Burly isn’t so Burly (But He is a Good Hitter)

Burly.

Short for Burleson, Alec.

It’s an appropriate nickname, isn’t it? Burleson naturally shortens to Burly. It makes sense linguistically. It makes sense physically. Burleson is a pretty Burly-looking guy. Baseball Savant lists him as 6’2 and 225 pounds.

Burly is burly.

Except, he’s not.

When I think of burly baseball players, the player that always comes to my mind, for obscure reasons I don’t even understand, is Pete Incaviglia. Does anyone remember Incaviglia? He was one of those hitters who looked like an MLB team had called him up straight out of beer league softball.

Incaviglia was…burly! Fangraphs lists him at 6’1” and 220 lbs. Pretty much the same size as Burleson. He hit exactly the way you would expect a hitter of his stature to hit. His batting averages were routinely at or below .250. He regularly slugged 20-30 homers. He rarely bothered walking. He struck out at a crazy high rate per era, reaching nearly 30%.

You would expect a hitter with the nickname of Burly to hit that same way – as a reincarnation of Pete Incaviglia.

Alec Burleson isn’t the kind of hitter. At all.

Burly has had a great start to the season. As of Tuesday morning, he was batting .308 with a .455 slugging percentage, and a 128 wRC+. His wOBA is .346. His (expected) xwOBA is .327. He’s been really good.

His production this season fits what we saw from him coming up through the minor leagues. Burleson was drafted in the now-famous 2020 Cardinals draft. He moved very quickly, skating through A+ before landing for half a season in AA. He did just fine there, slashing .288/.333/.488 for a 116 wRC+.

The club wanted to challenge him, so they pushed him to AAA late in the season. That didn’t go so well. In 45 games, his BABIP tanked. Even though his K rate improved, his power dropped. He had an 81 wRC+ as a 22-year-old in Memphis. That’s fine. Considering his age and accelerated promotion rate, he was bound to hit a ceiling. His failure in Memphis during his first run doesn’t matter at all. What mattered more was what he would do on a return trip.

In 2022 at AAA, he was excellent. Burly hit .331/.372/.532 with a .392 wOBA and a 137 wRC+. It was a fantastic season that earned him a brief look in the majors and set him up for a roster spot in ’23.

Last season didn’t go so well for Burly. He essentially replicated his ’21 first run through AAA. He slashed .244/.300/.390 with an 89 wRC+. Injuries forced him into the field more than the team probably would have preferred and things did not go well for him defensively. With below-average offense and a worst-defender-in-the-league kind of pace in OAA, Burly produced just -0.6 fWAR on the season.

Many of us, and I’ll include myself in that group, wondered whether or not Burleson’s quality Statcast profile would translate to the Major Leagues. And if the club could afford to carry him, as a 1b/DH/OF-in-a-pinch-type unless he really started to hit.

He’s really started to hit.

Let’s run the numbers. Below is Alec Burleson’s Baseball Savant dashboard for both 2023 and 2024. It’s a new format that I’m trying out to help provide context for baseball analysis of a player over time.

Before we dig too deep into Burly’s offensive profile, I wonder if you notice anything about the two images above? They include two years of Statcast information – 2023 and 2024 – displayed as sliders based on Burleson’s percentile rankings. 2023 is on the left. 2024 is on the right.

The first thing I noticed, and the reason I edited them into this new format, is that the two seasons are strikingly similar. Nearly identical. That’s good for us as baseball analysts. Consistency in performance over a bunch of PAs should produce consistency in production. That production did not show up last year, despite encouraging rate stats. The rate stats are just as encouraging this year. And now the production is starting to show up. That should have Cardinals fans excited.

What Burleson Does Well

Let’s start with two aspects of Burleson’s batting profile that he has always done very well. They aren’t the only positive aspects of his hitting approach, but they help bring together what makes Burleson work as a hitter.

Contact Ability

It all starts with Burleson’s ability to make contact. When we think of burly hitters, like Incaviglia and his ilk, we don’t think of contact guys. That is what truly sets Burleson apart from many other hitters of his physical build.

Burleson is a contact hitter. He excels at putting the bat onto the ball. This is obvious in the stats you see above. His Whiff% last year was 17.7%. So far this season it’s at 20.3%. When Burleson swings, and he swings a lot, he rarely misses the ball.

