Article: Alex Bregman's Cold Stretch Is Cause for Concern, but It Is Fixable

[Brandon Glick]

Alex Bregman has been such a model of consistency in Boston since arriving late in the offseason that's it's almost hard to imagine what a 'bad' version of him would look like in a Red Sox uniform. Unfortunately, we don't have to imagine any more. The last few weeks of Bregman have been an unmitigated disaster at the plate, and him turning into a pumpkin could not have come at a worst time.

Before we try to figure out what's going, let's look at the numbers. In the scope of the second half, Bregman has been solid: a .269/.355/.421 slash line with a .152 ISO, good for a 113 wRC+. Yes, those figures all mark drastic declines from his first-half performance, but a .776 OPS is hardly a reason to jump ship.

Narrow things down to just August, and the problems start to become a little clearer. Bregman hit .260/.375/.360 with a .100 ISO last month, which resulted in a season-low 107 wRC+. Again, not the sign of someone who lost all sense of competence at the dish, but his season-high 13.3% walk rate (and season-low 9.2% strikeout rate) are doing a lot of heavy lifting in propping up those overall numbers.

Tighten our sample even further to Bregman's last ten games from Aug. 23 to Sept. 1 -- starting just after his second consecutive three-hit performance against the Yankees -- and the numbers grow truly ugly. In that window, the third baseman is batting .103/.182/.128. He has just four hits in his last 39 at-bats (44 plate appearances), only one of which went for extra bases (a double against the Guardians on Labor Day). His ISO in that span is .026, and his wRC+ is a scale-breaking -15.

Yikes. This is about as bad of a stretch as Bregman has ever had in his career, and there doesn't appear to be any (publicly-known) injury that's hampering him. About the only outside factor that we can toss into the equation is his looming free agency (assuming he declines his player option for the 2026 season), though that same circumstance didn't preclude him from hitting .256/.310/.500 (123 wRC+) with the Astros in the final month of the 2024 season.

Get your small sample caveats out of the way now. A ten-game sample is hardly conducive to prognosticating a player's future, let alone someone with as strong of a track record as Bregman. However, that doesn't mean what's happening right now isn't problematic, and it also doesn't automatically guarantee a return to form for one of the Red Sox's most important players.

In this most recent stretch, Bregman's batting average on balls in play (BABIP) is .114, a 215-point drop from the first half. That's... comical. For reference, Aaron Judge leads all MLB players with a .380 BABIP in 2025; his teammate, Anthony Volpe, is the lowest-ranked qualified hitter with a .242 BABIP. You would need to add another 77 points of average to their difference to explain the gap between first-half Bregman and last-ten-games Bregman.

Okay, so we have a culprit, but what's the reason for such a precipitous decline? Yes, Bregman's hard-hit rate is 31.4% since Aug. 23, a steep drop-off from the 37.4% rate he posted in the first half, but it's actually an improvement on his cumulative second half numbers (29.8%). If you can believe it, his soft contact numbers are even better; his soft-hit rate of 8.6% over his last ten games is better than what he did in the first half (12.3%) and his total in the second half (16.6%).

That suggests his quality of contact isn't an issue, and quick look at his spray chart offers the same conclusion. So, if he's generally hitting the ball hard, rarely striking out, and still pulling the ball a ton, what on earth is going on?

Well, prepare for me to sound like your old middle school coach, but the issue is that Bregman isn't 'elevating and celebrating'. Indeed, his ground-ball rate over these past ten games is an alarming 51.4%, leagues above what he was doing in the first half (35.6%). Naturally, his fly-ball rate has been slashed, as his 28.6% rate recently represents a near-22-point drop from the pre-All-Star-break Bregman. It also doesn't help that one in every five of his fly balls in our sample failed to leave the infield, up sharply from a 12.5% infield fly-ball rate.

Bregman's launch angle issues have actually been a problem all year -- his conscious change to try and hit more pulled fly balls to take advantage of the Green Monster has resulted in the lowest launch angle sweet spot rate of his career (33.0%). You can read more about LA SwSP% here, but know that it means the rate at which a player produces a batted ball event with a launch angle between 8-32 degrees. That's generally considered the "ideal range" for a player to produce optimal outcomes, and whereas Bregman was doing that more than 37.0% of the time during his peak from 2018-19, he's not even achieving it one-third of the time this year.

Now, none of this means Bregman is "broken". This recent cold stretch is a confluence of bad luck and not squaring up enough balls, and if he can start turning some of those topped groundouts or popped-up fly outs into line drives, the numbers should follow suit. But this is a reminder that even the best players are prone to tough times, especially when they alter their profile to fit more of the extremes.

Watch Bregman closely over the next few weeks as he tries to get himself right before the playoffs. This is a veteran player with a long history of success. Expect him to adjust given this data, and hopefully, he'll return to the All-Star version of himself before the games start meaning life or death.

View full article

[moonslav59]

Seems like a lot of line drive outs the past 2 weeks.

I'm not worried.

[TedYazPapiMookie]

Slumps happen and then they end, and players return to normal.  If there is no underlying injury at the center of his slump, it will simply be a matter of time before he comes out of it.  He has had slumps every season of his career and this season has been so exceptional that it's not surprising that he's finally having one.  Let's hope it ends soon, or we know Cora will do something irrational and it will impact the team's chances of winning.

[Maxbialystock]

Absolutely fascinating analysis.  Thanks.