MLB trends: Jeff McNeil finds his power stroke, Victor Robles finds a new home, A’s find a cornerstone

The dog days of summer have arrived. Teams made their moves at the July 30 trade deadline and now the postseason races (and awards races) will begin to heat up. Less than eight weeks remain in the regular season. Here now are three MLB trends worth knowing as we enter the stretch run.

McNeil is ready to launch

From 2018-22, Mets second baseman Jeff McNeil was one of the best pure bats in the game. He slashed .307/.370/.458 with an 11.9% strikeout rate in more than 2,000 plate appearances those five years — the league average was a 22.8% strikeout rate from 2018-22 — which included hitting .318 in 2019 and an MLB best .326 in 2022. McNeil was a magician with the bat.

The last two years have been a grind though. Now 32, McNeil hit .270/.333/.378 in 2023, which isn’t bad, but it didn’t move the needle much and was way down from 2018-22. This year, McNeil entered July with a .217/.276/.304 batting line and had begun to lose playing time to veteran Jose Iglesias. He wasn’t swinging and missing more, but he wasn’t driving the ball either.

Things began to turn for McNeil right out of the All-Star break. He hit two home runs in New York’s first game of the second half, went deep three days later and then again the day after that. Since the All-Star break, McNeil is hitting .364/.393/.746 with five home runs and seven multi-hit games in 17 games. He had five homers and 14 multi-hit games in 88 games before the break. 

“I feel your swing gets messed up when you try to guide the ball,” McNeil said after his two-homer game in Miami on July 19 (via New York Post). “If you are trying to guide the ball out there it’s tough, so lately I have been trying to hit the ball wherever it’s pitched, and hit it hard.” 

McNeil’s hard-hit rate — his percentage of batted balls with 95 mph exit velocity — was 30.2% in the first half. It’s up to 38.0% in the second half, which is still a tick below the 38.8% league average, but is much improved. What really changed is McNeil’s batted ball direction. The lefty hitter has gone from serving singles to left field to yanking the ball to right, and the results have followed.

The Mets have also cut back on his playing time against lefties. McNeil has always held his own against lefties, though he is at his best against righties, and Iglesias serves as a natural platoon partner. McNeil had 29 plate appearances against lefties in April and 39 in May. He’s had only 35 plate appearances against lefties since. For all intents and purposes, he’s a platoon guy now.

McNeil’s season began to turn around when he stopped trying to aim the ball and focused on hitting it as hard as he could. The Mets have also done good work putting him positions to succeed (i.e. sheltering him against southpaws). Chances are 2018-22 McNeil is never fully coming back, but there’s still enough here to be a productive player. All he had to do was pull the ball.

Robles hitting his stride in Seattle

In need of an offensive upgrade(s) at the trade deadline, the Mariners found one in the unlikeliest of players: Victor Robles. And heck, it wasn’t even a trade! The Nationals released Robles, their longtime center fielder and a member of their 2019 World Series championship team, on June 1. Three days later, Seattle signed him to be a platoon option/defensive replacement.

Robles grounded into a game-ending double play in his first at-bat as a Mariner. The next day he dropped routine fly ball in left field. An inauspicious start, it was. Robles made only eight starts in his first 33 games with the team. It was not until early July that he began to get regular playing time, and that only happened after Robles hit a home run on July 7.

Entering play Tuesday, Robles was hitting .358/.419/.552 with four doubles and three homers since July 7. That’s a .971 OPS in a span of 20 games in 75 plate appearances. Only once in eight seasons with Washington did Robles muster an OPS that high in a span of 20 games and 75 plate appearances: .977 OPS from June 19 to July 16, 2019. This is as good as he’s ever been.

“I’ve always been a quick-hips type of guy,” Robles said recently (via Seattle Times). “And (Mariners hitting coach Jarret DeHart) made some type of balance in between and helped me with a scissor swing a little bit, so I can have more direction to the ball. I just got close to him and told him that I’m here to do whatever I thought was going to help me out.”

Big names like Jose Altuve and Mike Trout employ the scissor swing (i.e. moving your back leg toward the back of the batter’s box), which is a swing technique that creates more efficient weight transfer. It can look unnatural, but it creates more power. The Mariners got Robles to drop his leg kick in favor of a small toe tap to simplify things, and suddenly he’s driving the ball.

With the Nationals this year, Robles averaged 68.5 mph bat speed and 85.2 mph exit velocity. With the Mariners, he’s up to 69.4 mph bat speed and 88.8 mph exit velocity, numbers that are more or less league average rather than comfortably below. Will Robles continue at a .971 OPS pace? Almost certainly not, but there’s been real improvement under the hood.

Robles turned only 27 in May and he was ranked as one of the top 15 prospects in the game from 2017-19. He’s never been short on talent. There’s a reason the Nationals hung onto him so long hoping he’d figure it out. They decided to cut bait this summer, the Mariners pounced, and Robles has raised his game to a new level. Even if it is short-lived, he’s already helped Seattle win games.

Butler excelling since demotion

Barring a turn of events, the Athletics are in their final few weeks as an Oakland-based team. They’re moving to Sacramento next season and, at least in theory, Las Vegas somewhere further down the line. The A’s badly need a new stadium. No one denies that. The way owner John Fisher (with MLB’s full support) has gone about getting that new stadium is shameful.

Anyway, the A’s are still quite bad but not the total pushover they were last year. They’ll match last season’s win total (50) within the next week or so, and there are some promising players on the roster. Brent Rooker is a legitimate middle of the order masher. JJ Bleday seems to be finding himself as a big leaguer. Mason Miller is an absolute star in the late innings.

Then there’s outfielder Lawrence Butler, who took a .248/.313/.479 batting line into Tuesday’s game. Butler, who turned 24 in July, made the Opening Day roster, then was demoted to Triple-A with a .179/.281/.274 line and two homers in mid-May. He returned in mid-June, and since the start of July, he’s hit an incredible .337/.384/.750 with 11 home runs. Promising signs abound:

Butler is making significantly more contact these last few weeks, plus he’s hitting the ball harder and on the ground less often. That is a pretty excellent recipe for home runs and extra-base hits. Generating exit velocity has never really been an issue for Butler. It was getting the bat on the ball and getting it airborne. The demotion to Triple-A gave him an opportunity to refine his swing.

“Shorter, less head movement, more direct (to the) baseball,” A’s manager Mark Kotsay said about Butler’s breakout last month (via San Francisco Chronicle). “… He got to the point where the focus wasn’t just on hitting the ball where it’s pitched. More of just trying to do damage. That’s what we’re working on. He is a complete hitter, using the other side of the field like he did in spring training. You see the results, and that’s the potential. That’s what we have to unlock.”

Entering 2024, Baseball America called Butler a “dynamic athlete” who “has the upside of an everyday power-speed corner threat who could become a foundational piece.” Butler is not short on tools. He just had to learn how to turn those tools into on-field production, and that’s starting to happen now.

What the future holds for the A’s, I don’t think anyone knows. Regardless of whether they’re in Oakland or Sacramento or Las Vegas, they are still a ways off from contention. They’re building for the future and there’s a chance Butler is a long-term outfield piece. Earlier this season, he looked lost at the plate. Now things are coming together and Butler looks like a keeper.