Collette Calls: Are Goldschmidt's Problems in his Head?

Looking into what is wrong with a consensus first-round pick who is hitting .204/.325/.370 nearly 200 plate appearances into the season is something that everyone will want to read about and a topic that can lead to a 1,500 word count before I know it.

I want to preface this piece with a hypothesis of what is likely wrong with Goldschmidt as it was a topic of conversation during the lunch above with Jeff. We both agreed on the belief that the humidor is in his head. Every word you have read to this point has been done before I have looked into any stat beyond looking up his triple-slash line. This was done to remove any potential bias as this piece comes together.

Hypothesis: Paul Goldschmidt is not hiding an injury. His poor statistical performance to date is due to the fact the humidor is in his head.

Over the past six seasons, Goldschmidt has been a fantasy cornerstone type player. You invest a top draft pick around him because, save the 2014 season, he has a tremendous track record of health and production. Even that 2014 season was amazing at the plate before the fractured hand injury due to an errant Ernesto Frieri fastball.

As we compare 2018 to the previous six seasons, there is one particular area that stands out from the rest: his strikeout rate.

via GIPHY

He has frequently used the middle part of the park as well as the pull side throughout his career, but in 2018, he is not pulling as many fastballs save this monster shot off Rich Hill. The immediate thought would be that pitchers are working the fastball more away now that Chase Field is humidified. In reality, there has not been a huge difference in where pitchers are locating their fastballs to Goldschmidt, although more appear to be in the elevated regions of the strike zone in 2018 and he sees fewer fastballs on the inner third:

via GIPHY

After slightly overperforming his expected weighted on-base average the past few seasons, he has severely underperformed it thus far in 2018. The important part to remember about xwOBA is that is helps us understand what has happened, but is not a strong predictive measure of what is to come. Sure, if said player continued to make the same type of batted ball contact with the same type of launch angle, and those batted balls went to the same places they are currently going, then xwOBA could predict the future. That does not happen, so it cannot. The larger lesson with this expected stat is that, in theory, Goldschmidt's numbers should be better.