Technically, there wasn’t a lot at stake. Though Mason Miller was trying to defend a one-run lead with two outs within the tenth inning of an early September conflict, the A’s and Rangers have been enjoying out the string, battling for wins in a misplaced season. For Wyatt Langford, nevertheless, it meant one thing extra.
On the primary pitch, Miller fired 101 mph down the center. Langford was aggressive, fouling it straight again for strike one. He watched 102 mph sail excessive, then flicked his bat to foul off an up-and-in 101-mph heater to fall right into a 1-2 gap. A slider sailed outdoors earlier than he fouled off pitches at 102 mph and 103 mph to remain alive, after which he laid off two depraved sliders to safe the bottom on balls. Langford confronted down among the finest stuff in baseball, and emerged the victor.
It was only a stroll, however it sparked a resurgence. After a dismal 5 months, Langford exploded in September, posting a 180 wRC+ and main the American League in WAR. Within the sequence following his profitable encounter with Miller, he blasted titanic tanks off Luke Weaver and Clay Holmes, catching as much as heaters on the prime of the zone and depositing hanging sweepers deep into the left area bleachers.
It led to a query: Was September reflective of Langford’s new stage? The reply, partly, was conditional on prior expectations.
And the expectations have been definitely excessive heading into the season. After touchdown in Texas with the fourth total choose within the 2023 draft, Langford incinerated the excessive minors, posting a .360/.480/.677 line throughout 4 ranges and 200 plate appearances. ZiPS pegged Langford’s fiftieth percentile final result above three wins, moderately assured that Langford would go from the SEC to an above-average common within the span of a yr. As Cactus League play started, the hype prepare picked up steam; Langford hit .365 with six homers, leaving little doubt as as to if he’d begin the yr on the large league roster.
It seems hitting within the majors is difficult. Not was Langford tasked with keeping off the pitching workers of Mississippi State or the El Paso Chihuahuas; as an alternative, he needed to take care of Chris Sale sliders, Hunter Greene fastballs, and Tarik Skubal changeups.
Fittingly, he appeared like a rookie. The plate self-discipline was there early on; his stroll and strikeout charges hovered round league common, suggesting that Langford was not fully overmatched like his rookie counterpart Jackson Chourio, who struck out over 32% of the time in March and April. However Langford’s batted ball high quality was missing. He slugged simply .314 in April, lifting heaps of lazy fly balls into outfield gloves.
Whereas Chourio discovered his footing in the summertime months, logging a 144 wRC+ in June and by no means wanting again, Langford’s line remained stubbornly subpar — till the ultimate month of the season. Lastly, because the Rangers slogged by their September schedule, Langford went bananas. His .300/.386/.610 line and glorious baserunning led to 1.6 WAR in that month alone, trailing solely the infernal Shohei Ohtani.
There are a couple of potential tales to inform concerning the Langford rookie marketing campaign. One is that he bumped into a couple of poorly positioned pitches throughout a small pattern. One other is that Langford made his changes, simply as Chourio clearly did, accumulating sufficient expertise towards main league stuff to leverage his immense instruments.
ZiPS, as at all times, splits the distinction. The projection system sees Langford as a 3.8 WAR, 128 OPS+ man subsequent yr, baking in Langford’s transcendent minor league outcomes with a slight ability bump as he heads into his age-23 season.
However splitting the distinction isn’t any enjoyable. This strategy, utilized to gamers throughout the league, will result in extra correct projections. There is no such thing as a good empirical motive to weigh September outcomes extra closely within the subsequent season’s forecast. However there’s a temptation, at the very least on my finish, to consider that Langford goes to be the participant we noticed in September transferring ahead.
On this model of the narrative, the expectation for Langford’s sophomore marketing campaign isn’t simply an All-Star 4-WAR season, as ZiPS forecasts; it’s one thing extra like 5 WAR because the fiftieth percentile expectation, mirroring the age-23 projections for current breakouts Corbin Carroll and Julio Rodríguez.
