What the Rays can expect from their former batting champion

What went wrong for Yandy Díaz in 2024, and can he return to his 2023 form where he received down-ballot MVP votes?

These two questions could heavily influence the Rays' 2025 season and how it goes with their offense, as Díaz continues to lead off and be a steadying influence for this lineup.

In 2023 Yoked Yandy was the talk of the league; he had always been an analytics darling, with an elite command of the strike zone and high exit velocity numbers.

But in 2023, he was able to put it all together and finally start to get a bit of loft to his swing, resulting in a 5.1 fWAR season, 22 long balls and a 163 wRC+, all career highs for the former Cleveland corner infielder.

His numbers in 2023 were just better across the board than 2024; all of his expected marks were down last season, and that had a bit to do with luck, as his BABIP dropped .053 points, but he also had am 11% drop in his barrel rate.

What contributed to his inability to hit the ball as hard and effectively?

Well, for one, his ground ball rate reached their highest mark since 2020, as 55.5% of his batted balls were on the ground.

He also was chasing a bit more but also making contact with those chased pitches at a much higher rate, as his Chase Contact% jumped from 60.1% in 2023 to 74.5% in 2024.

Meaning, not only was he swinging at bad pitches more often, he was also putting those pitches in play far more, which explains why he wasn't mashing nearly as much.

Unfortunately for Yandy, he was (consciously or not) sacrificing a bit of that power surge he saw in 2023 for more bat-on-ball skills, as his whiff rate actually went down in 2024.

If Yandy can go back to his more balanced approach, not only will it result in a bit more power, it'll bring his walk rate (which was a solid 10.8% in 2023 compared to 8.1% in 2024) back up due to pitchers having to respect his pop a bit more.

In other words, pitchers will have to give him more hittable pitches because if Yandy is more selective in his approach but more aggressive when he does get a pitch to hit, they'll have to throw him more pitches out of the zone.

It might seem counterintuitive to say "be more selective but also more aggressive," but it's more like telling a player to take more pitches but take more risks when you do swing at good pitches.

It's ok to swing and miss a bit more than Yandy was last season, because even if he does chase (as rarely as he does, even in 2024) at least it won't get put in play where it'll likely be an out.

A better way to phrase it might be his lack of "run production" compared to average on pitches in the heart of the zone, which was -16, compared to his excellent "run production" on borderline pitches and waste pitches, which were +20 and +19 respectively.

He also seemed to be protecting quite a bit from getting beat up and in, but at the cost of doing more damage on pitches in the middle of the zone, as his exit velocities from the up-and-in portion of his strike zone were actually higher in 2024, but in 2023 his zones across the middle horizontally were higher.

Hopefully that makes sense, and Yandy and the Rays are both aware of these factors and the Rays can probably do a better job explaining it than myself.

Unfortunately for Yandy it's a lot easier to write about these adjustments than to actual do them, as major league pitching is famously pretty darn good, especially when pitching to hitters with such sterling reputations as Yandy's.

But if anyone can do it, Yandy can.