6 small-sample performances that could swing the NL this season
The compressed sample size of baseball's 60-game season wreaked havoc on personal stat lines in 2020. The National League's reigning MVP hit like a pitcher for the first third of the short schedule. Baseball's shakiest closer in 2019 was suddenly untouchable again. Will these players revert to their career norms? Or were these results signs of future trends?
Ahead of MLB's return to a 162-game slate, we're looking back at a few unexpected performances that have the potential to shape the 2021 playoff chase. Part One covered the American League, and the Senior Circuit's up today.
Nolan Arenado, Cardinals 3B
Credit where it's due: Arenado remained outstanding in the field in 2020, leading the majors in defensive runs saved (per FanGraphs) to nab his eighth Gold Glove in as many seasons. Context where it's due, too: He played through joint inflammation in his left shoulder, which ended his season - and active Rockies tenure - two weeks early.
With that acknowledged, Arenado's last season in Colorado was a letdown. He dipped under 115 OPS+ for the first time since his rookie year, and well under it at that. Arenado's exit velocity (87.8 mph) and hard-hit rate (33.7%) fell below his personal standard and league average. The Rockies outperformed their expected record but still maxed out at 26 wins, and then they shipped him to St. Louis.
Promisingly, Arenado was still disciplined at the plate last season, striking out a mere 10% of the time. The bet in St. Louis is that better health and a fresh start could reinvigorate him - that teaming Arenado with Paul Goldschmidt could be the stimulus that he, like the Cardinals' punchless offense, needs.
Cody Bellinger, Dodgers OF
Twenty games into 2020, Bellinger was slashing .165/.224./.266, a frigid run of form that made up a full third of the truncated season. An incumbent MVP slumping to such depths would have doomed most contenders' title hopes. In his case, Los Angeles smoked the Padres in Game No. 20 to improve to 13-7.
Clearly, Bellinger's early woes - not to mention his 3-for-22 outage in the World Series - didn't slow his juggernaut club's long-awaited march to the title. The Dodgers rated near the top of the majors in every hitting metric and paced all teams with 118 homers, 15 clear of second-place Atlanta. It was gravy that Bellinger improved in L.A.'s last 40 games, recording a .960 OPS to bump his line clearly above league average, although still a career low.
If Bellinger's dangerous all year again and returns to the MVP tier, just how nasty could the Dodgers be? What magic would the Padres (and we'll get to them soon) have to summon to threaten the champs?
Edwin Diaz, Mets P
Diaz's eventful last three seasons can be recapped in as many stats. With Seattle in 2018, he saved an MLB-high 57 games. With the Mets in 2019, he gave up 15 home runs in ninth-inning appearances, an ignominious league record. In 2020, he allowed a dinger in his second appearance - and only one more the rest of the season.
That Diaz blew four of his 10 save opportunities in 2020 belies the strides he took. Ignoring the three appearances he made in July, Diaz's ERA was 1.16, he struck out 45 of the 97 batters he faced, and he was only tagged for three earned runs. By September, he was almost exclusively pitching in the ninth.
His improvement in ERA- from 2019 (134) to 2020 (41) was the largest in baseball. Diaz sustained the same brutal BABIP (.381) in those seasons, but his opponents' average exit velocity, hard-hit rate, barrel rate, and launch angle all plunged, as did their slash lines.
The 2021 Mets have the air of a fringe contender, a team that could boom if its offseason additions move the dial or bust if a high-leverage reliever like Diaz falters again. Given that homers are what stung him in 2019, maybe MLB's decision to blunt the flight of its baseballs will help Diaz preserve a couple more leads.
Wil Myers, Padres OF
Myers is San Diego's longest-tenured player, the rare Padre - it's him, Eric Hosmer, and a few relievers - whose time with the big club precedes Manny Machado's arrival in 2019 free agency. He'd waited a long time to play for a competitive team. That Myers was vital to the overdue playoff charge felt fitting, and also surprising.
Myers was the 2013 AL Rookie of the Year and a 2016 All-Star, but his mean hitting metrics from 2017-19 - a .244 average, 20 home runs, and a 105 OPS+ in 131 games per season - weren't anything special. Last summer, though, his wRC+ surged from 96 in 2019 to 154, among the 10 biggest upticks in the majors. Myers, Machado, and Fernando Tatis Jr. combined to bash 48 of San Diego's 95 homers. That trio and Hosmer powered the club's four-game grand slam streak in August.
Only NL finalists Los Angeles and Atlanta scored more runs than San Diego's 5.42 per game in 2020. With Yu Darvish and Blake Snell in the mix on the mound, the Padres have the arms and bats to withstand some slippage from Myers, though offensive depth is a prerequisite to hanging with the Dodgers.
Marcell Ozuna, Braves OF
Like Myers, Ozuna is a former All-Star who'd authored a great season before 2020 - just not especially recently and never to this rarefied degree. His 18 homers and 145 total bases led the National League, and his OPS+ rated fifth in the majors. Per FanGraphs, Ozuna amassed the same WAR figure (2.5) as he did in 2019, just in fewer than half the games.
Ozuna's BABIP swing - .257 in 2019 to .391 last year - was enormous, but Statcast data notes that his average exit velocity (93 mph), hard-hit rate (54.4%), barrel rate (15.4%), and xwOBA (.435) were elite. Another telling stat: In 19 games as the Braves' left fielder, Ozuna hit .275 with an .852 OPS, marks that soared to .362 and 1.155 in the 39 games where he served as designated hitter. There will be no DH in the NL this season.
Like Ozuna, Atlanta's Freddie Freeman (the NL MVP), Ronald Acuna Jr., and Travis d'Arnaud all enjoyed career seasons of varying quality in 2020. The point about Myers and the Padres applies to the Braves: Keep it up over 162 games and maybe the Dodgers will have reason to sweat before October.
Juan Soto, Nationals OF
To label Soto's 2020 line an anomaly is probably a disservice to the Dominican prodigy. Baseball's brightest young star this side of Tatis has been a .900 OPS hitter since he debuted in the majors at 19, but he upped his production to stratospheric heights last year even as Washington's defense of its World Series title cratered.
How potent was Soto over 47 games? Barry Bonds in 2004 was the last player to clear 200 OPS+ for a season. Only Freeman, Ozuna, and Yankees infielder DJ LeMahieu had remotely comparable seasons at the plate. Soto's .363 BABIP was fortunate, but he showed tangible growth by cutting his strikeout rate (from 20% in 2019 to 14.3%), increasing his walk rate (16.4% to 20.9%), and improving his barrel rate (11.3% to 17.5%).
Can he remain in this superstar stratosphere long term? Soto only homered twice in 28 games after Aug. 31, though he walked three times as often, and his launch angle for the year dropped 8 degrees to 4.2, which usually correlates with worse production. Of course, this amounts to nitpicking for a guy who'll vie for MVPs annually if he approaches this output over full seasons.
On a team level, resurging to respectability means going through the Braves in the NL East. Freeman's and Ozuna's breakouts, combined with Atlanta's run to Game 7 of the NLCS, set up a nice individual challenge for Soto entering 2021: strive to be the uncontested most fearsome slugger in the division, if not the majors.
Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.