A few weeks ago, my colleague Peter wrote about Anthony Rizzo’s neck injury and subsequent slump at the plate, particularly in regard to his xWOBA trends. With a decent sample size since then, it’s an opportune time to take stock of his month as a whole and follow up on Peter’s astute observations. As he highlighted, Rizzo had a -3 wRC+ in the first 16 games of June, and his wOBA strike zone chart tells all.
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No hitter can be successful when they don’t hit strikes. Rizzo was compromised on the inner half because of his temporary bad habit of opening up his hips early leading to an inevitable rollover or pop-up.