A year ago, Prince Fielder looked finished. Finito. Spent. And any other synonym for the word “done.”
But as anybody who watched the Texas Rangers veteran first baseman in action on Friday night against the New York Yankees will tell you, rumors of Fielder’s demise were greatly exaggerated.
Fielder went into Texas’ tilt at Yankee Stadium in the midst of an outstanding comeback season, batting .340 with an .884 OPS and five home runs. He then made said comeback even more outstanding, leading the Rangers to a 10-9 victory with a pair of home runs and four RBI.
To the videos! This was Fielder’s first homer, a three-run, upper-deck shot off Michael Pineda in the third inning:
And this was his second, a long solo shot to center off Chasen Shreve in the seventh inning:
With these two home runs, Fielder now has 295 for his career. Five more, and he’ll become the 46th left-handed batter ever to reach the 300-home-run plateau.
He should have no trouble getting there. He’s now hitting .341 with a .918 OPS, and his seven homers give him a real shot at his first 30-homer season since back in 2012.
And after watching Fielder in 2013 and 2014, it’s hard to watch what he’s doing now without feeling at least a shred of disbelief.
In 2013, Fielder seemed to be sinking into a decline phase. His .819 OPS and 25 homers were the two worst full-season marks of his career, and he looked completely out of gas in the middle of the Detroit Tigers‘ playoff run.
The Tigers’ response was to get Fielder and as much of the money remaining on his nine-year, $214 million contract off their hands as they possibly could. The Rangers were the taker they found, and they didn’t exactly get a good return on their investment. Fielder OPS’d just .720 with three homers in 42 games for them in 2014, and then was lost for the season to neck surgery.
At that point, things looked bad. Fielder was a guy on the wrong side of 30 who already seemed to be declining and now had to come back from a serious operation. Any reasonable person could have guessed that his best days were squarely in the rearview mirror.
But now here we are in 2015, watching Fielder not only producing like his old self but looking like his old self, too.
How is Fielder looking like his old self? Well, it’s all right there in the two videos embedded above. Watch those, and you’ll see a classic Fielder swing: strong base, quick bat, explosive finish.
We didn’t get to see too many swings like that in 2013 and 2014. No doubt Fielder wanted to swing like that, but he couldn’t.
As in, he literally couldn’t. His health wouldn’t let him.
As Fielder told Bleacher Report’s Scott Miller this March, his bad neck would cause pain and numbness in his left arm. As a result, the light-tower power that made him one of the great young power hitters in MLB history during his time with the Milwaukee Brewers all but vanished.
“I couldn’t move,” Fielder told T.R. Sullivan of MLB.com. “I couldn’t move enough to get into any kind of habits. It wasn’t a bad swing. I just had no power. I got to the ball decently, there just wasn’t anything there. I wasn’t strong enough to complete my swing.”
Granted, there were times when Fielder seemed to find his old swing. Like that time he hit a second-decker at Globe Life Park in Arlington early last May. But for the most part, his swings looked like this:
There just wasn’t much there. Fielder’s bat speed was greatly diminished, and you can see him doing what Rangers hitting coach Dave Magadan calls “crashing into the ball.” That’s his way of saying Fielder was jumping on pitches rather than letting them travel.
Given the state of Fielder’s health, there wasn’t much else he could do. But he’s healthy now, and the difference doesn’t sneak by on the eye test. He once again has the goods to let the ball travel and to take good rips at it.
And it’s not hard to find where the return of his old swing is helping Fielder the most.
For one, he can hit fastballs again. As these figures from Baseball Savant can vouch, his average against the hard stuff was trending down for a while there, and now it’s back up:
- 2011: .334
- 2012: .337
- 2013: .273
- 2014: .271
- 2015: .321
That’s Fielder’s renewed bat speed at work, and his renewed ability to let the ball travel has granted him another gift: He can hit the ball with authority to the opposite field again.
That’s something he couldn’t do in 2013 and 2014, as FanGraphs put his Isolated Power (slugging percentage minus singles) to left field at .094 and .097. This year, he entered Friday’s contest with a .154 ISO to left field, which was backed up by his best opposite-field hard-hit rate (33.3) since 2007.
And overall, Fielder is making better contact than he has in years. Entering Friday, FanGraphs put his hard-hit rate at 36.4 percent. That’s his best mark since 2010. And as we noted recently, hard contact turns into hits about as often as you’d expect.
Throw in the fact that Fielder is once again living well below the league-average strikeout rate, and the only thing that’s missing is his old walk habit. He’s drawn only 11 walks all season. But given that pitchers can see what we can see, that could very well change as they realize it’s in their best interest to be more careful with how they pitch Fielder.
Really, nothing would be surprising at this point. Fielder has done enough over a large enough sample size to prove that he has plenty of good baseball left in him, and he’s looked good doing it.
Once again, it’s good to be the Prince.
Note: Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference unless otherwise noted/linked.
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