Eli White's breakout feels somewhat sustainable

The Atlanta Braves may legitimately have an outfield position battle on their hands.

Let’s talk about Eli White.

© Christopher Hanewinckel-Imagn Images

The speedy outfielder has taken Braves Country by storm: starting the last seven games, he’s currently 10-28 with two homers, seven RBI, nine runs scored, and a stolen base across the stretch while picking up at least one hit in every one of those games. His full season stats are at least half-comprised of this seven-game stretch, adding up to 45 at-bats and a line of .311/.367/.600.

Many fans are crediting White’s insertion into the lineup, coming in the finale of their home series with the St. Louis Cardinals, as being one of the final moves required to push this lineup into dangerous territory. In his starts, Atlanta’s scored 39 runs, an average of 5.6 per game, frequently fueled by White’s presence on the bases at the bottom of the order.

But is what he’s doing sustainable? Unlike Nick Allen on Wednesday, I think this is.

Let’s talk about it.

What’s different?

As we discussed the other day, whenever someone’s radically outperforming their career norms (.191/.266/.302 entering the season), it’s important to look at what’s different in their profile.

And unlike Nick Allen, who is hitting the ball the same as ever but getting significantly better results out of it, Eli White actually is doing something different at the plate:

Hitting the ball hard.

White’s gone from an average exit velocity of 88.7 mph to 90.6 mph this year, including the hardest-hit ball of his career at 108.5 mph.¹

He’s also doing it in the optimal way possible, getting a Launch Angle Sweet Spot percentage of 34.3%, a career-high (excluding a seven batted balls sample in 2023).

Launch Angle Sweet Spot, abbreviated LASS%, is how many of a hitter’s batted balls are leaving the bat within the ‘ideal’ launch angle of 8 to 32 degrees. When you combine a hard-hit ball with one in this LA sweet spot, it’s usually a barrel and those are usually home runs.

Now, is this related to the ‘torpedo bat’ that White’s been using? It’s impossible to know for sure - I can’t exactly run a Statcast search separated by which bat a guy was using for each particular at-bat.²

But that’s not the only improvement White’s made.

He’s making more consistent contact.

Eli White’s currently at a career-high 88.6% zone contact percentage, above both his career average (76.7%) and the MLB average (82.0%). There are a few elements that go into this, one of which is in his control and one that isn’t.

The element not in his control is where he’s getting pitched. For some reason, maybe the lack of a scouting report or just a lack of concern for what he can do with the bat, opposing pitchers are attacking Eli White. He’s seeing 13.7% of his pitches in attack zone five, defined as literally middle-middle, when the MLB average is roughly 7.3%.

The element in his control is what he’s doing with those pitches, and that’s hitting them. His swing rate at those pitches is an above-average 78.3%, and he’s hitting .444. He’s taken only five of the twenty-three for called strikes, with four of them coming in the first pitch of an at-bat. He’s also only whiffed on one of them, a Kevin Gausman heater to open a 2nd-inning at-bat.

The torpedo bat, designed to re-distribute the center of gravity and mass of the barrel to the player’s sweet spot, is probably an above-average asset to a guy with a profile like this, but he’s earned a lot of these stats to this point in the season. More on that later.

But wait, there’s more

White’s not only blasting the cover off the ball, he’s contributing in every phase of the game. Early statistical returns on his defense are what we expected - positive run value, buoyed by great range. (He has pretty good arm strength, too, but doesn’t have enough max effort throws to show up on this season’s leaderboards just yet.) While his reactions and routes are roughly average, he’s getting significantly above-average production out of his burst, the second 1.5 seconds of the play.

The ‘reaction’ is the first 1.5 seconds of the play - think the initial steps and how quickly they make them. The ‘burst’ is the second 1.5 seconds, so how quickly they accelerate and cover ground as they track the ball. The ‘route’ is their total path to the ball and how efficient it was versus the optimal or ideal path. I think Statcast adjusts this for wind, but I’m not sure - defensive stats are a little bit of a black box.

His baserunning is also elite. He’s already positive on Baserunning Runs Added despite barely playing this season, getting positive marks for stolen bases (he’s a perfect 2-2) and has yet to record a negative play when attempting to take an extra base on a hit. His sprint speed of 29.9 ft/sec is not only the top mark on the team, it’s tied for 5th-best in all of baseball.

He needs to run more, quite frankly. There’s room to add a bit of aggressiveness without overcorrecting. Think about the aggressive point guard who gets 15 assists with three turnovers versus the conservative one who gets six assists with no turnovers. You’d take the extra performance as long as the occasional negative play doesn’t outweigh the positive ones.³

What’s the downside here?

There’s two things that give me pause, outside of the whole ‘.364 BABIP’ thing.⁴

Eli White’s chasing more than ever. It’s still not a lot, just 26.5%, and he’d have an above-average bubble on Statcast in that regard if he had enough plate appearances to qualify. The issue here is that his contact rate of 38.9% when he chases is over twenty percent below the league average.

When you combine the ‘disproportionately large portion of his production coming on meatballs’ thing with ‘chasing more and making way less contact than average’ thing, it’s a recipe to regress once opposing pitchers change their locations on him.

The second issue is his lack of production against offspeed pitches.

Not “below-average” production, complete lack of production. Because Eli White doesn’t have a single hit off of an offspeed pitch this season. On the entire pitch group, his three batted balls are all outs (two grounders, one well-hit lineout). His whiff rate on offspeed pitches is 37.5%.

(This is slightly counterbalanced by his exemplary performance on fastballs, putting up a .381 BA/.346 xBA and whiffing only 13% of the time against them.)

If you asked me how to attack Eli White, I wouldn’t throw him a single strike. I’d alternate fastballs up/above the zone with changeups and sliders below, trying to get him to expand both up and down and desperately avoiding leaving anything center-cut over the plate.

But no one’s gameplanning Eli White to that extent…yet. When/if his production starts slipping, let’s go back and look at this to see if the pitch mix he’s seeing (55% fastballs/37% breaking balls/8% offspeed) has changed, or the locations.⁵

But unlike Allen, who is outperforming all of his inputs to a significant degree that’s bound to regress, a lot of what White is doing is earned. It’s a .294 xBA versus an actual .311, and a .518 xSLUG versus an actual .600. This is fueled by White getting some luck with pitch locations and selections, but also hitting those pitches harder than ever before.

Now let’s see if he’s still any good at second base.

1. He’s broken 108 twice this year, both against the Rockies. 108.5 was a triple off of Germán Márquez on Tuesday, while 108.2 was off of Jake Bird on Wednesday and was a groundout.

2. Yet

3. Looking at you, 2023 Ronald. 14 caught stealing?

4. Which might not come down a ton - the super speedy guys are the ones that always outperform the league average BABIP.

5. Or both.