Not as good as he looked in the first half, not as bad as he looked in the second half
With the 2024 regular season over, it is time for us to go back and take a look at the players who appeared for the Texas Rangers this season.
Today, we look at infielder Josh Smith.
Josh Smith and Ezequiel Duran both came over to Texas in the Joey Gallo trade in the summer of 2021, and have been linked since then — each viewed as bat-first infielders with quality hit tools who could play shortstop, but were probably better suited to play second base or third base.
Smith and Duran each made their major league debuts a couple of months into the 2022 season, within days of each other — Smith on May 30, Duran on June 4. They were each sent back down again in 2022, then called back up again in 2022 (though Duran was sent back down late in 2022 and ended the year at AAA, while Smith stayed up and ended the year in the majors).
Smith and Duran both made the major league roster in 2023 as super-utility types, guys who could play the infield and the outfield, though each ended up getting more playing time than anticipated due to injuries. The pair started platooning in the infield in 2023 due to an injury to a starter early in the season, but Duran ended up getting the lion’s share of the playing time due to out-performing Smith, though Duran faded over the final couple of months in the season.
Come 2024, Smith and Duran both made the major league roster in 2024, and again had an early infielder injury open the door for them to platoon. This time, however, Smith ended up getting the bulk of the playing time due to out-performing Duran, though Smith faded over the final couple of months of the season.
How mirror image were the 2023 and 2024 seasons of Josh Smith and Ezequiel Duran? Josh Smith had a 76 OPS+ in 2023 and a 110 OPS+ in 2024. Ezequiel Duran had a 110 OPS+ in 2023 and a 75 OPS+ in 2024.
Josh Smith was a bright spot in a disappointing 2024 season, pretty much taking over as the starting third baseman while Josh Jung was out due to injury, filling in at shortstop when Corey Seager wasn’t available, handling some second base and corner outfield as needed, and ultimately finishing the season fourth on the team in games played, with 149, and third in plate appearances, with 592. He slashed .258/.337/.394 on the year, put up a 3.2 bWAR and 2.8 fWAR, and won the Silver Slugger Award for the utility player spot.
It was a successful season.
The Tale of the Body Thief is the fourth book of Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles series. It is narrated by Lestat, a vampire described (accurately, I think) by Wikipedia as the “anti-hero” of the series.
Towards the end of The Tale of the Body Thief, when the events of the book have seemingly come to a positive resolution, Lestat tells the reader that they should stop reading at that point, even though the book is not over, because they most likely will not enjoy what is to come — and if they ignore the warning, they do so at their own peril, and cannot be angry at him or blame him for learning what is to come, as he warned them to stop now.
Similarly, I am going to encourage you to stop reading now, particularly if you are 1) a big Josh Smith fan, 2) not inclined towards statistical esoterica, or 3) just not wanting to read anything negative right now.
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Seriously.
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Its not too late. You can leave this page now and go to the morning links comments and argue about Adrian Houser or something.
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Okay.
Let’s compare Josh Smith’s 2023 slash line with his 2024 slash line:
2023: .185/.304/.328
2024: .258/.337/.394
Obviously, a significant improvement in 2024. It is worth noting, though, that despite the 73 point jump in batting average, Smith’s OBP increased by just 33 points — not nearly the increase one would expect.
There’s a couple of reasons for that. First of all, Smith’s walk rate decreased from 2023 to 2024, going from 10.8% to 7.8%. That appears to be a result of Smith being more aggressive at the plate. Smith swung 40.6% and 41.9% of the time in 2022 and 2023 — a relatively low rate. To put into context, of 362 hitters with at least 200 plate appearances in 2023, Smith’s 41.9% rate was higher than 47 players, putting him in the bottom 15% or so in frequency of swinging.
In 2024, Smith’s swing percentage jumped significantly, to 46.5%. Out of 365 players with at least 200 plate appearances, that rate was higher than 139 of them, putting him in the bottom 40% or so in frequency of swinging. Swinging more often is, generally, going to mean fewer walks.
In addition, Smith reached base via HBP a little less often, percentage-wise, in 2024. After having 9 HBPs in 2023, Smith had 18 HBPs in 2024, despite having his plate appearances increase by a little over 150% — a proportional increase would have resulted in 23 HBPs in 2024.
Looking at Smith’s slugging percentage year-over-year, the increase is also less than the increase in batting average, although unlike with his OBP, the delta is small. Smith’s ISO in 2023 was 144, compared to 136 in 2024. From an overall power standpoint, Smith was more or less the same in 2024 compared to 2023.
So the overall increase in Smith’s slash line in 2024 was driven by an increase in batting average. The increase in batting average was due in part to Smith’s strikeout rate being lower, and due in (much larger) part to an increase in batting average on balls in play, which went from .222 to .311.
Batting average from year to year can be somewhat noisy for players because BABIP can be somewhat noisy, and whenever there is a substantial change in overall numbers — whether positive or negative — that is driven by a substantial change in BABIP, there’s going to be some skepticism about whether that is a “real” change, given the noisy nature of BABIPs. That being said, a .222 BABIP is much more of an outlier, relative to the league, than a .311 BABIP is — it was 14th lowest in 2023 out of our 362 players — and it would be reasonable to think that the .311 BABIP is more indicative of Smith’s true talent level.
One can compare some data from 2023 to 2024 and see some support for the notion that this is a real improvement. If Smith is being more aggressive at the plate, that could lead to better contact and thus more hits and a higher BABIP. The higher swing rate we discussed earlier would support such a notion. In addition, looking at Statcast, Smith’s average bat speed on his swings increased from 69.4 mph in 2023 to 70.1 mph in 2024. That’s still well below the league average of 71.5 mph, but is an increase nonetheless, indicating he is swing harder, which would lead to better contact and thus a higher BABIP.
