Breakout Breakdown: Chas McCormick

Everyone loves Dusty Baker. Baker, though, never seemed to fully embrace Chas McCormick even amidst mounds of evidence that he should.

McCormick was not in the Astros' lineup for the first two games of last season. There was a stretch from May 19 to July 5 when he never started more than three games in a row, and he reached that number just three times during that span. Those are arbitrary endpoints, sure, but it paints a picture of a guy who was clearly falling short of everyday status.

McCormick did start playing a lot more regularly during the second half, but there was a span in late August and early September when he started just four times during an eight-game stretch. That's when Baker dropped this quote to Chandler Rome of The Athletic.

"He ain't a big boy yet," Baker said of McCormick. "It's hard to be a big boy right out the gate. What is this, Chas' third or fourth year? The big boys are Altuve, Bregman, Tucker, those are the big boys. The other boys are approaching big boys."

"Ain't a big boy" McCormick was slashing .289/.371/.527 with 20 home runs and 14 stolen bases over 384 plate appearances when that article came out. He finished the season with a .273/.353/.489 batting line with 22 long balls and 19 steals across 457 plate appearances. The 28-year-old then hit .286/.355/.393 with one homer in the postseason, starting eight of 11 contests.

Baker is now retired from managing, having taken a front office job with the Giants as he waits for his call from Cooperstown. Will former Baker bench coach and new skipper Joe Espada be more committed to McCormick as an everyday guy in 2024?

When asked in December about the status of McCormick and fellow outfielder Jake Meyers, general manager Dana Brown said the team planned to use Meyers as its primary center fielder, with McCormick playing regularly between left field and center. That's not exactly a full-throated endorsement of McCormick, but perhaps more tellingly, Houston lost Michael Brantley and hasn't added any outfielders this offseason. 

Yainer Diaz is slated to take over as the primary catcher, affording Yordan Alvarez more time at designated hitter and less in left field. Mauricio Dubon has earned regular looks in the outfield (and at other positions), but you'd have to believe those will come at the expense of Meyers, not McCormick. Meyers is the better defender in center field, but McCormick is pretty damn good himself and there's no comparison between the two offensively. I'll also point back to the aforementioned article from Rome which stated that McCormick's sporadic playing time was "a constant source of frustration for some within the organization." Between the uptick in his playing time down the stretch and Baker no longer being around, I'm pretty confident McCormick will be an everyday guy in 2024, at least to start.

Now that we've (hopefully) put the playing time concerns to rest, let's dive into why McCormick was so good in 2023.

McCormick's quality of contact was pretty modest last season, with a 39 percent hard-hit rate (38th percentile) and 88.1 mph average exit velocity (25th percentile). Both numbers were identical in 2022. McCormick has always been good at producing barrels, though, and that rate came in at a career-high 11.1 percent in 2023.

Per FanGraphs, McCormick also upped his pull rate from 34.3 percent to 44.3 percent. In addition, his fly ball rate ticked up from 35.1 percent to 38 percent. Those two factors, along with a good number of barrels, allowed the 28-year-old to hit a healthy 22 taters in 115 games in 2023 despite below average hard-hit and exit velocity data.

The first thing that stands out to me with McCormick is how he absolutely murders fastballs, particularly four-seamers. Check out the chart below, organized by Baseball Savant's Run Value on four-seam fastballs.

A .745 slugging percentage and .502 wOBA against four-seamers is insane. It's not a new development, either, as McCormick slugged .648 with a .445 wOBA versus four-seamers in 2022, coming in with a Run Value of 16.

Frankly, it's surprising that McCormick saw as many fastballs as he did last season. Four-seamers and sinkers represented 53.4 percent of the pitches he faced, with breaking balls coming in at 36.4 percent and offspeed pitches at 10.2 percent. McCormick's xwOBA against both breaking and offspeed offerings was just .280. He was particularly bad versus curveballs with a .237 xwOBA, but pitchers threw him curves just 7.7 percent of the time. It would certainly stand to reason that McCormick will have to adjust to seeing more non-fastballs in 2024.

The other thing that stands out with McCormick is the damage he did against left-handed pitching. The switch-hitter slashed an absurd .325/.399/.610 versus southpaws in 2023, with nine of his 22 homers (in 181 fewer plate appearances) coming off lefties. As the table below from FanGraphs shows, McCormick ranked eighth in wOBA against southpaws last season. For his career, McCormick is batting .309/.384/.566 with 19 home runs in 344 plate appearances against left-handers. 

McCormick was still pretty good versus right-handers last season, too, slashing .250/.333/.436, with 13 long balls. He has just a .719 OPS against righties in his career, however, and obviously both of those numbers pale in comparison to his work versus southpaws. 

As previously alluded to, I'm not worried about McCormick being platooned, at least not initially. His defense will help keep him in the lineup everyday, and the Astros don't really have the personnel to pull off a platoon, anyway. I could see him batting in the bottom third of the lineup against right-handers, though, and when you combine the ineptitude versus non-fastballs with some relative struggles against righties, it's fair to wonder if some regression is coming.

McCormick was one of the many to benefit from the new pickoff rules and bigger bases in 2023, more than doubling his career total in pilfering 19 bags. His 76 percent success rate was merely adequate, though, and we saw his sprint speed drop to the 72nd percentile. He also mentioned in Rome's article that he liked how his body felt at a heavier weight, so I'm not sure the speed will rebound, especially as he comes up on his 29th birthday in April. I wouldn't count on any more steals in 2024 even if he gets more playing time. Given the stolen base landscape around the league, you're probably hoping McCormick just treads water here.

In NFBC Drafts thus far, McCormick is sitting on an ADP of 162 and is the 38th outfielder off the board. I'm surprised it's not higher, frankly, considering he finished 102nd in RotoWire's Earned Auction Values and should play more in 2024. Perhaps others share some of the concerns I have. However, even with those worries it seems like a nice price, especially with the uncertainty at the outfield position the deeper you get into your draft.