Pittsburgh Pirates: Examining What’s Gone Wrong With Josh Bell’s Bat

Josh Bell was one of the best hitters in baseball in 2019, but he has struggled in 2020. What is plaguing the Pittsburgh Pirates star slugger?

Josh Bell was a top 20 hitter in 2019. Through 613 plate appearances, thefirst baseman hit .277/.367/.569 with 37 home runs and doubles for the Pittsburgh Pirates. Bell finished the year with a 135 wRC+, 142 OPS+ and .378 wOBA. Among all qualified batters in 2019, Bell ranked 22nd in wRC+, 25th in wOBA and 16th in OPS. Among his fellow first basemen, Bell only trailed Pete Alonso, Freidde Freeman and Anthony Rizzo in wRC+.

Bell was so good because of his ability to crush the baseball. He had an average exit velocity of 92.3 MPH and 47.2% hard hit rate. He placed in the top 90th or better percentile in both cases. But Bell was extremely inconsistent throughout the 2019 season. We essentially saw three different Bells.

The first one looked like he could be an MVP candidate after hitting .343/.405/.704 with a 178 wRC+ and outstanding .661 ISO to go with 18 home runs. This was through his first two months and 242 plate appearances of the season.

Then, Bell fell into a summer slump, batting .213/.318/.448 with 9 home runs with a 94 wRC+ in June and July. Bell did end his year off strong though with a .258/.377/.516 line, and a 126 wRC+ in his final two months and 154 plate appearances.

But it’s likely he would have done better in the second half of the season if he didn’t get extremely unlucky. Bell had a .233 batting average on balls in play, and a 43.1% hard hit rate, compared to the 2019 league average of 38%. No player has ever had batting average on balls in play of .240 or lower and a hard hit rate above 40% in 500 plate appearances.

With all that, Bell seemed like he was set up for a good 2020 season. Though nobody expected him to hit like he did in his first two months of 2019, it wasn’t out of the question if he could be a .270/.380/.520 hitter, something like we saw at the tail end of the season. He made hard contact quite often, and had great plate discipline. Bell struck out just 19.2% of the time, compared to the league average 23%, and walked 12.1% of the time compared to the 8.5% league average.

But, so far in 2020, Bell has been awful at the plate. His first 146 plate appearances of the year have yielded a .197/.273/.303 line, .251 wOBA and a woeful 54 wRC+. So, what’s happened to this once extremely promising slugger?

Well the first big culprit is his plate discipline. I already showed just how good he was at walking and preventing striking out in 2019, and he’s always been able to do that throughout his career. Going into 2020, Bell had a career 11.9% walk rate and 18.7% strikeout rate. He’s never once struck out more than 20% of the time in a single season, not even in the minors. This year, though, he’s seen his usual patience at the plate completely disappear with a 28.7% strikeout rate. This also coincides with a sharp decline in walking with a 9.3% walk rate. That’s his lowest walk rate since 2014 when he was in High-A and Double-A.

Bell has still been able to make hard contact consistently. Though he’s seen his hard hit rate drop to 43.5%, that’s still above average and in the top 70th percentile. When he is making hard contact, he’s still ripping the cover off the ball with a 91.3 MPH exit velocity. He’s even seen his soft contact rate drop from 13.2% to just 9.8%, which is currently the 8th lowest in baseball.

The issue for Bell though has been getting the ball off the ground. Bell’s ground ball percentage is at a staggering 50%. In 2019, that was just 44%. He is hitting more line drives which are the best possible batted ball you can get, but his fly ball rate is also way down compared to 2019 (37.3% to 28.3%). His launch angle is just 8.1 degrees, the lowest since his rookie year. In 2019, that was 12.9 degrees. Plus it’s not like he’s now become super pull-happy. Sure, he’s pulling the ball more than going oppo or up the middle, but his 39.1% pull rate is actually lower than his 2019 rate of 42.3%, and below the 2020 league average of 41%. He’s going oppo (26.1%) more often than the league average, and up the middle at the exact league average point (34.8%).

It is surprising to see Bell struggle so much with his plate discipline. It was what he was most praised for in the minors, and it’s something that transitioned with him after his promotion to the majors. He’s swinging at a lot more pitches outside of the zone, and making less contact than he was previously.

Though when he is making contact, he’s hitting the ball hard, it’s usually into the ground. This was an issue Ke’Bryan Hayes struggled with in 2019 at Triple-A. He saw his ground ball rate take a spike compared to previous years, and posted numbers that weren’t all that great. Now look at how well he’s doing after making a few minor adjustments. Maybe that’s all Bell needs, is a few small adjustments. After all, he’s still making quality contact, but just not getting the right angle like he was last year.