Nobody projected that the Baltimore Orioles would be leading the AL Eeast at the All-Star break, and rightly so. There was no clear-cut ace in their pitching staff, despite Chris Tillman’s breakout 2013 campaign and the addition of Ubaldo Jimmenez, who alternates between lights-out and batting practice. Their offense looked good enough, though, boasting names like Adam Jones, Matt Wieters, Manny Machado, J.J. Hardy, Nelson Cruz, and Chris Davis.
Things haven’t gone to plan on the offensive side of things. Davis has faltered and hasn’t gotten off the interstate all year. Machado looks nothing like the doubles machine he was last year. Hardy didn’t hit his first homer until June (he’s hit at least twenty in the last three seasons). Weiters destroyed the ball in April and then destroyed his elbow. Despite a monstrous season from Nelson Cruz (and something resembling a bounce-back from Nick Markakis), disappointments from four slots in the lineup can kill a team.
Enter Steve Pearce. You may remember Pearce from stints with five different big league teams before this season, including Baltimore. Pearce was actually a recipient of the old DFA/release/re-sign trick earlier this season as a way to clear space off the roster (and the payroll). Literally nobody could have seen his success coming.
Yet here we are. Here’s how Pearce’s performance breaks down month-by-month.
The first thing that catches the eye, despite the torrid triple slashes (batting average/on base percentage/slugging percentage) following April, is the BABIP. I’m a bit overly fond of using the batting average on balls in play, admittedly, but his .412 mark for June is pure insanity. His BABIP has actually been pretty high all season. It’s difficult to find something to compare the BABIP mark to, as Pearce has never had any consistent playing time at the Major League level. He’s been what some people call an AAAA player, too good for Triple-A but not good enough for the Majors.
So let’s look at some other stuff, then. There are other ways of figuring out if a run is sustainable or not. Above I used a table from BaseballReference, below I’m going to use some batted ball numbers from Fangraphs. The top row of numbers represents Pearce’s averages over the course of his entire career, including all of 2014. The second row represents the 2013 season, in which Pearce hit a very respectable .261/.362/.420 in 138 plate appearances with Baltimore (300 BABIP). The third row is 2014.
| Year | Grounder/Fly Ball | Line Drive % | Ground Ball % | Fly Ball % | IF Fly Ball % | Homer/Fly Ball |
| Career | 0.9 | 18.50% | 38.70% | 42.80% | 8.90% | 8.90% |
| 2013 | 0.9 | 17.00% | 39.40% | 43.60% | 9.80% | 9.80% |
| 2014 | 0.77 | 22.30% | 33.80% | 43.90% | 7.70% | 16.90% |
So what have we learned, exactly? Well for starters, let’s take a look at Pearce’s line drive rate. Pearce has been smacking the stiches off the ball this year; more than a fifth of the time when he makes contact it’s shooting off his bat. That’s truly remarkable. You’re going to have a lot of success putting up marks like that. For reference, Mike Trout has a career 21.9 LD%. Miguel Cabrera has a 21.6%. Andrew McCutchen has a 20.7%
Line drives also have a habit of missing defenders, barring some sort of leaping grab (although they do happen every now and then). That will drive your BABIP up. Pearce has partially taken these newfound line drives away from his ground balls and infield fly balls, which have high chances of turning into outs, especially infield fly balls. Defenders hardly, if ever botch those plays. His fly balls are also ever so slightly up. If you ask a hitter how best to get a hit by hitting the ball into the outfield, they’ll tell you they want to hit a line drive.
But Steve Pearce plays half his games at Camden Yards, and many more of them in the AL East. Camden Yards is an absolute bandbox, it’s got relatively shallow walls and the ball carries out. Yankee Stadium, Rogers Centre, and Fenway Park also exist in this division. Pearce has capitalized by turning a whopping 16.9% of his fly balls into homers this year. For those of you doing the math at home, he’s got 11 round-trippers.
Homers, of course, are balls in play, so there goes the BABIP. So between them, the line drives, and depleted ground balls, it’s time to buy into Steve Pearce. At least partially. It’s worth noting that Pearce is striking out at a 19.1% rate, and as the new scouting report on him gets around, some of his many bases on balls (9.1% walk rate) could turn into strikeouts. For what it’s worth, here’s the heat map on Pearce from BrooksBaseball.
Keep in mind that this is from the catcher’s point of view, and Pearce is a right-hander. We can see he very much likes to hit balls inside the zone, and based on his spray chart, tends to pull his contact to right field. So, logic would dictate try to get him to chase on something outside the zone, and put on some sort of shift, right?
Maybe. Pearce has line drive power to all fields, so you’d probably need to play your outfielders decently straight away. I’m not a manager, so this is all spitballing. But baseball is also a game of adjustments, and as the league inevitably adjusts to Pearce, the true test will be whether he adjusts to their adjustments. It’s probably also safe to assume that his prodigious line drive rate will normalize at some point, both through the law of BABIP normalization and league adjustments. But for now, let’s marvel at how much Steve Pearce is simply punishing the ball, and wonder where the Orioles would be without him.
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