Esteury Ruiz - 2023

 

Esteury Ruiz  🇩🇴 (2023)

Esteury Ruiz Reyes (Azua, Dominican Republic, February 15, 1999), is a Dominican center fielder for the Oakland Athletics. He made his MLB debut in 2022 with the San Diego Padres and also played for the Milwaukee Brewers.

Esteury Ruiz has managed to captivate MLB with his incredible speed in stealing bases, in addition to being one of the few (or perhaps the only one) among the Athletics who showcased his talent in all aspects. Ruiz closed the season with .254 batting average, .654 OPS, 47 RBIs, and his most impressive stat, 67 stolen bases, setting a new record for a rookie in the American League. 

Along with Ronald Acuña(73 stolen bases), they were the players with the most stolen bases in 2023, marking the first time since 2010 that one or more players achieve 65 stolen bases or more.

In this analysis, we will place more emphasis on his 67 stolen bases and everything related to his speed during this season.

With speed being his greatest asset, he had a decent offensive performance. One way to measure his contribution is with WAR (Wins Above Replacement), which assesses a player's value in all facets of the game by determining how many more wins he's worth than a replacement-level player at his same position (e.g., a Minor League replacement or a readily available fill-in free agent). 

In Esteury Ruiz's case, he had a -0.1 WAR, falling well below the average. Additionally, a season is generally considered good if a player achieves a WAR between 3 to 6, while a WAR of 8 or higher is considered MVP-worthy, that's why we focus on his stolen bases and speed.

I must clarify that the rankings are based on a combination of both leagues, in order to assess the significance of performance in categories that feature among the best in MLB.

If you have any questions regarding the types of pitches (Fastball, Changeup, etc.), here is all the necessary information

Enjoy it 🙌

The data provided is from Baseball Savant

1- Hits

Esteury Ruiz received 1753 pitches, which is a low amount for a starting player. Additionally, playing for Oakland (unfortunately, the worst team in MLB), he was sidelined for a month due to a Right shoulder subluxation. 

In this season, he made 114 hits, including 84 singles, 24 doubles, 1 triple, and 5 home runs. An interesting stat is that he ranked third among players with one of the lowest Hard Hit averages (hits with an exit velocity of 95 mph or more) in MLB with at least 400 plate appearances: 3- Esteury Ruiz - 20%, 2- Geraldo Perdomo - 19.5%, 1- Steven Kwan - 18.8%.

Esteury is a player who produces results with singles. Additionally, he is one of the players with the lowest Walks percentage in MLB: 4-Esteury Ruiz - 4%, 3- Mauricio Dubon - 3.9%, 2- Will Brennan - 3.5%, 1- Salvador Perez - 3.3%. 

In the chart below, we can see the distribution of hits, spread across the entire field, with the majority in the infield.

 

Here is a compilation of plays from the 2023 season

In the chart below, we can see his performance in more detail, with 31% of hits against FS Fastball, and 22% against Sliders and Sinkers. He also had a balanced distribution of hits across different zones, with the center zone being where he made the most hits with 32%, followed by the Lower zone 25%. 

With a Batting Average of .254, he had a decent rookie year, also being the player with the highest Batting Average on the Oakland team.

In the chart below, we can see his Batted Ball Events (this includes outs, hits, and errors). This helps identify which pitch types the batter excels against and what kind of hits he produces. 

Against Fastballs, he had 213 BBE, of which 69 were hits, .284 batting average and a 17.6% Whiff rate.

Against Breaking Balls: 105 BBE, 34 hits, .221 BA, and 34.8% Whiff. 

Finally, against Offspeed Balls: 38 BBE, 11 hits, .212 BA, and a 31.7% Whiff rate.

Below the Batted Ball Events, we can see the launch angle and exit velocity of the BBE, which are divided into various categories. 38% were Topped (with a launch angle less than 0 degrees), indicating a relatively high percentage in terms of swing quality. As mentioned earlier, Ruiz is not a power hitter, and he even has a high percentage of Weak (8.2%) compared to other players I have analyzed.

You can see more about launch angle and speed here

2- Speed

To measure a base runner's performance, it is divided into several categories: the first is Stolen Bases, followed by Bolts (any run where the Sprint Speed of the runner is at least 30 ft/sec - 32 km/h), and Sprint Speed.

Something very interesting is that the fastest players in this top 5 are Carroll and Witt Jr, but Acuña and Ruiz lead in stolen bases by a large margin; we will see why.

There are several interesting facts regarding Esteury's speed. First, he had 80 stolen base attempts, of which 67 were successful steals and 14 were caught stealing. In other words, he had a caught stealing percentage of 16.2%. 

We can compare this with the top 5 players in stolen bases, such as 

Ronald Acuña: 87 attempts (73 stolen bases, 14 caught stealing), caught stealing % 16%. 

Corbin Carroll: 59 attempts (54 stolen bases, 5 caught stealing), caught stealing percentage of 8.4%. Bobby Witt Jr: 64 attempts (49 stolen bases, 15 caught stealing), caught stealing percentage  23.4%. 

CJ Abrams: 53 attempts (47 stolen bases, 4 caught stealing), caught stealing percentage 7.5%

Or, in the case of Trea Turner, who had 30 attempts and 0 caught stealing.

In the chart below, we can see a more detailed performance of the top 5. The rounded numbers in red represent the best in each category. In the case of Esteury Ruiz, where he excelled the most is in the 3B stolen bases with 21, surpassing Acuña by 7, holding the overall second position with a considerable lead over the others.

In the chart below, we can see Sprint Speed, which is the average speed during the 2023 season, Bolts, which are any run above 30 ft/sec - 32 km/h, and Home Plate to 1B, which is the average time in seconds to reach 1B. Esteury Ruiz had 63 Bolts, placing him in the sixth position with most bolts in the MLB. But if we compare with Witt Jr(first in the MLB), who had 149 bolts, and Carroll(second in the MLB) with 133 bolts, why did Esteury Ruiz have more stolen bases than these two players?

The reason is not closely related to the stats measured by Baseball Savant; it has a lot to do with the dynamics of the game and when to steal a base. In the image below, we can see an example of the distance he takes from 1B (12.6 feet = 3.84 meters), which is risky but effectively helped him achieve 67 stolen bases, and there might have been many more if he hadn't been injured.

Here's a video where he stole four bases in a game, and we can see what was mentioned earlier with the distance he takes from 1B.

It is quite interesting that despite having these stats where Acuña and Ruiz clearly do not rank among the best, they are the leaders in the most important category. This means that they have a lot of confidence. It also demonstrates that speed is not the most important thing when stealing basess. In the case of Witt Jr. and Carroll, both are rookies like Esteury. At this pace, we will see these three leading Sprint Speed/Bolt/ Stolen base stats for a long time.