What's Wrong With Callaspo?

In half a season's worth of games in 2008 Alberto Callaspo hit for an empty .305 average but showed some great promise, walking at a league average rate and never striking out. The following year he showed that he had some pop in his bat, belting 11 home runs and putting up a .352 wOBA. With his below average defense at second base taken into account Callaspo was still worth 2.4 WAR and was an above-average starter on a bad Royals team.

Callaspo's 2010 has not been nearly as good and because of his and the Royals struggles this season he was traded today to the Angels for major leaguer Sean O' Sullivan and "C" prospect Will Smith. As Craig Brown of Royals Authority tweeted, it was "neither a win, nor a lose. Just a trade". Considering how good Callaspo was last year, the return for the Royals seems somewhat light, but part of that lack of return probably has to do with how he has performed this year. Looking at his numbers there are two major things that are leading to Callaspo's (semi)-disappointing season: a decreased walk rate and increased O-Swing percentage.

During his breakout 2008 and 2009 seasons Callaspo walked 8.2% of the time over 868 plate appearances which is certainly a relevant sample size. This lead to above average on-base percentages of .361 and .356 respectively. This year that walk rate is down to 5.1% which has absolutely killed his OBP. What's peculiar about his reduced walk rate is that he's actually swinging at slightly less pitches this year (47.1 swing% compared to 47.6% last year).

Callaspo has also increased the number of balls outside of the strike zone that he's swung at. In 2008 he swung at 21.0% of pitches outside the zones, while in 2009 he swung at 25.4% of those pitches. This year that number has risen even higher up to 28.6%. What's interesting is that he's making the contact at the same rate as he did last year; this leads me to believe that while he's making contact, he's hitting worse pitches and making weaker contact. Looking at his batted ball types backs up this assumption, as his LD% has fallen from 26% to 17.2% and finally to 16.6% this year. Due to the decreased LD% and a slight increase in infield fly ball percentage Callaspo's BABIP has fallen from .312 last year to .278 this year. While some of that has been bad luck (his xBABIP stands at .293), it's still obvious that he's not making good contact on the balls that he's hitting.

Despite his struggles this year he's been worth 1.1 WAR so far which over 640 plate appearances would mean that he's roughly a league average third basemen both with the bat and with the glove. There's some good value in that, especially for a team like the Angel's who need corner infield help. But to replicate his 2009 success Callaspo is going to need to increase his walks and decrease the number of bad pitches he swings at.