Revisiting Asdrubal Cabrera’s monster end of 2016

We’ve all seen players go on hot streaks. Often times on these hot streaks, there’s a ton of good fortune and not much else going on. But occasionally, we see something different happening beyond just “the hit gods smiled on him.” At the end of 2015, we saw Daniel Murphy turn on pitches rather than being happy with flicking the ball the opposite way for a single. And we saw what Murphy did this past season. So, was there anything in Asdrubal Cabrera’s big finish to 2016 to offer hope he can follow in Murphy’s footsteps?

First, let’s give a quick rundown on Murphy’s 2015, to identify exactly what he did differently. He started off the year with a whimper, posting just a .454 OPS the first 15 games of the year as he battled a hamstring injury. But over the next 33 games, Murphy went on a typical Murphy hot streak, where the hits fell in and his numbers were really good. In those 131 PA, Murphy posted a .336/.382/.459 line for an .841 OPS. He did this thanks to a .358 BABIP. The hits were falling in but they weren’t much of the extra-base hit variety, as he had a .123 ISO.

Then, from August 18 until the end of the year, Murphy put up an .856 OPS with a .265 BABIP. This Murphy hot streak was not due to the hits falling in but rather because of a power surge. He had a .542 SLG and a .253 ISO. Flash forward to 2016 and we see that Murphy had a .595 SLG and a .248 ISO for the entire year. Clearly, he was a different hitter from the guy who posted a .114 ISO in 2014.

Looking at his splits on a monthly level, we can isolate how the change happened. From April to July in 2015, Murphy had a .270/.322/.393 line. In this time frame, he pulled the ball 38.1% of the time, hit the ball in the air 31.7% of the time and had a 6.8 HR/FB rate. In the final two months of the season, Murphy had a .296/.321/.533 line. And he pulled the ball 44.4% of the time, hit a fly ball 42.3% of the time and had a 10.0 HR/FB rate. It was more of the same in 2016, when Murphy set career highs by pulling the ball 41.3% of the time, hitting a fly ball 41.9% of the time, along with a 12.4 HR/FB mark.

Now let’s look at Cabrera.

In 2016, Cabrera went 63 PA before hitting his first home run. He hit his first half high in OPS on May 9, with a .789 mark, by way of a .304/.361/.429 triple slash line. This was a case of the hits falling in, as Cabrera had a .356 BABIP and a .125 ISO. Near the end of June, Cabrera went on a power surge for 20 games, which saw him produce a .568 SLG and a .296 ISO. But that stretch didn’t last, as he slugged .222 over his next 15 games. Near the end of that poor stretch, Cabrera ended up on the DL for a strained knee.

Shortly after being activated, Cabrera caught fire. He closed the season with a .350/.418/.664 line with 22 XBH in 153 PA. This was the best of both worlds, as he saw great power with a .314 ISO and did this as the hits were falling in, as he notched a .355 BABIP in this span.

Like Murphy in his close of the year streak, Cabrera saw an increase in the percentage of fly balls hit, going from 37.6 to 44.8 – not quite as severe of a change but definitely noticeable. But Cabrera actually saw his pull percentage go down slightly, from 51.5 to 50.4 in his monster stretch.

Rather, Cabrera succeeded thanks to a big jump in his HR/FB rate, which went from 11.6% to 19.2%. On a season basis among qualified hitters, a 19.2 HR/FB rate would have been the 12th-best mark in the NL, slotting between Jay Bruce and Paul Goldschmidt. Is this sustainable from a guy who had a double-digit HR/FB rate just once in his first nine years in the majors? If you were to consult the Magic 8-ball, the most likely answer would be, “Don’t count on it.”

And to dice the numbers even further, we see that in this closing hot streak that Cabrera hit well on the road and like 1920 Babe Ruth at home. Here are his H/R splits in his final 153 PA:

H – .385/.467/.877 75 PA, 12 XBH, 10 HR, 10 BB, 11 Ks, 59.3 pull – and a 43.5 HR/FB rate!
R – .319/.372/.472 78 PA, 10 XBH, 9 2B, 3B, 6 BB, 9 Ks, 42.9 pull

Prior to the hot streak, Cabrera had a .726 OPS and a 51.3 pull percentage at home in 199 PA and a .700 OPS and a 51.7 pull percentage on the road in 216 PA. Yes, we can point to pulling more balls at home during the hot streak. But it’s hard to wrap your head around that roughly eight percent increase at home leading to an .877 SLG mark.

For what it’s worth, Murphy did the exact opposite in his closing streak in 2015, doing his damage on the road rather than in his home park. Murphy had a .794 OPS at home and a .978 OPS in road parks, with a pull percentage nearly identical (42.5 at home, 42.2 on the road) in the split.

When you combine the elevated BABIP, the huge home/road split and the cartoon HR/FB rate in a 75-PA sample, it’s difficult to say that Cabrera has established some new level. At the same time, not many of us would have said that Murphy established a new level in 2015 yet it appears he did exactly that. Can lightning strike twice with a Mets middle infielder taking a giant leap forward at the end of his age 30 season?

If so, the Mets will be in great shape.