What happened to Johan Camargo’s Bat during the 2019 season?

Although he isn’t the next Mike Trout or Bryce Harper, Johan Camargo has been a solid substitute player for the Atlanta Braves during the last 3 years. Of course, substitute players are by default going to be less useful than a starter since he plays in fewer games, but Johan Camargo’s role as a substitute player is vital towards a team’s success. A starter can only play in so many games before he gets exhausted, so strong substitute players are needed to fill in the days when starters do take breaks. This allows teams to maintain a consistent performance from its players while also keeping the players healthy during the season. Furthermore, some of the starters could be injured during the season, requiring the substitute players to fill in the vital roles that these starters have. Great teams might have talented starters, but the best teams usually have a strong core to fall back on if their starters go down. Knowing this, examining a substitute player like Johan Camargo could be quite enlightening.

Taking a superficial glance at Johan Camargo’s statistics, we see that he has been quite an exceptional backup player during the 2017 and 2018 season, posting a wRC+ of 100 and 116 and a wOBA of .330 and.346 respectively. Factoring in his above-average defense, his WAR for the 2017 season (1.1 WAR) and 2018 season (3.3 WAR) were quite encouraging for an analyst to see especially of someone ready to hit his peak. However, despite the encouraging trends in Johan Camargo’s performance, the 2019 season deviates from his trend of baseball success. During the 2019 season, he posted a measly 67 wRC+ and a -0.5 WAR in 98 games, which is almost 16 more games than during the 2017 season. His BABIP has dropped about 60 points (.315 to .258) between the 2018 and 2019 season and his SLG% also faced a similar drop as well (.457 to .384). Such a drastic change in the performance of a player drastically calls for attention whether this is something of concern or whether this is some unlucky phenomenon.

(Note I will not be providing any analysis for Johan Camargo’s defensive performance as not only does he play a multitude of positions, but it is also hard to find the exact reason why someone struggles with defense. Also, I think that the plethora of information available for us when analyzing a player’s offense is sufficient enough for this article.)

Option 1: Plate Discipline

When first analyzing changes in a player’s hitting, a good place to start would be observing any changes in the plate discipline of a player. This includes the K%, BB%, First Pitch Swing%, and Swinging%. Looking at these statistics first is especially important because it helps us visualize the type of player that Johan Camargo is. There are a large number of statistics that I want to cover, but to start things off, I want to analyze the BB% and the K% of Johan Camargo.

Here are some graphs of the BB% and K% of Johan Camargo.

Observing the graphs, although Johan Camargo has quite an impressive K%, his BB% tends to be more volatile than his K%. His BB% dropped below the league average during the 2019 season even though he drastically improved his BB% percent during the 2018 season. Although I don’t think that the drop in Johan Camargo’s BB% is the definitive reason for his lackluster season, improving his BB% will make him a much better player.

However, only looking at the K% and BB% of Johan Camargo is not sufficient enough for us to analyze his plate discipline. To give us a clearer picture, we would have to look at his swing%, and chase rate% as well.

Here are the graphs to the 1st pitch Swing%, Swing%, Zone Swing%, Zone Contact%, Chase%, and Chase Contact%.

As seen with the graphs above, his approach to the plate has not drastically changed over the years. With his high and nearly identical Swing% and Zone Contact% over the last two years, Johan Camargo is more of an aggressive hitter than a passive one. While his aggressive hitting style is something of later analysis, what is much more important to see out of the graphs above is the increase in his Chase% and the stagnation in his Chase Contact%. This trend is problematic because if this trend continues, we could see a further decline in Johan Camargo’s performance. Although we could explain that his aggressive hitting approach is at fault for his high Chase%, other factors such as the types of pitches need to be weighed before a final analysis is made. For example, if Johan Camargo has an unusually high amount of sliders thrown towards him, then it would only make sense that his Chase% would be higher.

Although I mentioned a lot of statistics and made quite a lot of suggestions from these statistics, the weight of these suggestions is not as vital as the other suggestions I am going to make in this article. The actual difference between the statistics mentioned above between the years is not drastic and does not warrant any fundamental changes to Johan Camargo’s play style.

Option 2: Pitch Analysis

If his plate discipline has not drastically changed, then something else must explain why he regressed during the 2019 season. Referenced in the previous section, other factors such as pitchers’ adjustments to Johan Camargo or a stretch of bad luck can explain his poor performance during the 2019 season. Knowing this, it might be better to look at some major deviations from his stat line over the last three years. In particular, I want us to analyze the BABIP of Johan Camargo during the 2019 and 2020 season.

Here is a graph of Johan Camargo’s BABIP from 2017-2019.

As stated in our previous section, we noted how Johan Camargo tends to be more aggressive towards the plate than other hitters in the MLB. As such, much of his contributions come in the form of hits and making plays in the field. However, as seen with the graph above, his BABIP has dropped significantly from the 2018 to the 2019 season, ending up with a BABIP for the first time in his career below the MLB average. If his BABIP is the root cause of the lack of offensive production he has, then we can take the next step and say that his lackluster performance towards specific pitches causes his BABIP to significantly drop. Of course, this is not the end-all-be-all reason why Johan Camargo is struggling, but I think that out of all of the other reasons as to why he is struggling, this reason contributes the most to the lack of offensive production the Braves usually expect from Johan Camargo.

