When I first started writing this article, it started something like this: Oneil Cruz’s results are still in the future. But after lasers spread throughout the park, Cruz has a WRC+ of 126, the highest of his career in his short 2021 call. The 6-foot-7 outfielder’s Titanic bat ignited a truly incredible performance. His current hot streak and seasonal figures are a glimpse of what his talent can do, they had a contract with last season when he owned 110 WRC+ and posted such a long and powerful man in the lower third of the strike zone.
Back in January, I checked Cruz’s biggest power: his ability to hit the court at the top of the area. Players with such long leverage are usually not productive at the top of the area as last season. His .496 Xwoba is third in the entire baseball! If you are there against him, you are vulnerable to real pain. But being locked in one part of the area usually means making sacrifices in another part. It’s hard to use to command the upper and lower thirds, while Cruz has only a certain league average of Xwoba in the bottom third (.319). This is weird, though, because these are the types you expect someone with a body to easily put their barrel under the ball. When I write my own article, the obvious conclusion is that if Cruz can keep his third of excellence and cause more damage in areas that should be well with his physical abilities, his batting profile will be completely unlocked. It’s still early, but Cruz has made great progress with the third-placed Xwoba so far this season.
There are several layers to this story. I like to incorporate potential adjustments to batsmen into two areas: swing changes and swing decision changes. The batsman may try one or two when trying to solve his swing. Let’s start with Cruz’s swing decision. Overall, Cruz’s chase (and swing) this season is much lower than last year, from 27th to 62nd percentile in the chase rate. This helped him almost increase his walking rate from 8.5% to 15.6%. So, overall, he is more selective. But selectivity is in both directions. You can swing less on a court that cannot be damaged and swing more if possible. Cruz is generally less motivated, but let’s see if this reduction is concentrated in specific areas of the strike zone:
Oneil Cruz division multiplied by region
| season | The lower third | Three points in the middle | Upper third |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 58.4 | 67.0 | 65.8 |
| 2025 | 54.2 | 53.8 | 65.2 |
Cruz is still wielding almost every opportunity he gets on the high court, where his swing hasn’t actually changed. Instead, the major change was a slight decline in the middle third (14.4 percentage points down) and a slight decline in the lower third, which was his least last season. Ideally, you would like to see Cruz have a greater advantage in the middle of the area. According to Robert Orr’s Seager Metric, it’s a measure of how batsmen recognize and swing status on the court, Cruz’s overall tolerant overall inclination dropped from 44% to 35th. There is more room for improvement there. As for his tilt in the lower third of the swing, as long as he attacks the court, he can match his plane less frequently than he can, which makes sense to him. Let’s dig deeper.
In my work in January, I mentioned that Cruz almost never put his barrel under the ball under the ball at a low speed. When his bat crosses the area, it usually fails to reach an attack angle, allowing him to make the most of the bat’s speed and long pole. In theory, his long arms should allow him to easily lean on a low-key plane when fully stretched, but the old left-handed spell puts the barrel under the court below the low-key ones. His contact quality is good (.459 Xwobacon), but not the game you want, and the build risk of damage. This year, Cruz jumped to .589 on the lower third of Xwobacon, so the change happened. His downswing made me think he aimed better, but has the swing itself changed to allow him to reach these courts with greater authority?
The difference in Cruz’s swing path is subtle, but it’s really what he needs. To keep him strong at the top of the area, it makes sense that he relies on smaller changes. After all, keeping what you are good at is as important as solving your weaknesses. When looking at Statcast’s new bat path data, we can see that subtle tweaks may make sense.
Cruz’s attack angle increased from 11 degrees to 13 degrees in the lower third, and his swing path increased from 35 degrees to 35 degrees. However, when he specialized in breaking the ball, his attack angle jumped from 13 degrees to 16 degrees, and his contact point increased by about an inch and a half (43 to 44.4). Even with the swing path changing, he was still not that steep at the bottom of the area. By making his body in front, his bats have more time to match the field plane. If he can’t manipulate his torso and shoulders early on, that’s the ideal way. This is the key to his work with breaking the ball. Since the sweeper, slider and curve ball have a downward trajectory and are slower than the fast ball, the transfer of contact points allows his bat to have more time to match the plane of the court. This is especially true of his performance with the sweeper.
Last season, he only waved on the 11 swings in the lower third. This year, this number is already nine o’clock. He has 1.050 Xwoba for them this year, compared to .133 last year. The sample size may not be enough to say that this is stable, but boy, it is a good signal for him. The difference in contact points and the resulting attack angle are the differences between the low-line driver and the hard ground ball. These line drives usually lead to home runs when you’re as powerful as Cruz.
This is why the angle of attack is often called a timing metric. This shows when a batsman can place his barrel on an aircraft that can raise the ball. The best batsmen are able to get the barrel on the upward track early in the swing and keep the path up, but everyone has their own limitations, including Cruz. He is more likely to have a much lower fastball than his contact points outside the area because he has more time to get on the plane.
I’ll leave you some examples of swings on low breaks vs high balls to illustrate how swings are only subtle with each other:
Proactive ambitions to the spoilers could lead to Cruz’s already high strikeout rate, which is the third percentile. But honestly, I’m not sure if that will change. His offensive character always persists because of how hard he hits the ball. If that comes with a lot of strikeouts, then that’s it. Cruz’s current approach to hitting the absolute nose in the ball only in different parts of the region seems to be somewhat sustainable. He is indeed an interesting player, which is why I wrote twice in just a few months. How many players may have a 30-30-30 season? That is, home runs, stolen bases and strikeout rates.
