Collette Calls: Breaking Down Byron Buxton

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Updated on August 23, 2017 6:15PM EST

Hey, my bad in giving Aaron Nola the kiss of death with last week's article. I mean, getting blasted by the Giants? Ugh! I will attempt to avoid doing that this week as I talk about a former 1.2 pick – Byron Buxton.

Let's be honest, all of the kids whose first name begin with C – Corey Seager, Carlos Correa, and Cody Bellinger – are spoiling it for everyone. After all, 21-23-year-olds are supposed to be in the minor leagues wrapping up the season, yet that trio, along with guys like Francisco Lindor, Joey Gallo, Alex Bregman, and Andrew Benintendi, are making it look really easy these days. Then we have Buxton.

Buxton was going to be the 1.1. pick in the 2012 draft before the Astros zagged and took the aforementioned Correa. Buxton and his five tools have been a fantasy tease ever since he reached the majors three years later at age 21. That year (2015), Buxton hit .305/.367/.500 across the minors and came up and finished with a .209/.350/.326 line at the major league level, providing us with yet another reminder why statistical scouting by minor league stats is fraught with risk. In 2016, he once again mashed in the minors at a .305/.359/.568 rate only to end the year in the majors batting .225/.284/.430 in 331 plate appearances.

Buxton was still going mostly full freight in Tout Wars drafts despite the sketchy track record. He went for

Buxton was still going mostly full freight in Tout Wars drafts despite the sketchy track record. He went for $10 in the mixed auction, $21 in AL-Only and was a 10th-round pick in the mixed draft. Buxton's April performance of .147/.256/.176 brought along cries of "BUSTon" as he struck out 37 percent of the time, but did manage to walk 12 percent of the time, showing a slimmer of hope.

May gave some promise with a .254/.321/.380 line and his strikeout rate improving by six percentage points, but he was still coming well short of what people paid for him in March. June saw the contact improve a bit more, but the final line was .184/.237/.287, and he finished the first half batting .216/.288/.306 with a 31 percent strikeout rate.

One thing to note was that month over month, Buxton's strikeout rate improved. The biggest knock on Buxton has been his inability to make contact at the major-league level. Sure, he could get the fastballs, but non-fastballs resulted in swings like this:

And this:

Travis Sawchik from Fangraphs told a story about how the Twins braintrust worked to get Buxton back on track in late April:

And then, at the height of troubles, Buxton went out for early hitting one Sunday in Minneapolis. There, around the on-field batting cage, in an empty, quiet Target Field he engaged in conversation Twins manager Paul Molitor, hitting coach James Rowson, and Twins coach and long-time major leaguer Torii Hunter. As the game kept speeding up, accelerating on Buxton, the Twins' coaches began to try and slow it down. And maybe it worked. Maybe that conversation and the following adjustments have helped Buxton begin to get the bat to the ball and fully unlock his elite athletic gifts.

With young players such as Buxton, we want to see improvement. That track may not go as quickly as we'd like it to, but seeing month over month improvement is a good sign of a player getting it. The surface stats may struggle as the player is working on multiple facets of his swing to get to a better place, but sometimes the results pay off. We've already seen it this year with guys such as Justin Smoak, Logan Morrison and Yonder Alonso, and we're beginning to see it with Buxton too.

First, here is his 15-game rolling average for his contact rate:

So, we see periods of things getting better but then dumping right back down below the league average. Note where things started to climb just before game 200 on the graph above, which is when he began turning things around in May. Now, check out how that same graph looks for just the 2017 season.

Buxton has transformed from a free-swinging guy with a lot of holes in his swing to someone making contact well above the league average within this season. Since July 1, Buxton is hitting .356/.410/.567 and has further reduced his strikeout rate to 23 percent. His wRC+ is 158, meaning his offensive production in that time has been 58 percent above the league average.

The improvements at the plate can be observed in the swing below from a game on Friday against Arizona. To set the stage, this was in the third plate appearance of the night between Zack Godley and Buxton. In the first plate appearance, Buxton tripled off the base of the wall. The next time up, he hit the fastest inside-the-park home run in the StatCast era. This particular plate appearance came just after Godley struck out Eduardo Escobar on a great curveball for Godley's 10th strikeout of the outing.

This particular pitch is in the most critical situation of an at-bat: the 1-1 count. Pitchers want to get to two strikes within the first three pitches of an at-bat. This season, batters hit .161 after getting into a 1-2 count but .346 after getting into a 2-1 count. Godley unleashed a nasty 1-1 curveball to Buxton and this happened:

The 1-1 count is a key linchpin to a plate appearance. This at bat came after Godley K'd Escobar for 10th K of game. What a take pic.twitter.com/SvuWNQzUz5
— Jason Collette (@jasoncollette) August 19, 2017

That same curveball had Escobar swinging over the top of it and one Buxton would have likely done the same thing with earlier this season. In this at-bat, he spit on it and proceeded to double down the line two pitches later.

While you were watching the actual pitch and the take, you likely missed the other important part of that at-bat. Watch it again, but focus on the front leg and then go back up in the article and watch the two swings-and-misses while also watching the front leg. See the difference? That is by design, as MLB's Rhett Bollinger covered last month:

"It's been about being more patient at the plate, while also being more aggressive at the pitches I should swing at," Buxton said. "It was very tough to go from where I was to where I am now. It's just a process. I know when we first started with this new swing it was tough because I had used the leg kick in the offseason and the last couple years. It just allows me to trust myself and keep having quality at-bats." Twins manager Paul Molitor said the changes have allowed Buxton to see the ball longer to the plate.
Buxton clarified the changes aren't about hitting the ball on the ground to use his speed but more about increasing his contact rate while still trying to drive the ball. His hard-hit rate has jumped to more than 40 percent this month (per Fangraphs.com), which is nearly double his previous rate.
"We've been working on staying back and driving the ball the other way," Buxton said. "It's just about not missing pitches. There were pitches early in the year I could handle, but I was popping them up or fouled them off. So it's about being balanced and not worrying about everything."

If we look at Buxton's launch angle graphs side by side, we see where the pop ups are way down and how he's driving the ball rather than hitting cans of corn when he was making contact.

PRE-JULY 1	POST-JULY 1

Buxton may have stumbled out of the gate a few times while his age peers sprinted out of it, but he's catching up quickly here down the stretch. By wRC+, Buxton has been a top-12 outfielder in the second half of the season as the fruits of his labors to change his offensive approach have begun to pay off.

Buxton still hasn't shown the type of power that his projection says is there, but he is also still filling out. He has fewer than 850 major league plate appearances, and we've already seen how he is trying to rework his swing to cut down on the swing-and-miss that has plagued him. Perhaps he gives back a little of that contact to focus on some more power next year, but this current version of Buxton is pretty damn exciting as well. How sustainable it is will be up to how he continues to adjust as the league learns to adjust to him.