can count on Jhonk / Please have fastballs and Hammy calls / he’s our right-handed Pronk / Opening Day will find him / Hitting balls on the seams /We’ll be home for Big Christmas / Not only in our dreams.”