Of course, knowing what pitches Johan Camargo struggles with would require us to look at his weighted Performance against each pitch.

Here is a graph of Johan Camargo’s performance against each pitch in terms of weighted runs.

Although Johan Camargo’s performance against each pitch has regressed during the 2019 season, I want to call in particular focus the regression of his wFB, wCH, and wSF since those dropped the most. In 2019, his wFB dropped 141%, dropping from a respectable 7.9 to a pitiful -3.2 wFB. This steep change also occurs against other pitches; he regressed quite significantly against changeups (283% change) and split-finger pitches (134% change). This change is quite flagrant when you also consider the fact that Johan Camargo has not yet hit his peak as a player and should be quite familiar with most major league pitching by this point.

So what changed?

One possible explanation could be the fact that most pitchers are finally catching on to the weak points of Johan’s swing. If we take a look at a heatmap of Johan Camargo’s 2019 season, we see weak spots up in the zone and the left of the zone that pitchers can easily exploit even though the heatmap below includes all types of pitches.

However, only looking at a general heatmap overlooks the specific weaknesses that we are trying to look for, so we have to instead look at a heatmap of each pitch. Note that all of the heatmaps listed below are from the 2019 season instead of all of his previous seasons. This is because we want to analyze specifically Johan Camargo’s offensive production during the 2019 season. Including other seasons such as the 2018 and 2017 season could give us more reliable data towards Camargo’s offensive tendencies, but they are not pertinent to his 2019 season. * I did not include a heatmap of the split-finger pitches since I was unable to get a heatmap that corresponds with that pitch. Instead, I will include a heatmap of Johan Camargo’s performance against sliders.

Fastballs:

Focusing on the Fastball heatmap first, we see a weak spot in Johan Camargo’s ability to hit fastballs down the middle and left of the plate. Although Johan Camargo’s ability to hit fastballs up in the strike zone is not as quite as strong as in other red zones, it is nothing so glaring that it requires further analysis. In the case of Johan Camargo, his ability to hit fastballs left of the plate is not as concerning as his ability to hit fastballs down the middle. Compared to his 2018 season, Johan Camargo AVG/P for fastballs down the middle has dropped significantly (.119 to .038). Although Johan Camargo did play in fewer games during the 2019 season compared to the 2018 season, having such a steep decline in performance does concern analysts on his ability to hit fastballs down the middle now. While he does have a strong dominance over the corners of the plate regarding fastballs, Camargo’s weakness against fastballs down the middle and to the left of the plate does allow pitchers to exploit his weakness and cause even further regression for Johan Camargo.

Looking at the pitch% heatmap of Johan Camargo’s performance against fastballs, it is quite clear that pitchers are exploiting Camargo’s (relative) weakness against fastballs up in the zone, down the middle, and left of the strike zone. Johan Camargo has had 38.5% of his fastballs thrown at strike zones where his AVG/P was not red. If Johan Camargo were to focus on hitting fastballs at his weak points, specifically over the middle of the plate, then we would definitely see Camargo having more offensive production over the coming years.

Also, if we were to analyze the pitch% and the AVG/P heat maps together, then we could see Johan Camargo’s tendency to chase fastballs above the strike zone. The reason for this is that even though 13% of his pitches are above the strike zone, he has a 0 AVG/P in that region. Furthermore, his swing% in that region is 62%, signifying that he has a high chase % regarding fastballs above the strike zone. Such analysis warrants that maybe his aggressive playing style forces him to swing at all pitches, even at pitches that are not in the strike zone. I am not saying that Johan Camargo should completely ditch the aggressive hitting style, but if he is able to better discern between fastballs up in the zone and above the strike zone, then he should not only see an increase in his fastball performance, but also an increase in his BB%.

Of course, there are more pitches to analyze, but since the fastball was the most predominant pitch thrown to Johan Camargo, improving on the fastball would most likely surge his offensive production

Pinpointing a reason why Johan Camargo regressed regarding his fastball performance, I would most likely say that it is both the pitchers and Johan Camargo. Comparing the difference between the 2018 season and the 2019 season, pitchers have not made a drastic change in terms of where they located their pitches, but they have slightly thrown more pitches towards the mentioned weak spots of Johan Camargo’s strike zone. However, despite the slight shift in pitches toward Johan Camargo, Johan Camargo has also lost his ability to hit fastballs down the center and towards the left, compounding his problems. Furthermore, his tendency to chase fastballs above the strike zone leaves a lot of room for improvement for Johan Camargo. If he can recognize these mistakes before he approaches his prime and goes into free agency, Johan Camargo can see himself one step closer to a steady MLB career.

