{"id":71785,"date":"2024-05-01T14:39:39","date_gmt":"2024-05-01T18:39:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/?p=71785&#038;preview=true&#038;preview_id=71785"},"modified":"2024-05-01T14:39:39","modified_gmt":"2024-05-01T18:39:39","slug":"this-angels-outfielder-is-getting-extremely-unlucky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2024\/05\/01\/this-angels-outfielder-is-getting-extremely-unlucky\/","title":{"rendered":"How One Angels Outfielder is Struck with Bad Luck"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/m\/moniami01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2024-05-01_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Mickey Moniak<\/a> has been through a series of unfortunate events this season. Moniak is hitting a paltry .156\/.206\/.220 to go with a -0.7 fWAR.\u00a0 This is coming off the heels of a successful 2023 campaign, in which Moniak swatted 14 home runs in just over 300 plate appearances. It&#8217;s only a month into the season, but what has been going on with Moniak?<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Ron Washington on Mickey Moniak in the wake of Mike Trout\u2019s injury: \u201cHe\u2019s gonna get that extended playing time.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He doesn\u2019t see Moniak as the *everyday* guy, but said he\u2019ll get plenty of run out in center field.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Nathan Ackerman (@NathanAckerman_) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/NathanAckerman_\/status\/1785444728189980991?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">April 30, 2024<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h2>Mickey Moniak&#8217;s Series of Unfortunate Events<\/h2>\n<h3>What Went Right in 2023?<\/h3>\n<p>Last season, Moniak was given consistent playing time for the first time in his career. He was able to get into a career-high 85 games and rewarded the Angels with a 1.8 fWAR. For the first time in his career, Moniak started to look like he could live up to being a number 1 overall draft pick. In his <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/2016\/05\/09\/mickey-moniak-2016-mlb-draft-profile\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">draft profile<\/a>, Moniak was touted to have &#8220;<em>Consistently hard contact<\/em>.&#8221;\u00a0This\u00a0translated to the big leagues in 2023, producing a barrel rate of 12.6% and a hard-hit rate of 36.9%.<\/p>\n<p>There were some glaring concerns that went beyond the batted-ball outcome. Moniak carried a 35% K rate and an anemic 2.8% walk rate. That, combined with a .397 BABIP, meant something had to give. What&#8217;s interesting, though, is Mickey is coming back down to earth in a good way in 2024.<\/p>\n<h3>What About This Year?<\/h3>\n<p>Simply put, just about everything is going wrong in 2024 for Moniak, but it&#8217;s not because of his approach. This year, Mickey has raised his walk rate to 6.7% and brought his strikeout rate down to 30%. Are either of these numbers great? No, they aren&#8217;t, but they show a more measured approach at the plate. This is supported by a much lower O-Swing%, currently sitting at 38.8%, the lowest in his career aside from a cup of coffee in the shortened 2020 season. His contact rate is also up, with a 75.9% rate, again a career-high.<\/p>\n<p>Beyond what Mickey is doing at the dish, he&#8217;s\u00a0a net-neutral player. So far in 2024, he&#8217;s had a -1.4 UZR, which makes him about average in the field, and a -0.8 baserunning score. So\u00a0really\u00a0what it comes down to is what he can do with the stick.<\/p>\n<h3>Just Unlucky So Far<\/h3>\n<p>When it&#8217;s all put together, it looks like Moniak is just getting unlucky. He&#8217;s taking a much better approach this year and is still hitting the ball fairly hard. Fangraphs is projecting him to be about a league-average bat the rest of the way, with only part-time play. The upside is there, though, and with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/t\/troutmi01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2024-05-01_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Mike Trout<\/a>\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2024\/04\/30\/angels-lose-mike-trout-to-injury-again\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">going down with injury<\/a>, there may be room for more consistent at-bats, which is all he needs.<\/p>\n<p><em>Main Photo: \u00a9 Katie Stratman-USA TODAY Sports<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mickey Moniak has been through a series of unfortunate events this season. Moniak is hitting a paltry .156\/.206\/.220 to go with a -0.7 fWAR.\u00a0 This is coming off the heels of a successful 2023 campaign, in which Moniak swatted 14 home runs in just over 300 plate appearances. It&#8217;s only a month into the season, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5133,"featured_media":72092,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16,1071],"tags":[6394],"class_list":["post-71785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-angels","category-mlb","tag-mickey-moniak"],"modified_by":"Matt Graves","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5133"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71785"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71785\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}