Article: Romy Gonzalez: Dangerous Hitter (Literally)

[Davy Andrews]

After back-to-back incidents during live batting practice on Tuesday, Romy Gonzalez might want to consider raising his launch angle, both to improve as a hitter and to avoid hurting anybody.

I first wrote about Red Sox second baseman Romy Gonzalez back in October. Gonzalez begs to be written about because he is one of the many players who features a particular combination: a precious skill locked away within a maddening skillset. He hits the ball hard and he hits it on the ground. That’s a problem. Hitting the ball hard is wonderful, and wasting it by hitting it hard directly into the dirt is the opposite of wonderful. Some players – think Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette – are able to succeed despite hitting so many balls on the ground because they’re able to hit everything hard all the time. A smaller percentage of players – think Mark Vientos and, it certainly seems, Kristian Campbell – learn to elevate their hard contact, at which point the sky is the limit. A bigger percentage – think Ke’Bryan Hayes and Josh Bell – never quite figure it out.

Time will tell whether Gonzalez is able to turn his gift for loud contact into actual offensive production. The Red Sox have certainly had some big player development wins lately, and it would be a real coup if they could help him unlock his potential. However, the matter took on greater urgency on Tuesday. During a live batting practice session, Gonzalez smashed a comebacker directly at Walker Buehler. The ball caught Buehler on the hand, and the Boston Globe's Alex Speier documented it on video:

As it turns out, Gonzalez’s penchant hard, altitudinally-challenged contact isn’t just endangering his slash line. It’s endangering pitchers. Buehler turned out to be ok and returned to pitch another inning, but just minutes later, Gonzalez nearly struck again. This time, he ripped a grounder directly back at Lucas Giolito, sending ball right at the recovering righty’s feet. Once again, Speier was doing God's work and caught the play on video:

I realize that multiple pitchers have been hit by line drives up the middle so far during spring training, and I don’t mean to make light of that. It’s a serious problem and I worry about it a lot. However, Gonzalez’s penchant for sending the ball back at pitchers, especially his own, is almost too on the nose. Look how hard he hits the ball! And yet, he keeps hitting it right back at the pitcher. Here we are spilling ink on how he could be a great player if he just stopped wasting all his rockets on infielders, and it's almost as if the only reason he's hitting the ball so hard is in order to ensure that he can hand it over to the first defender he can find.

I took a trip over to Baseball Savant to see if Gonzalez has a history of threatening to maim pitchers – for the super dorks among you, my search parameters involved balls hit straightaway with an exit velocity above 90 mph and a launch angle between -10 and 15 degrees – and guess what? Romy Gonzalez really is a menace to pitchers everywhere.

Don’t think that the clips above are the only ones I found. Gonzalez puts any pitcher in an uncomfortable position the moment he walks up to the plate. The only position that’s even more uncomfortable? The one the pitcher finds themself in immediately after Gonzalez launches a bullet straight back up the middle.

So yeah, Gonzalez needs to raise his launch angle and stop hitting the ball on the ground so much. It’s the only way he’ll end up as a successful big-league hitter. But it might also be a matter of life and death.

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[mvp 78]

Now this is an article that speaks to me. Love it. 

I don't think he necessarily has to be a launch angle guy as it doesn't work for everyone. He's always had a terrible launch angle and a bigger concern is his poor K rate (31.6% career) and BB rate (3.7% career). If he could just take a walk once in a while and continue to hit the ball hard, however it gets into play, he'll be fine.