An adjustment that could bust Jeff McNeil’s slump
Why McNeil has struggled against inside pitches
The Mets need Jeff McNeil to hit. Besides the fact he has been living on an interstate where only Upstate New Yorkers should find themselves — batting .188 heading into the series against the Red Sox — throughout his career, he has been the team’s most consistent clutch hitter. His .307 batting average with runners in scoring position over the past three years is by far the tops among players who have donned the blue and orange in that time. He has only delivered on one such hit (in 15 at-bats) so far in 2021.
An area where McNeil has particularly struggled in the early going has been against inside pitches. While he did turn one into a magnificent home run in the bottom of the 9th against the Marlins earlier this month, overall, he’s only batting .200 against inside stuff, after mashing anything close to him for a .395 average last year.
In trying to correct this, you might have noticed McNeil changed his stance at the plate. He talked about it after Tuesday’s game in which he hit a home run on a pitch located middle-in.
“I’ve been cutting myself off, big time at the plate,” he told reporters. “My front foot’s been a step in front of the plate, and there’s just been no room to hit … I haven’t been taking a stride the last few games. I’ve been picking my foot up a little bit and putting it back down in the exact same place.”
We can see what he’s describing in the split image below. On the left (from early in the season), he lifts his front foot high off the ground in taking his stride, whereas on the right (from Tuesday), he keeps his foot down.
The key is the difference in how he plants his front footas he swings: With the high leg kick, he lands closer to the plate (as he mentioned) and it causes his body to corkscrew as he pulls the barrel of the bat through the zone; by eliminating his stride, his front foot is planted centered to his body (as you can see in the right image below), allowing him to square his body around his swing.
This is called being a professional hitter. McNeil entered the season with a career .319/.383/.501 slash line for a reason. Sometimes you need to make adjustments, and even though his lone home run came on an inside pitch, he was quick to recognize that his swing was off balance.
BOTTOM LINE: The 29-year-old has hits in seven of his last nine games, building a picket fence with almost a hit per day over the past ten days. He continues to hit the ball hard, which is why his expected production on contact (or as the stat nerds call it, xwOBAcon) is in line with his career totals despite a slow start according to the box score. It seems only a matter of time before he really busts out of his early slump.