Batter Whiff% has obvious implications for K rates. If a batter doesn’t whiff often then they aren’t going to K very often, are they? Simple logic. Last year, Burleson was in the 95^th percentile in K% at 13.0%. This year, a few more whiffs have led to a few more K’s. He’s at the 82^nd percentile at 16%. Both are very good.

This elite contact ability is what led him to high batting averages in the minor leagues and it is showing up now that he is more comfortable in the majors. His current xBA – expected batting average – is .286. His actual batting average is .308.

Notice that ability was present last year. His xBA in ’23 was .277, good enough for the 85^th percentile. That’s just slightly below where he sits this year. His actual BA was .244. Other factors, like an unexpectedly low BABIP, contributed to his struggles last season. But he should have been better than he was. Now we know that statement is not just theory. We’re seeing it on the field. That matters.

Exit Velocity and Hard-Hit%

A high contact rate alone isn’t going to make you into a good average hitter. You have to be able to do something with the ball when you put the bat on it. This is where Burleson’s second skillset positively accents the first.

Burleson might be a high contact hitter but it would be a mistake to call him a slap hitter. Burly can hit the ball hard. His average exit velocity last season was 89.9 mph, good for the 60^th percentile. This year he’s increased that to 90.8, which sits at the 74^th percentile.

Interestingly, despite a consistently “good” average exit velocity, Burleson lags in max exit velocity. His hardest batted ball event of the season is just 107.3 mph. You would expect more from a batter his size with the kind of average EV that he generates. His career high is just 110.6. Still not as high as one might expect.

Despite a low top-end EV, his Hard-Hit% on the season is 44.5%. That ranks in the 68^th percentile of all batters. Pretty good!

For Burleson, his batting approach is more about consistent hard contact than it is about generating top-end power. Burly is not a masher. He’s not a “burly” softball homerun hitter. He’s not really a power hitter at all. His high contact ability and strength help him generate hard-hit line drives (his LD% is 26.2% now & 22.1% in ‘23) that lead to a high expected batting average but only pretty good expected slugging percentages.

His expected slugging percentage in ’23 was .449. His actual slugging percentage was just .390. This year, his slugging percentage is closer to expected. His expected slugging percentage is .445. His actual is .455.

Burly is a contact hitter. He hits the ball hard, generating line drives that get past fielders but not necessarily over the fences. He does this consistently. He did it last year and didn’t receive the results. He’s doing it this year and the results match his batting profile.

What He Doesn’t Do Well

There’s a drawback to all the contact that Burly makes, and it’s probably what will keep him from taking that next step forward toward becoming a truly elite hitter. A lot of contact is great on pitches in the zone. Contact out of the zone? That’s not so good.

Chase Rate

Several stats measure what I’m talking about above but chase rate probably does the best job of putting it all together. Chase rate simply measures the number of times a batter chases – swings – at pitches outside of the strike zone. Again, Burleson is remarkably consistent. Last year, he chased 34% of pitches outside of the zone. That was in the bottom 19% of batters. This year, he’s at 34.8%. Pretty much the same percentage, but he’s dropped down to the 14^th percentile.

I talked above about Burly’s excellent contact rate and low whiff rates. That, unfortunately, doesn’t change all that much on balls outside of the strike zone. Burly’s chase contact percentage was 70.6% last year and is 66.7% this year.

Not to be the master of the obvious, but that means that around 70% of the time when Burleson swings at a pitch outside of the strike zone he makes contact with it.

Unless you’re Vlad Guerrero with an insane ability to swing at anything and still drive those pitches with power, that’s not a trait to brag about.

Simply put, swinging at pitches out of the zone leads to more outs than swinging at pitches in the zone.

This simple heat map shows Burleson’s Hard-Hit% on balls in play by pitching zones. The inner square shows the quality of his contact on pitches in the strike zone. The outer squares are the batted ball events he has produced on pitches outside of the zone. Red is good. Blue is bad. As expected, Burleson’s Hard-Hit% plummets when he makes contact with pitches outside of the zone. It surges inside the zone.

There’s a second element to this. Not only does Burleson’s chase rate impact the quality of contact that he has, every swing he takes at pitches outside of the zone turns a would-be ball into either poor contact or a strike. Chase rate is tied very closely to walk rate.

If Burleson does anything like a beer-league softballer, it’s walk. His current walk rate of 4% is one of the worst in baseball – 6^th percentile. He was better than that last year at 6.6%, 26^th percentile. That’s still not very good. Considering that his walk rates in his long stops at AA and AAA were 6.7% and 6.2% respectively, this is just the way it is with Burleson. Lots of contact from lots of swings. Lots of chasing. Little walking.

