Player Review: Keon Broxton

I’ve written about Broxton a couple times now. It first started when I proclaimed him to be the next big thing in baseball, and then I listed him as one of the power/speed/defense hybrids that we now see in today’s center fielders. Really that’s what is so frustrating about Keon Broxton; I have so much good to say about him yet I was so, so wrong about him being the next big thing.

Based off his 2016 season, I saw a lot of good in him. In just a half season, he hit 9 homers and stole a very efficient 23 bases. He was fast, he hit the ball as hard as the best hitters in the league, and when he was called up for good in the second half, he put up really impressive numbers.

2017 saw a lot of that same talent. It’s definitely there, just check out this great highlight video.

Homers! Catches! Effortless speed! I love all those things. In 2017, Broxton continued to show off the skills that I saw. He hit 20 homers with 21 stolen bases, one of only nine players to accomplish 20/20 seasons in 2017. Statcast was a fan of his defense as well, ranking him the 11^th best outfielder by outs above average and tied for fourth with four 5-star catches made. His sprint speed was 29.5 ft/s, making him the ninth fasted player in the game was well.

                

There were definitely red flags back in 2016. First and foremost, I was judging off of a very small sample size: 244 plate appearances. Of course we need a way bigger sample to truly judge a player’s skill level, and Broxton meanwhile was entering his first full season at the not-so-young age of 27. I saw how much Statcast and Fangraphs liked his hitting and chose to not overreact to his terrible 36.1 strikeout percentage. I realized that his BABIP (batting average on balls in play) of .373 would leave some regression to result but I wasn’t expecting his rate stats to go down by that much.

Broxton went from slashing .242/.354/.430 to .220/.299/.420. As stated, the dip in average was expected because of BABIP, which is really something considering a .242 average isn’t good to start with. To drop 55 points in OBP is really troubling, and we have to hope Broxton can do better than that. Looking back on the BABIP, we could say that it was luck that made him so much better in 2016, but that feels lazy. Like I said, .242 isn’t great to start with, and it’s more like he got bad to slightly worse at getting base hits. I suspect his BABIP is more a product of his quality of contact and how rare he makes contact. As you’ll see in a little bit, Broxton is terrible at making contact. Broxton rarely made contact, but when he did in 2016, he was among the leaders in hard-hit% (8th) and exit velocity. So when he put the ball in play, all was good.

What’s most troubling to me is that the thing he was already bad at, plate discipline, got even worse. His walk rate of 14.8% in 2016 was pretty great actually, but combined with his 36.1% walk rate, we knew he had a problem. That problem got worse when his walk rate went down to 8.6% and his K rate got even worse to 37.8%. Broxton had a good eye and was great at not chasing balls in 2016, and while it wasn’t nearly as good in 2017 (chase rate from 22.1% to 27%), it was still good (league average of 29.9% last year). The guy is just terrible at making contact. Broxton ranks dead last in contact% for swings on pitches in the strike zone and is second to last in contact% overall. It’s safe to say if Broxton ever wants to be a productive hitter, he must lower that K rate by a lot or increase his power by a lot. Below is a list of every player to have a K rate over 35%. It takes a ton of power to produce an above average wRC+. Just to make sure you understand how often Broxton strikes out, he has the worst K% ever for a 400+ PA season.

Broxton had an uptick in power but at the cost of almost every other hitting metric. His flyball rate went up for the homers, but his exit velocity and hard hit percentage both went down. Broxton hits bombs, buts it feels like hitting them shouldn’t quite be his forte. His average launch angle is at 9.3 °, which isn’t reflective of a home run hitter at all. With the consequence of all the strikeouts, it makes you wonder if he should give up on hitting homers all together. Then you see how hard he hits the ball and imagine all the power when he figures out his swing with a proper launch angle. It’s like he stuck in the middle of being a speed guy who gets on base and a guy who wants to hit homers. Between the launch angle and contact rates, both come down to his swing and I’m rooting that he figures it out.

We can’t take his speed away from him though. Sure 21 stolen bases is good, but I think he has 40 bag potential, especially considering he stole more in way less time in 2016. Part of the problem is that his success rate went down from 85% to 75%. The other cause is that he simply ran less often. In 2016, he ran 44% percent of the time he had a stolen base opportunity, which is just ridiculous. For reference, the average is 5% but someone like Dee Gordon runs 27% of the time. A player’s inclination to run is a hard thing to predict, especially now that he plays with three 30-homer players, but it should have been easy to realize that he wasn’t going to attempt a stolen base that often. His rate of 22% in 2017 was way down but still very high, so a 40-steal season in the future is still possible. Just keep up that walk rate so we can watch you run.

                   

It’s funny because originally I was so interested in Broxton because I thought he’d be a great player. Now it’s because he’s so perplexing. He doesn’t chase, but can’t make contact. He hits the ball hard, but doesn’t elevate his swing. He’s very fast and plays good defense but it’s hard to look past those flaws. I like Keon Broxton. I like the tools he has to offer; not everyone can have power, speed, and defense like he does. He seems like good too; there was like ten gifs of him that I wanted to use. There’s just so much to doubt in him, and with Bret Phillips looking to take his job next year, I think the Brewers are starting to doubt him too. In fact, as I’m going through and editing this article, it’s been reported that the Brew Crew picked up Lorenzo Cain and traded for Christian Yelich. Sorry for the news Keon, but hey you’ll be on a good team and hopefully can contribute. I really hope he gets another go-around to put all his tools on display and show us how good he can be.

All stats courteous of Baseball Reference, Fangraphs, and Statcast via Baseball Savant.