Dan Uggla's Struggles

With Dan Uggla continuing to struggle (last night's mammoth 3 run homer not included of course), its time to take a look at what might be causing it. With early season struggles, the first thing I generally glance at is BABIP, and Dan's stands at .220 right now. With a career .298 BABIP, you could point to this as being the primary cause .208/.260/.396 triple slash line. We should expect him to regress to the mean a bit in this category, which will cause his batting average to go up some as more hits start to find holes rather than gloves. However, there are more concerning problems regarding Uggla's hitting this year.

The main problem with Dan this year is that he is swinging so much more than he used to. His walk rate stands at 6.5% this year, which is a far cry from the 11.6%+ walk rates he had posted each of the last 3 years. This is not a good sign, as one of Uggla's best attributes as a hitter in the past was his package of plate discipline and power. When you become a hitter with power and no plate discipline, you turn into somebody like Alex Gonzalez, becoming a hitter prone to long stretches of futility in between power surges. Unfortunately for Dan, that kind of approach can't be tolerated like Gonzalez's is, as he doesn't bring nearly the defensive value that Gonzalez does.

Looking further into the numbers, you find out exactly what you would expect from a hitter who hasn't walked much, and that is he is swinging way to much. Uggla is swinging at 27.7% of pitches out of the strike zone and at 70.4 % of pitches inside the strike zone. His career numbers in those categories are 21.4% and 66% respectively. However, he is making contact on about the same amount of pitches as he usually does, so we have to look now at his batted ball percentages to see where his new free swinging approach is affecting him. Uggla's ground ball/fly ball ratio this season is 1.09 to 1, while his career rate stands at .83 to 1. His ground ball rate has spiked to 43.5% from a career 37.8%, and his line drive rate is down to 16.5% from 17.8 last year.

What these numbers tell me is that Uggla's new approach is causing him to make weaker contact when he does make contact. Swinging at pitches outside of the strike zone is something that will obviously cause that, which is something that we saw for many years when Jeff Francouer was the Braves' everyday right fielder. Uggla could be pressing at this point to impress his new team and fans, and it quite possibly is causing him to be impatient and chase to many pitches out of the zone. Whatever his causing it, in order to get back to his career norms, he must revert back to his old, more patient approach at the plate. If he starts being more selective, his numbers should revert closer to his career norms, as swinging at better pitches means more solid contact. Only then will the Braves enjoy what they paid $62 million for, which is a slugging right handed second baseman.