Changeups:

Now, analyzing his second most frequent pitch, the changeup, we can also see a similar weakness that Johan Camargo showed when going against fastballs. Specifically, his tendency to chase outside pitches is more prevalent when analyzing the heatmap of Johan Camargo against changeups.

As seen with the heat map above, most of Johan’s pitches come below the strike zone, which alone is not very concerning for someone to see. However, when paired with the Swing% heatmap against changeups, it is quite concerning to see that he has swung almost or more than half of the changeups below the strike zone.

As mentioned previously, Johan Camargo has quite an aggressive approach to the plate, so maybe his aggressiveness towards the plate backfires when a pitcher throws a changeup. By the point he realizes that a pitch below the zone is a changeup, it would have been too late for Johan Camargo to realize, and he would get a strike as a result. If he learns to recognize the changeups from other pitches, then not only would his BB% go up, but pitchers would also probably throw other pitches that are more familiar to Johan Camargo, such as a fastball.

Sliders:

Finally, we are going to analyze Johan Camargo’s approach to sliders, which nearly has the same analysis as that of sliders. Again, his tendency to chase offspeed and breaking pitches below the strike zone is prevalent here, so a lot of the analysis between the changeups and the slider is similar. Notably, when combining both the Pitch% and the Swing% heatmaps from Johan Camargo, he swings at 33% of sliders below the strike zone. Although this number is nowhere as big as the one with changeups, it is still quite informative as to why Johan Camargo has struggled significantly during the 2019 season.

As we have seen with the previous two graphs, Johan Camargo has struggled considerably with offspeed and breaking pitches, notably the changeup and the slider. I don’t think that the problem here is how Johan Camargo hits the ball, but more towards his ability to recognize pitches. Most of the sliders and the changeups that are thrown to him are out of the zone, but the fact that he almost swings at half of the sliders and changeups out of the strike zone does undermine Johan Camargo’s ability to recognize offspeed pitches and breaking pitches.

Section 3: Is it Luck?

The following spreadsheet below further proves my point about Johan Camargo’s struggle to hit offspeed and breaking pitches as well.

Compared to Johan Camargo’s xwOBA against fastballs, his xwOBA against breaking pitches and offspeed pitches is much lower than that. This reaffirms our conclusions made during the last section, where we noted Johan Camargo’s struggles against offspeed and breaking pitches was because he was unable to recognize out-of-the-zone pitches. If he can lower the swing percentage of those offspeed pitches and breaking pitches, then Johan Camargo can most likely return to the same great production that he had during the 2018 and 2017 season. However, if Johan Camargo does not recognize any of these mistakes, he will continue to chase those offspeed pitches that pitchers can exploit against him. In fact, the % of sliders and changeups that pitchers threw to him during the 2019 season has increased by 3% each.

Another factor that I want to touch on before I start my conclusion is luck and how Johan Camargo was “lucky” during his first two seasons while playing for the Atlanta Braves. During the 2018 MLB season, Johan Camargo’s wOBA for breaking pitches is .286 while his xwOBA is .256 and Johan Camargo’s wOBA for offspeed pitches is .341 while his xwOBA is .296. Such a huge difference would signify a stretch of good luck from Johan Camargo and it would only be time until the “luck” runs out. This would be evident during the 2019 MLB season, where his wOBA and xWOBA for both the offspeed and the breaking pitches matched better (.263 wOBA vs .270 xWOBA for breaking pitches and .216 wOBA vs .220 xwOBA for offspeed pitches). While I don’t attribute luck as the sole reason for a player’s struggles, I do think that Johan Camargo has had quite a bit of luck during the first two years while he was playing. Specifically, I think that Camargo’s status as a rookie backup player contributed significantly towards his great performance during the 2017-2018 season. Because he was a rookie and a backup player, many pitchers were unaware to know how to approach Johan Camargo. Now that Johan Camargo is in his 3rd season with the Braves, more analysis on Johan Camargo has been done and pitchers have a greater grasp on how to approach him. From this, I think that we can assume that a 2019 season would be something more usual for Johan Camargo to have rather than his impressive 2017 and 2018 MLB seasons.

Conclusion:

To conclude, Johan Camargo’s regression during the 2019 season most likely happened due to his inability to hold off breaking and offspeed pitches that are out of the strike zone and his regression against fastballs. Since he is a player that does not rely on a lot of walks and more on the plays that he makes in the field, it is also imperative that he gets his BABIP much higher than what it is currently. Although he was quite lucky in terms of his performance from the 2017 and 2018 season, his 2019 season seems much more in line with what is expected and is what I think is something that we are more likely to see of him during his future years. I don’t think that Johan Camargo is done yet, but if we want to revert to his high success during the 2018 season, he would have to rework his approach to the plate so that he can force pitchers to throw at the strike zone rather than outside the strike zone. While not as emphasized as much during this article, Johan Camargo should also work on his defensive abilities as well. If he continues to improve both of these aspects toward his play, then he should definitely improve as a player during the 2020 season.