A Quick Glimpse at a Different Carlos Correa

Something changed a few days from the end of the year, for Carlos Correa. Well, something changed back. Correa has been excellent all season, but he was even better after his return from the IL on Sept. 14. He ran a 172 wRC+ over the final fortnight, up from 153 before the injury, and his on-base percentage was a gaudy .460. Now, we’re talking about just 11 games and 50 plate appearances, and Correa ran an unsustainable ..387 BABIP over that period. However, I think there were some real changes going on--temporary changes, but real ones, nonetheless.

When Correa returned from a two-month absence due to plantar fasciitis in his right foot, I checked in on his bat speed and noticed that it wasn’t far below his season average. However, I spoke too soon. The really useful thing about bat speed is that it stabilizes very quickly. You only need to see a player reach a bat speed of 88 mph one time to know that they’re capable of hitting the ball extremely hard. Correa’s bat speed before the injury was 74.7 mph, which put him in the 85th percentile. After his return, his bat speed has averaged 72.8 mph, which would drop him down to the 65th percentile.

Before the injury, 48% of his swings were over 75 mph; when he came back, it was 28%. Watching Correa swing the bat these past two weeks, I don’t think the issue is that he can’t put everything into his swing. He hit the ball hard often enough, and his swing looked explosive at times. Back in May, Matt Trueblood noticed that Correa had started using a scissor kick, transferring his weight so aggressively that his right foot would slide backward, away from home plate, sometimes rising off the ground entirely. Correa is still using that move. Here he is doing so on Wednesday night.

However, Correa still didn’t approach the highest bat speed that he’s capable of. While he was still scissoring, his back foot was rarely leaving the ground entirely. Correa’s hardest swing of the season was measured at 87 mph, and he’s had 50 that were measured at or above 80 mph this season. In September, however, the fastest swing he unleashed was 79.2 mph. It ranks as just his 72nd-hardest swing of the season. In fact, of his 100 hardest swings this season, just four came after his return. Statistically speaking, if nothing had changed at all, we would expect that number to be closer to 12. However, at this point, I need to remind you of how Statcast measures bat speed.

The number you see indicates how fast the barrel is moving in the video frame where it’s closest to the ball, and many, many factors influence it. For example, because the bat keeps accelerating all the way through the hitting zone, pulled balls, which are necessarily hit out in front, will have a higher bat speed than balls hit the other way, which are usually caught deeper in the zone. The overarching theme of these factors is adjustments. When you're exactly on time and the ball is put right where you want it, you can get off the fastest swing of your life. The more you have to adjust your swing – maybe you’re late on a fastball, so you have to cheat to catch up to it; maybe you’re early on a breaking pitch, so you have to slow down in order to avoid whiffing; maybe the pitch is high and your swing is geared for lower pitches; maybe a changeup dropped more than you expected, so you have to lower your bat angle at the last second; and so on; and so on – the more bat speed you’re going to surrender.