A Look At Jason Heyward’s Excellence On His Birthday

Jul 30, 2013; Atlanta, GA, USA; Atlanta Braves center fielder Jason Heyward (22) hits a single against the Colorado Rockies in the seventh inning at Turner Field. Mandatory Credit: Brett Davis-USA TODAY Sports

It is a special day in the world of the Atlanta Braves, because it is Jason Heyward’s birthday. Happy birthday, Jason! On this momentous day in Braves history that is essentially Braves Christmas, I wanted to talk about something I think is important, which is how good of a season Jason Heyward has had.

Heyward’s season started off very poorly when horrific batted ball luck and an appendectomy conspired to send the Braves right fielder into the beginning of June with a .121/.261/.259 slash line. Now I have read several articles about the Braves 13 game winning streak that makes note of Heyward’s strong play of late and while Heyward has been spectacular during the Braves streak many of these articles seem to be under the impression that Heyward’s resurgence began with the Braves streak. This is not the case at all. Heyward has been playing extremely well lately, but has actually been his old self since the start of June.

Since June 1st, Heyward has a triple slash line of .283/.366/.463 which is actually an improvement over his career line of .257/.350/.437. This stretch–since the beginning of June–constitutes 53 games, which is far more than the 30 games Heyward played the first two months of the season where his numbers were so poor. The strong play of Heyward in 2013 now far outnumbers the weak play, and in fact Heyward during his positive stretch has a higher OBP and OPS than he had in 2012 when Heyward was the Braves best player.

Many fans and writers were upset over Heyward’s slow start to the season blaming everything from Heyward’s batting stance to just being an inconsistent player who would never live up to his potential. Many folks including myself tried to tell everyone that Heyward simply had bad luck as his ridiculously low BABIP but good peripherals showed. In April and May Heyward was hitting the ball hard and getting poor outcomes. A strong rebound was entirely predictable and was in fact predicted in more than one Braves blog on the internet.

Now that the rebound has come and now that the rebound has entirely overtaken the poor period in length, I hope this serves as a reminder to folks that yes bad luck can make a good player look bad for a period of time. Heyward is getting these positive results with the same batting stance and grip that amateur coaches on twitter were utterly convinced was the source of his problems. Heyward has been knocking the cover off the ball all year and that was as true in April as it is in August. In April Heyward’s line drives kept finding the gloves of fielders but that doesn’t last forever. Now Heyward is crushing the ball and the ball is finding the outfield grass. Nothing has changed. He is the same awesome player now that he was in April.

Heyward this year has in fact improved his game in almost every respect. Heyward has the second highest walk rate of his career and the lowest strikeout rate. Heyward often gets lumped in as one of the Braves strikeout prone hitters but this year Heyward has the best strikeout to walk ratio on the team. Defensively Heyward has saved 13 runs this year which leads all right fielders and puts him on pace to deserve another gold glove. Heyward has a career high line drive rate and a career low groundball rate.

Most impressively, Heyward has improved massively on the biggest weakness in his game to this point, his struggles against left handed pitchers. This year Heyward’s platoon split has disappeared almost entirely and Heyward has been an above league average hitter versus left handed pitching. Essentially Heyward has improved his game in almost every respect this season except for that time where he was suffering from bad luck on balls in play. Heyward has a batting average on balls in play 36 points lower than his career average this season. That essentially explains every so called struggle Heyward has had this year. That and an emergency appendectomy which is obviously not the sort of recurring injury that will be a problem in the future.

For whatever reason, there are segments of the media and the Braves fanbase who keep waiting for Heyward to turn into a pumpkin. That’s how you end up with a player who at 23 years old matched Terry Pendelton’s MVP season in fWAR being compared to Jeff Francouer the very next year. Today Jason Heyward turned 24 years old. He is the best defensive right fielder in baseball. He has been an all-star. He was robbed of the rookie of the year award. He is an elite baserunner and he is on pace to be worth more fWAR than Tony Gwynn. This year he had some bad luck and a freak injury to start the season and since then has been right back to being the great player that he is. Heyward is already a great player and will only get better as he gets older. He is nowhere near his prime. People need to stop waiting for him to fail, because it isn’t going to happen.

Happy birthday, Jason, and thank you for the gifts you continue to bestow on Braves fans night in and night out.