Marcus Semien tries to shake the seasonal downturn

Maybe it's the batting order Switcheroo, or maybe it's the minor league court. Marcus Semien hit the lead for the first time in Bruce Bochy's manager as Rangers since August 11 last year, falling to fifth place for the first time in Bruce Bochy's run, for the first time in Sacramento's season, Marcus Semien recorded his first multi-hit game of the season this season. The 34-year-old second baseman scored 3-3 in three home runs, walking, sacrificial flies and four runs against track and field competitions – a much-needed positive signal given his season opening sluggishness.

Semien's big night was held at Sutter Health Park, and while batting, Relocation A and his opponents beat 5.4 runs in each game. 270/.342/.466. Whether the venue is a factor or not, Bochy's new lineup is like charm, like new Leadoff batsman Josh Smith, New No. 2 batsmen Wyatt Langford and booming Jake Burger are also for the Rangers. All shots were paid by 29-year-old Righty Osvaldo Bido; Semien has already put the Rovers' second run paver with the first-inning Fly, crushing the middle-class sinking piece by 417 feet, breaking the 4-2 game in the fifth in the midfield:

Home run is just Semien's second season, his third extra hit percentage. He entered the game batting with 17 WRC+.141/.209/.192, with all four numbers ranking the highest quarter of the 170 players and showed up with enough cricket to win the batting championship. His new slash line (.160/.231/.247, 39 WRC+) now makes him the bottom qualifier in these categories, but he is not close to the worst player on the team. Joc Pederson (.052/.141/.069, -37 WRC+) has a bigger problem, including Tuesday's 0-to-3, but Rangers' investment in his Semien is not as good as their $175 million deal in December 2021 in the seventh year.

Since the signature, the Semien has been key to the Rangers lineup, combining strength, speed, strong defense and durability. He averaged 161 games in his three seasons with the team and led cricket and batting in the Grand Slam twice. He also formed two All-Star teams and helped the Rangers win their first World Series, during which time he was ranked 14th in the Grand Slams at FWAR (14.8) and eighth in Bwar (17.5). By the latter measure, which includes his two-way work by 7.7 Bwar in 2023 (a top of the 2023 position players but still lags behind Shohei Ohtani (10.0 Bwar), he has become an invisible Hall of Fame candidate, a strong future given his standout at the 40.6 peacs of 40 pears of 40 war threshold (40.6).

During his 13-year career with White Sox, A, Blue Jays and Rangers, Semien proved to be a slow starter. He is a .239/.311/.392 (95 WRC+) batsman in March and April, while his career is .257/.324/.448 (112 WRC+) from May until the end of the regular season. This is a substantial difference; using our split ranking tool and some Excel Magic, I found it to be the 17th largest gap since 2010 (I chose a truncation from the thin air):

Semien is in the 81st percentile in this weird split, not even as extreme as his doubles partner (Seager), but this may help explain his comparative lack of all-star choices (three) relative to his outstanding All-Star choice as a player. I came up with this idea when I saw Francisco Lindor’s 14-point difference (109 WRC+ in March/April, 109 WRC+ remainder of the year), and there was no All-Star choice since 2019.

I have no explanation for this weirdness, but it persists, obviously not uncommon. Recall that Semien got off to a similarly bad start in his first year with the Rangers, hitting .157/.226/.217 (26 wRC+) through April following the lockout-abbreviated spring training of 2022, and while his final offensive numbers were unremarkable (.248/.304/.429, 107 wRC+), that was still good for a 4.4-WAR season thanks to his excellent Defense. Nevertheless, after a 2023 excellent 2023 year (.276/.348/.478, 126 WRC+, 6.3 WAR), he dropped to .237/.308/.391 (99 WRC+) last year with a 4.2 war, so with any 34-year-old, it’s natural to know if he’s suddenly wondering if he’s going to know his career.

We were very early this season and only some statistics started to stabilize, so the conclusions we came to shouldn't be too solid, but no, I don't think this is not the end of Semien. Some areas of his performance do stand out, most of which are just a little skewed – but in the small sample, the decline seems to be more than just the sum of its parts.

