Upon Jose Bautista’s release on May 20, Braves’ GM Alex Anthopoulos discussed his decision to supplant Bautista and plug in Johan Camargo as the everyday third baseman. While Bautista had hardly produced enough to warrant a starting job, or a bench job for that matter, Anthopoulos’ decision to utilize Camargo full-time didn’t seem like much of an offensive upgrade -- at least not on the surface.

Regarding Camargo, Anthopoulos addressed this in his statements to the media.

“If you look at the surface stats, when Dansby was out, they weren’t necessarily all that good. But the more that we looked at some things, [there were] some really good indicators that he might be able to perform a lot better than that. Some exit velocities, some bad luck, things like that.”

Anthopoulos is right about needing to look deeper at Camargo’s numbers - when looking at his stat line, it may have seemed curious to hand off the job to a guy who was hitting .226 at the time. Let’s dive into the underlying figures Anthopoulos & Co. saw under the surface in Camargo’s game.

BABIP

One of the carrying elements of Camargo’s surprise 2017 season was an unusually high BABIP of .364, which was 64 points over league average. This included an absolutely ridiculous .481 BABIP against left-handed pitching. Coming into 2018, it was fairly obvious that this would regress - but not only has it returned to league average, it has overcorrected to the tune of a .250 BABIP overall - 43 points below league average - and only .240 against lefties, less than half of his mark from last year. So, while he has been the victim of some unfortunate luck, it is easy to see that a natural regression to the mean could turn that around.

Improved Plate Discipline

Camargo’s 2017 rookie season saw him hacking early in the count, and rather often. He swung at 34.4% of pitches outside the strike zone, and 50.4% of the pitches he saw overall - if he’d had enough plate appearances to qualify, both of these would have placed him as one of the 30 most aggressive swingers in the league. In 2018, he has become a remarkably more patient hitter, swinging only 39.5% of the time, and cutting his chase rate to 22.1%.

His walk rate has skyrocketed accordingly. His free swinging nature in ‘17 led to a paltry walk rate of 4.7% against a strikeout rate of 19.9%, both of which obviously needed to be improved upon with the inevitable BABIP regression. His patience at the plate has helped to offset this regression, and his walk rate has quadrupled. Yes, quadrupled - he is now carrying a walk rate of 20%. His strikeout rate has dropped to 15.2%

His patience has led to a 10% reduction in first pitch strikes (from 58.6% to 48.6%), which allows him the upper hand in at-bats by not immediately going into a 0-1 hole. The value of his patience was on display in Monday afternoon’s game against the Mets, as he drew a 9th inning walk from Seth Lugo to set the stage for Charlie Culberson’s walk-off home run.

He has already drawn more walks in 32 games (21) in 2018 than he did over 82 games (12) in 2017, which is absurd. Since being declared as the starting third baseman, his line is a comical .200/.448/.300, and he has walked 8 times against only 2 strikeouts. He has posted a 130 wRC+ in that time.

Quality of Contact

One of the most impressive things about Camargo is the overall evolution of his game, going from a slap hitter in the low minors into a legitimate threat at the plate, in no small part to his increased reliance on fly balls. He is putting the ball in the air at a 39.4% clip, which is an 8.5 % increase from 2017. His launch angle has increased, from 9.0% to 12.6%, which is now above league average of 10.8%. Camargo’s newfound penchant for elevating the ball hasn’t led to the success he deserves yet, but you can see it coming.

Camargo’s average exit velocity also has increased since last year and now sits at 90.8 mph - the same EV as Nolan Arenado.

If it seems like Camargo has been better at avoiding soft contact this year, it’s because he has - his 9.1% soft contact rate is less than half of last year’s mark of 20.2%. If he had the plate appearances to qualify, his 47% hard contact rate would be tops on the Braves, 3rd in the National League, and 6th in MLB. These contact rates point towards a BABIP that should actually sit above league-average, so maybe there’s more positive regression coming his way.

The changes Camargo is incorporating into his game take time to be fully realized, as one does not simply roll out of bed and change a swing which has taken years to develop and refine. But you can start to see him evolving as a player, moving towards a version that yields more valuable production. Even with his struggles, his wRC+ is 117, up from his 2017 total of wRC+ of 102.

In a way, it is refreshing to see Camargo’s .875 OPS against righties, as this is the side where the majority of his plate appearances would come. His OPS against RHP in 2017 was only .636, so this is another big step forward.

It’s great to have a front office that finally delves into these types of analytics. Otherwise, the Braves might be out combing the scrap heap for a placeholder to keep Austin Riley’s seat warm for the foreseeable future. Make no mistake, Austin Riley is eventually coming for the third base job. But in the meantime, Camargo has proven more than enough to hold down the hot corner for the time being, and to allow Riley to continue his development in AAA.