Barrel Rate

This has an ancillary consideration. A high chase rate, a low walk rate, and a high contact rate, in some ways, limit the percentage of elite contact that Burleson can make. Too much contact on pitches out of the zone inhibits the regularity with which he can make quality contact in the zone. I’ll explain what I mean.

Barrel% is the rate at which a batter hits a ball within a specific range of exit velocity and launch angle to achieve a minimum .500 expected batting average and 1.500 expected slugging percentage. Barrels usually lead to home runs. Sometimes to doubles or triples (not likely with Burly’s sprint speed). Occasionally they become very disappointing outs.

Burly’s barrel rate is just 5.0% this season. It was 5.9% last season. The MLB average is 6.9%.

It should not surprise anyone that it’s easiest to barrel a ball when it is in the strike zone. Preferably the middle of the zone.

My theory is that Burleson doesn’t give pitchers enough opportunities to make mistakes. It’s an old concept, really. If you’ve read my stuff over the years, you’ll know how much I like to re-frame complicated Statcast measurements into simple baseball concepts. In this case, what I’m talking about is “waiting for your pitch.”

If a batter swings at a pitch outside of the zone and makes poor contact, they might have just saved the pitcher from themselves. Getting an out on a pitch out of the zone means their next pitch doesn’t have to be a ball in the zone.

There is a stat that measures this. It’s called “meatballs”. It’s the number of metaphorical slow-pitch softballs a hitter sees. Burleson’s “meatball” rate is about the same as other Cardinals batters. It’s the same as Nootbaar, for example. Lower than Goldy’s. Burleson crushes these meatballs at an adequately burly rate. Still, with such a high swing rate and chase rate, he doesn’t see as many pitches as Nootbaar will over time. Even though their percentage of meatballs is the same, Noot will see meatballs more frequently simply because he sees so many more pitches.

Despite spending time on the IL, Noot has seen over 100 extra pitches. That’s 8 extra meatballs despite both players seeing them at the same rate. That’s a lot of potential production that Burly is missing out on.

The point is that Burleson’s contact ability and chase ability limit the quality of his contact. He doesn’t barrel enough balls and doesn’t give pitchers more chances to make mistakes. Even though he is a good hitter right now, those flaws are what will keep him from being a very good or elite hitter over time.

Outlook Going Forward

Burly might not be a very burly hitter. Unless there are some major changes in his swing – that he’s never shown – he’s not going to become a serious power hitter, generating 30-40 homers per season. He’s never going to be one of those swing-for-the-fences, drive-the-ball-as-hard-as-you-can-even-if-it-means-striking-out-a-bunch type of players.

Burleson is a contact hitter, and a good one, in a beer-league softball player’s body.

He showed that last year and didn’t get the results he earned.

He’s showing it again this year and it’s starting to pay off.

There’s every reason to think that what Burleson is doing right now will continue. While he might be slightly overperforming over a small sample size in 2024, he is within the range of what he should expect based on his batted ball profile. It fits with what we saw last year, even though the results weren’t there. What the Cardinals are seeing right now from Burly is likely what they should expect from him going forward.

Can he improve? When I consider how a player could improve, I tend to think in two areas.

1. Is there anything he is not doing now that he has done in the past?

2. Is there an obvious area of weakness that he can work to address?

I always have more confidence in my answers to question one than two. It’s been my experience that hitters, once they reach a certain age and experience level, struggle to change their game in significant ways over an extended period.

One thing Burleson could do now that he’s done in the past is walk more. His current walk rate is terrible but it is also the lowest rate of his professional career. I fully expect him to add 3-4 percentage points to his walk rate by the end of the season. That might help hold his overall stat line about the same as it is right now, even if his wOBA and xwOBA start to even out.

Then there’s the chase rate. This is an obvious area of improvement. I’m sure the Cardinals know it. I’m sure he knows it. I’m sure they’re working on it. If he could lower that chase rate without lowering his swing rate and contact ability on pitches in the zone, it could have a massive impact on his production. It’s the one major hole in his game that he would need to improve if he wants to reach All-Star or higher levels of production.

Overall, though, for a player who entered the season without a set role and in danger of marginalizing himself as a fringe, platoon DH, Burleson has done what he needed to do. He’s shown that his offensive profile and Statcast rates can become real production. And even though he’s not the burly hitter that his physique and nickname imply, he can be and is a good Major League hitter.