Semien started stabilizing over the 350 threshold on Tuesday night, so it’s worth noting that his swings are more frequent than ever (51%), even rising from last year’s full season high (50%) and his career high (45.4%). His 25% chase rate is slightly lower than last year, but still about three points higher than his career. In fact, Semien is a very disciplined batsman, scoring well on Robert Orr’s Seager metric, which measures the quality of a batsman’s swing decision. He is at the 90th percentile or above in each of his three full seasons at Texas, including last year’s 94th percentile, but this year he has reached the 84th percentile. It's still impressive because it's not to say he was suddenly hit by a desperate hack there, and it's better than the 78th percentile he entered on Tuesday. His big game gave many statistics in this post. That said, his 10% swing rate is the highest since 2017, up half from last year, 2.2 points. Even if he made a good decision on the swaying effort, they weren't as good as usual, and his connection frequency wasn't as frequent as before.

Semien's swing metrics tell us that his players do not have excellent bat speed. Even with a limited sample of late-season data starting in 2023, his average average swing speed was 13th percentile, and he dropped to 68.3 (9%) last year. This year, he is 68.6 (12th percentage point). His 6.5% fast swing is low (the major league average is 22.8%), but well above the 4.2% last year, so if anything, one wonders if he is swinging or not if he is swinging. Too difficult On rare occasions, he did twitch it. His square sum of explosion rates were both reduced (30.7% to 27.3% for the former and 9.8% to 6.5% for the latter), indicating that his contact quality was closed. He never illuminates the Statcast rankings; his barrel rate is on the league average, but his exit speed and severe blow speed are already in the lower quartiles. This is his time at the ranger:

As you can see, there is no huge difference between this year's numbers and last year's numbers. Semien's barrel rate is currently at the 52th percentile, but his exit from Velo and his hard-working speed are in the 23rd and 15th percentile, respectively. Despite similar performance and improved barrel rate relative to last year, his expected figures (apparently far from it) have dropped. I suspect this has a lot to do with his batting distribution so far, as it doesn't matter to his norm:

Semien had a lot more ground than usual and he pulled them more often. His batsman has hit a 0.255 range (unbelievable!) in each of the last three seasons. This seems to explain part of what happened.

When a player in the mid-30s began to struggle, it was reasonable to wonder if he had difficulties dealing with fastballs. We entered the smaller sample in the already small sample, but Semien did a good job with four shoemakers (.333 AVG/.500 SLG, compared to last year’s .243 AVG/.437 SLG). Strangely, his game against the sinker was only 20-20 (.050), and he handled it well last year (.273 AVG/.405 SLG), if not the average major league (.284 AVG/.421 SLG). Of the 18 settling films he plays, 12 are the bottom line. He is also a match against Sliders and Sweepers, who both played against Sliders and Sweepers last year, and although he played 19 in 19, only eight were on the ground.

I can't say about why Semien hit more ground and why fewer hitters on these grounds, but it's already early and all of them are likely to come out. We have seen Semien have experienced such moments before and are getting more and more frequent in his Ranger era:

Semien has changed little compared to the basic indicators in recent years, but they add up to a large amount, which may be attributed to sample size and timing of our focus. If August happens, four to five hundred plates are played this season, we won't notice that his downturn is almost not that much. It inevitably raises questions about whether players suddenly flip over the mountain through the calendar, but it is understandable if psychological factors also play a role. As former webcaster Ken Singleton, a great batsman still endured some slow starts – once said, looking up at that scoreboard isn’t fun to see you still “stumbled on the interstate” with a batting average of 1 (as shown in 1, it looks like a capital i).

Although the Rangers started with a differential difference of -12, the Rangers were 14-9, but they ranked 25th with 84 WRC+ (.220/.274/.363) and 29th scores (3.05 runs per game) with 84 WRC+ (.220/.274/.363). Bochy's time is ripe.

“I don’t have a say now until I start going back to what I do,” Sain said when asked about the lineup before the game. “I don't have a say, so that's where I'm in. I'm having a hard time hitting the ball in the game above. On some days, I'm going back to the club hall in the statistics table would be a big difference if I found the gap here or there. But there isn't that right now. But there isn't that right now.

Perhaps the shrinking venue has something to do with Semien's big nights. “We all beat very well on minors,” he later said. “So let's pretend to be minors. That's how we all get here, maybe that's why.”