He homered twice on Monday!
Spencer Steer isn’t a classic ‘utilityman’ in that his glove allows his manager to add value to positions all across the diamond. He’s a modern day utilityman, though, in that his bat is good enough to pencil in the lineup regardless of pitcher, and his glove plays just well everywhere to allow other regulars to rest against bad matchups.
Such was the case on Monday, when David Bell opted to give the slumping Jonathan India a day off against St. Louis Cardinals starter Sonny Gray. Steer, who had only started at 2B once all season, moved to the keystone (and the leadoff spot) and promptly swatted a pair of large homers to lead the Reds to a victory in the series opener.
We’re going to look at Spencer’s stats for a minute today, since last night’s exploits make them all look that much rosier. Rosier, though, is a relative term, and prior to last night’s pair of homers his overall work in 2024 seemed to pale in comparison to his breakout 2023 campaign.
He owned a 118 wRC+ and .355 wOBA in 2023. Those numbers – even after last night’s show – are down to just 106 and .329, respectively. Like most everyone across baseball in this down offensive year, his overall OPS has dipped, his .820 mark from 2023 dwarfing his .757 mark this season. That’s good for a drop from 118 to 107 in his yearly OPS+, for what it’s worth.
You may think that’s because he’s either doing something tangibly different, or even because he’s not able to adapt to an approach to pitching against him that’s different than last season. However, a quick glance at some of his underlying numbers shows that he’s been mostly the same ol’ Spencer – in a good way.
2023 BB% – 10.2%
2024 BB% – 10.3%
2023 K% – 20.9%
2024 K% – 20.4%
2023 ISO – .192
2024 ISO – .197
That’s a command of the strike zone that’s almost identical, with his walk rate, strikeout rate, and isolated power actually better across the board this year than last. His hard-hit rate, per FanGraphs, has also climbed from 32.2% to 33.9%, while his 2023 groundball to flyball rate (0.88) is almost identical to that rate this year (0.87). Even his pull/center/oppo rates have held identical since his call-up in 2022 after coming to the Reds from the Minnesota Twins, while Baseball Savant shows his barrel rate has increased from 6.7% in 2023 to 7.0% this year.
While that’s not the kind of meteoric rise in any statistic that should warrant expectations of a massive breakout season, they’re a) a good indicator that what we saw from him in 2023 from a production standpoint was no fluke and b) should be an indicator that his overall numbers in 2024 should probably be better from a bottom-line perspective.
That’s the rub here. His batting average on balls in play (BABIP) last year was a comfy .318, while this year it has somehow dipped to just .266. Dig as deep as you want, and it’s hard to get past that significant dive in ‘luck,’ even if there’s surely at least a little bit more than just ‘luck’ that goes into BABIP (such as predictive pitch funneling, defensive positioning, etc).
Still, it sure does seem like Steer is a guy who’s just running into a bit more bad luck this year than last.
Does that mean we should expect his BABIP to always be the .318 it was last year? It does not. Still, for a player who squares the ball up and hits it hard enough to be a roughly league-average guy in those statistics, you’d expect him to typically boast a league-averageish BABIP.
This year, that’s .290 league-wide. That number has fluctuated between .290 and .300 every year since 2008, for reference. If Steer’s ‘luck’ had him boasting a .290 BABIP this season, you can extrapolate as you please how much his bottom-line numbers might improve.
Moral of the story here is that Steer, especially after last night, is pretty much the same guy we were so excited about offensively last year, and likely has some positive regression coming his way. Whether or not that’s the kind of 1A to Elly De La Cruz that can power this club to an unexpected Wild Card push late in the season I don’t know, but it sure should help dent the GABP fireworks budget for the next month and a half.