Why Brandon Belt's approach vs. off-speed pitches will shape 2023 results

When the Toronto Blue Jays signed Brandon Belt, he was positioned as a complementary piece on a team making finishing touches to its 2023 roster. 

That’s a fair way to conceptualize a 34-year-old coming off a 0.0 fWAR season on a flier of a one-year $9.3 million contract. It also severely undersells the veteran’s offensive upside. 

Not only does he have a lengthy track record of being a well above-average hitter, but between 2020 and 2021 he wielded one of the most dangerous bats in the game. 

Because of the pandemic-shortened season and a couple of injuries, he took just 560 trips to the plate during that time — but his production was nothing short of elite. Belt’s wRC+ of 162 was the third-best mark in the majors among players with 500-plus plate appearances, right between Bryce Harper and Ronald Acuna Jr.

Perhaps more surprisingly his .310 ISO also ranked third — a stunning number for a hitter who never topped 18 home runs between 2011 and 2019. It was especially impressive for a player plying his trade in a ballpark that ranked as the fifth-most pitcher-friendly venue in the majors in both of those seasons according to Statcast.

Recreating production like that will be a tall task for Belt. It’s unfair to count on him to be one of baseball’s most potent hitters in 2023. If that were a reasonable expectation he wouldn’t have been available on the deal he signed. 

That said, it’s worth understanding what made the first baseman so dangerous in 2020 and 2021 — and as a result, how he could surprise as a Blue Jay in 2023.

Much has been made of Belt’s knee issues, and rightly so. A return to health is crucial for any success he has this season. Shortly after signing with Toronto, he told Shi Davidi that the muscles around his knee shut down throughout 2022 and clearly that’s an untenable state of affairs for a professional baseball player.

When you have a player who will turn 35 in April who dealt with injuries of that magnitude recently there is reason for concern.

At the same time, what made Belt so good prior to his difficult 2022 campaign had far more to do with his approach than his raw physical ability. For reference, the first baseman has the same career average exit velocity as Cavan Biggio (88.3) with a max exit velocity just 0.3 mph harder.

So, what was the magical approach that made a guy with solid-but-unspectacular power into a player with the second-highest slugging percentage in the majors over a two-year span?

More than anything, what Belt did right was handle soft stuff. 

His .544 SLG vs. fastballs ranked 72nd among hitters who saw at least 500 pitches in 2020 and 2021. His .677 SLG vs. breaking balls and off-speed pitches led the majors.

Without the luxury of elite raw power, he absolutely teed off on anything that wasn’t a fastball in a way that he’d never done before — and failed to replicate in 2022.

In order to understand how it helps to divide his approach against non-fastballs into pitches inside and outside the zone.

A high percentage of changeups and breaking balls in the zone are mistakes. That’s probably less true now than it would’ve been 20 years ago when fewer high-velocity sliders existed and pitchers were less experimental with their pitch mixes.

Even so, when it comes to breaking balls and off-speed pitches, most are designed to get batters to chase outside the zone, especially low. If a hitter sees one of these offerings in the zone it probably isn’t supposed to be there, and is asking to get smacked.

Imagine any hanging breaking ball you’ve ever seen get crushed. 

Or, better yet, watch Belt destroy this Tylor Megill slider that catches too much of the plate.

For most of his career, Belt swung at these pitches almost indiscriminately, hacking 72.8 percent of the time. The results — a .283 BA and .544 SLG — were solid, but we’re talking about hitters’ pitches here.

In his breakout seasons Belt was far more refined. He swung for 64.6 percent of these pitches and even though it meant taking more strikes he was far more efficient with his cuts.

Here’s a look at his launch angles on in-zone non-fastballs from 2020-21… 

… compared to the other seasons of his career (excluding pre-Statcast years):

By being a little more selective, Belt was able to lock in on some of the best pitches to hit in the majors. He hit .339 and slugged .809 off them with 43.3 percent of his balls in play going for hits compared to 35 percent in his other seasons.

Outside the zone

It’s tough for hitters to win against soft stuff outside the zone, especially as it often comes in unfavourable counts when they’re forced to protect the plate.

For the vast majority of his career, Belt could do nothing with these pitches, hitting .128 and slugging .144 against them outside of 2020 and 2021.

In those two seasons, he made a massive improvement, hitting .210 and slugging .419. While selectivity drove his success on in-zone non-fastballs, his swing rate didn’t change much on these pitches. 

Instead, he unlocked the ability to dig them out, something that had always eluded him. In those seasons he hit four home runs off soft stuff of the plate — the most impressive being this 418-foot shot off southpaw Andrew Chafin:

That’s notable because he’d never cleared the wall on a pitch like this in 4,221 MLB plate appearances before 2020.

It’s tough to pin down exactly how Belt unlocked this counterpunching ability, but it’s unlikely to be gone for good. Even through all of his struggles last year, he hit a long ball on one of these pitches — projected at 414 feet — than he ever had between 2011 and 2019.

By streamlining his approach on soft pitches to hit and finding some thump against ones he’d never handled well before, Belt became MLB’s most dangerous hitter on non-fastballs.

He’s unlikely to assume that mantle again, but it seems fair to be bullish on a player who’s used an advanced approach to turn good-not-great raw power into elite power production.

Led by his ability to hit the soft stuff, Belt has a skill set that should play even in his mid-thirties as it’s far more reliant on his approach than any loud tools that Father Time can rob from him.