Unfortunately, when we drill down further, that argument doesn’t appear to hold. While Smith swung more often in 2024 than in 2023, that increase was actually greater on pitches outside of the strike zone (from 22.0% to 27.9%) than on pitches in the strike zone (59.6% to 63.6%). Moreover, despite the increase in frequency of swings, his contact rate remained more or less than same, both on pitches outside the strike zone and on pitches inside the strike zone.
The problem with this is clear — if you increase how often you are swinging, and that increase in swing frequency is at balls in the strike zone, that’s a good thing, since pitches in the strike zone are pitches you’re going to be more likely to make quality contact on. An increase in swings at pitches outside of the strike zone, though, is not good, since you are more likely to swing and miss at pitches outside of the strike zone (as evidence by Smith’s 58.8% contact rate on pitches outside of the zone he offered at last year, compared to his 88.4% contact rate on pitches in the strike zone). Plus, when you do make contact on pitches outside of the strike zone, that contact is more likely to be weak contact than contact on a pitch in the strike zone.
Moreover, Smith’s hard hit rate increased only slightly in 2024 from 2023 — he had a 36.4% hard hit rate in 2023, versus a 37.1% hard hit rate in 2024, per Statcast, with his 2024 hard hit rate being at the 33rd percentile for hitters last year. His average exit velocity, meanwhile, dropped slightly from 2023 to 2024, from 88.5 mph to an 87.8 mph average that was in the 23rd percentile. His barrel rate suffered even a greater decrease in 2024. Smith had the same number of “barrels,” per Statcast, in both 2023 and 2024 — 15 in each season — with his 3.7% barrel rate being in the 10th percentile.
That would seem to help explain the drop that Josh Smith saw in home run frequency from 2023 to 2024. Smith had 6 home runs on 143 plate appearances that resulted in a ball in play in 2023 — a 4.3% rate. In 2024, Smith had 13 home runs on 407 such plate appearances — a 3.2% rate. When Smith made contact and hit the ball fair, it left the park in 2024 25% less often that in 2023. Interestingly, he exceeded his “expected” home runs, per Statcast, both seasons, with Statcast saying, based on his actual batted balls, his xHR numbers for 2023 and 2024 were 5.1 and 10.7, respectively.
As I noted above, Smith’s ISO was essentially the same in 2023 and 2024, which would not seem to make sense, given the drop in home run frequency. The reason why it was more or less steady is because Smith saw the number of doubles he hit increase significantly, from 8 in 2023 to 30 in 2024. Smith was actually 16th in doubles in the American League in 2024, tied with, among others, such luminaries as Alex Bregman, Vinnie Pasquantino, and Ryan Mountcastle.
Ultimately, if you have fewer homers but more doubles, and enough more doubles that your ISO doesn’t meaningfully suffer, then that’s not a bad tradeoff. One can thus argue that the drop off in homers for Smith doesn’t matter, given the big leap in doubles.
That being said, Smith wasn’t exactly smoking the ball on all those doubles. One of the things I remember noting early last season was how often Smith was getting an extra base hit on a ball hit right down the line, a placement that is going to result in a greater chance of getting extra bases, and doesn’t require a ball to be as hard hit.
In drilling down on the batted ball data, it does appear that Smith’s quality of contact on all those doubles wasn’t great. Of 323 players with at least 10 doubles in 2024, Smith’s average exit velocity on those doubles was 276th highest, with an average exit velocity of 94.2 mph.
When you take all this into consideration, its remarkable that Smith saw such an increase in his numbers in 2024. It would seem that, if anything, there should have been a decrease from 2023, not an increase.
So it is not all that surprising to look at Smith’s Statcast page and see that, while his wOBA increased from .287 to .323 from 2023 to 2024, his xwOBA decreased, from .321 to .304, and his xwOBA on balls in contact dropped from .355 to .333. Smith was, based on his x numbers, very unlucky in 2023, when he would have been expected to have a .211 batting average and .390 slugging, and somewhat lucky in 2024, when he would have been expected to have a .242 batting average and .352 slugging percentage.
From a slash line standpoint, Smith had two very different seasons in 2024. He went into the All Star Break with a .293/.392/.469 slash line. After the break, he put up a .215/.265/.300 slash line.
But if we look at his expected stats, the delta isn’t nearly as large.
Before the break, Smith’s expected slash line was .238/.344/.349. His .315 xwOBA was 63 points lower than his .378 wOBA.
After the break, Smith’s expected slash line was .247/.295/.356. His .289 xwOBA was 40 points higher than his .249 wOBA.
Josh Smith wasn’t nearly as good as his raw numbers made it appear in the first half, and wasn’t nearly as bad as his raw numbers it appear in the second half.
As we have discussed in regards to other players, whether one’s numbers are supported by the batted ball data and the like or not doesn’t matter retrospectively. No one is going to come back and take away hits from Josh Smith’s stat line in the first half of 2024, or add hits to his stat line in the second half of 2024.
It does matter, though, for teams in making decisions going forward, and for us in terms of our expectations going forward. Its the reason I pushed back so much in the offseason against the argument that Josh Smith had earned regular playing time, had proved he could hit.
At the end of the day, Josh Smith is a useful baseball player. He has value for a major league team. The Rangers should keep him around.
But Smith is a role player. He’s not someone whose bat is so potent that he needs to be shoe-horned into the lineup, that warrants Bruce Bochy finding him 400+ plate appearances at all costs. He’s a solid guy on your bench who can fill in at a number of positions if a regular needs a day off or gets hurt, though, and that is something that has real value.
Previously: