We’re entering the MLB season’s unofficial second half, which means many fantasy leagues are approaching the home stretch. With that in mind, I expand on Nathan Dokken’s recent post on surging veteran Kole Calhoun.
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The Kole Calhoun Resurgence
Was it really that simple? Calhoun was placed on the disabled list on June 1 with a strained oblique. At the time, he was easily baseball’s worst hitter, sitting on a .145/.195/.179 line. He returned from that stint about three weeks later and has slashed .292/.358/.662 ever since.
Maybe it’s too easy to wave away Calhoun’s dreadful first half as injury-related. At the time of his DL placement, the Angels told MLB.com that his injury had occurred just a few days prior, hardly enough to explain his abysmal seasonal line. Maybe he just needed the mental rest. Maybe he was on the verge of a breakthrough anyhow, and his injury merely delayed that a few weeks. Whatever the reason, though, it’s clear that Calhoun has come back a much stronger hitter.
His average exit velocity has spiked five miles per hour post-return, to the point where he sits top 20 in exit speed since the start of June (minimum 50 plate appearances). Ditto his launch angle, which has spiked a staggering 10 degrees. He’s gone from weak grounders to hard-hit fly balls, and the change in results has been predictable.
A lot of this is probably that Calhoun just feels healthy, but there’s a bit of a process change in here too. Predictably, Calhoun has long fared better when he avoids chases out of the strike zone, and he’s chased significantly less often since his return, while continuing to be aggressive on pitches in the strike zone.
While improved pitch selection is certainly one reason Calhoun’s hitting the ball with more authority, Fangraphs’ Rahul Setty recently identified another change he’s made, one more visible to the naked eye. Calhoun has picked up an exaggerated leg kick, transitioning from a subtler toe tap, a change that helped fuel fly ball breakouts for players like Josh Donaldson and Justin Turner in recent years. Unlike pre-breakout Donaldson and Turner, Calhoun’s been an established big leaguer for some time, and he’s always hit fly balls, so this is less a late-career breakout than a reliable player returning to form. Of course, he’s not going to slug .700 simply because he added a leg kick, and he’s due for some home run regression, but early-season Calhoun seems to be dead and gone. At this point, it seems wise to take the over on his projected .245/.319/.415 slash moving forward.
