Collette Calls: Breaking Down Jason Heyward

Personally, I wish MLB Network did an entire hour of stuff like this on a daily basis because segments like these are simply fantastic. We know the Walk-Up Drill as something Happy Gilmore did to learn how to golf, but Sean Casey simply explains what Jason Heyward was doing wrong in recent years and what needed to be corrected.

Casey made three points about halfway through the video: Heyward was struggling on fastballs, he was seeing more fastballs and he was pulling a ton of balls in play. Let's look at the numbers for each of these points.

Struggling on Fastballs

The outcomes on fastballs for Heyward certainly were at a career low in 2016, coming off a season in which his batting average was a career high.

His batting average on balls in play was a career-low .266 because of the quality of contact on the fastballs and so many ended up in the ground to the pull side. He hit a home run off a fastball at nearly the same rate Halley's Comet makes an appearance in our night sky and converted fastballs into outs at a very high rate.

Heyward had a better batting average last year off fastballs, but it was not as if he was lofting the ball last year, either. In fact, he hit even more grounders off fastballs last season as he had that abnormal 2.4 groundball-to-flyball ratio when his historical rate was closer to 1.6.

The larger problem for Heyward was that he was not getting as much carry off fastballs. Note his HR/FB ratio and flyball distance by season off fastballs:

The number of pitches pulled to the right side does not look much different from one year to the next. What does stand out on the spray charts are the red dots to the pull side – popups. In 2015, he had a number of popups the other way, which will happen when you are both late and underneath a pitch. If you are popping up pitches to your pull side, the best you can hope for is the defense being indecisive in who will catch the ball.

Heyward led all lefty batters in popping up in 2016 with 48 and also led with 20 popups to his pull side. The pulled balls were nothing new, but pulled, poorly struck baseballs were a larger problem for Heyward.

The lower half does look at bit different from other years. The images below are from 2012 and 2013:

However, it is not as simple as just fixing a back foot and his lower half. As Mark DeRosa pointed out in August, there were multiple symptoms going on with Heyward's swing last year.

It might be better to look at a swing from 2016 against what Heyward is doing this offseason, and we have that courtesy of @macdime54 on Instagram. A few things to note:

• Look where the bat and hands are at the 1-second mark; there is some serious bat wrap on the left and his front arm is practically arm-barred while neither shows up in the revamped swing setup.

• At the 2-second mark, the point of impact, look at the momentum on the right and the shorter stride to the ball against the wider stride from the left and how he is falling back on his back leg.

@WhatTheMicah@DEvanAltman best I can do rn. Hard to find a longer side angle from 2016 showing full swing/load. pic.twitter.com/NbNK4E4WzJ

— Corey Freedman (@CFCubsRelated) December 20, 2016

It looks like someone is doing just that with Jason Heyward, so perhaps he can get back to being a productive offensive threat and not a highly paid banjo hitter.