To make that argument persuasively, it will require proof that Langford recognized after which fastened the failings that held him again throughout his first 400 or so plate appearances. And there may be at the very least some motive to consider he did.
There is no such thing as a one wrongdoer for a hitter’s poor efficiency. The explanations are layered and complicated; it might be a difficulty with sure pitch varieties or sure areas, for instance. In Langford’s case, it appeared like at the very least one of many points was structural, tied to his hitting mechanics. Each he and Rangers offensive coordinator Donnie Ecker believed his swing was too vertical.
Even two weeks into the season, it was clear that Langford wanted to regulate. There was one clear potential space of enchancment: His distribution of weight on his swing. In a story written by Steve Kornacki (no, not that Steve Kornacki) at MLB.com, Ecker was quoted as saying that Langford’s mechanical tendencies wanted a reboot.
“[Langford] got here from faculty and commonly has not confronted breaking balls which might be breaking 18 to twenty inches,” Ecker advised Kornacki. “So, among the physique place he was in in faculty is now beginning to evolve. When you look the place the stress is at, possibly in faculty it was on his again facet. The entire finest hitters within the large leagues, their stress, once they land [on swings], is in the course of their physique. So, he’s slowly evolving from a man that’s again, to having to recover from the middle that’s in the course of our physique.”
Esteban Rivera, FanGraphs’ resident hitting mechanics professional, defined to me that loading up weight on the bottom makes it simpler for hitters to whip their barrel underneath the ball and subsequently generate energy. This strategy works nicely in faculty, the place hitters aren’t typically uncovered to excessive velocity and see numerous mistake pitches. It really works much less nicely when Brandon Pfaadt is spinning sweepers that teleport throughout the width of the plate. Esteban additionally identified that fastballs on the internal half or sliders off the plate might bother a hitter with a swing oriented towards crushing middle-middle errors.
Langford, for his half, appeared nicely conscious of the issue.
“We’re engaged on getting again to that heart mass, and never staying again an excessive amount of,” Langford stated in April. “It’s brought on me to swing a bit of extra up than I needed, and I’m leveling out my swing. That’s serving to me see the ball higher.”
The early outcomes weren’t favorable. Langford’s common launch angle climbed every month, from 16 levels in April all the way in which to 23 levels in August. Maybe because of this, he was flummoxed by sweepers and sliders thrown by same-handed pitchers; by August, his wOBA was .234 on these pitches. He was even worse on onerous inside fastballs; his .205 wOBA on high-velocity sinkers and four-seamers thrown on the internal half ranked among the many worst within the league.
However in September, the swing leveled out. Langford’s common launch angle in September — 11 levels — was the bottom of any month within the 2024 season. And the outcomes — maybe coincidentally, maybe not — adopted.
On inside warmth, Langford by no means actually adjusted. However he began crushing fastballs omitted over the plate in addition to hanging breaking balls, staying again lengthy sufficient to establish spin and punishing errors. A superb portion of his injury got here on swings like this double towards Marcus Stroman, lasering sliders on the knees into the right-center area hole:
These enhancements coincided with a change to his setup. In April, he was hunched in the mean time of the pitcher’s foot strike, trying to my beginner eye extra like a slap hitter:
However throughout his month of destruction, Langford stood rather more upright, able to assault balls at any depth or width.
Langford’s obvious mechanical changes, prospect pedigree, and chronologically handy injury distribution results in questions concerning the nature of projections. Prospect evaluators, together with our personal Eric Longenhangen, have been unbothered by his sluggish begin. In his High 100 Prospects Replace in Could, as Langford sat sidelined with a hamstring damage, Eric wrote that he anticipated Langford would “be an offensive star upon his return, and possibly fairly shortly,” noting that the “enormous instruments and plate protection” remained intact. It was only a matter of adjusting.
In his ultimate month of the season, Langford appeared just like the offensive star Eric anticipated. Normally, an enormous month shouldn’t be trigger for altering a projection. Langford, although, might be an exception.