Nelson Cruz: The Embodiment of Sustained Production

Baseball is such a random game. Seemingly every single year a group of players come out of nowhere and produce otherworldly stat lines. Simultaneously, there are players who ride high expectations into the season and don't perform near what they're expected. MVPs, Cy Youngs, and batting title winners change almost every year. Which is all well and good, as well as very impressive. But what I find more impressive is consistent, sustained production. I don't mean winning 5 MVPs or Cy Youngs or anything like that. Being at the top for multiple years in a row is near impossible. What I'm interested in is quality production, not at the top of the league, but a reliable, consistent, borderline-all-star-caliber player. Adam Wainwright is a perfect example of this, but I already talked about him in an Instagram post, so here we are deciding what other player fits the bill. Nelson Cruz.

To begin, let's talk about what Nelson Cruz's strengths are. To put it simply, he's a power hitter. In his 17 seasons in the bigs, he's hit 443 home runs. That does include a 2013 PED suspension, although he had many great seasons before and after that suspension. Besides, I'm not here to argue a hall of fame case (if he hadn't been suspended I would be), I'm just here to talk about consistency. Cruz began his career in 2005 with Milwaukee, then spent 3 more seasons developing with the Rangers, and was finally granted a full season of opportunity in 2009 and never looked back. From 2009 to now, his lowest single season home run output was 22 (excluding the COVID-shortened 2020 season, where he hit 16). His career ISO rating is .250, and had his lowest ISO between 2009-2021 in 2012, with .200. Besides 2012, his ISO never dipped below .238. That's simply incredible. To sustain that kind of power from age 28 onward is unreal, especially considering he turned 40 this year. Additionally, from 2009 onward he slugged .500 and above every year excluding 2012 (he slugged .460 that year), and has a career slugging percentage of .528, paired with a career wOBA of .370.

Before getting into the bad, I'd like to delve deeper into his plate discipline. Many people see a power hitter like Cruz and will automatically tell you he swings at everything, and thus has terrible plate discipline. Granted, he does strike out quite a bit, but I never said his plate discipline reached Juan Soto levels. I'm only stating it's not as terrible as one may think. Cruz has hovered around 30% in swings at pitches outside the strike zone, good for league average. Additionally, in the statcast era, he hasn't fallen below the 59th percentile in walk rate, even reaching the mid 70s in percentile thrice in such era. Again, he strikes out a lot, as shown by his bottom 20% whiff rate every year of the statcast era, as well as a strikeout rate that has dipped below 20% just once in his lengthy career. My take is this: he knows what he can and can't hit, which is half the battle of plate discipline. He essentially swings at everything he can hit, and takes everything he can't. Sure, he does swing and miss a lot at what he knows how to hit, but when he makes contact, he hits it hard. Take a look at this:

Above we see Cruz's swing percentage for each hitting zone, with the barrel rate of said pitches below. To be clear, this data only encapsulates 2021, but if you want to check out 2016-2020, the data is available on Baseball Savant. Trust me, it's really more of the same, but I'd imagine it's slightly tedious for some readers to look through 5 more years of the same data. What's so interesting to me is the amount of correlation between these two graphs. For instance, right down the middle is both where Cruz swings the most and where he barrels the most baseballs, and low and away is swung at the least as well as barreled the least. This can't be a coincidence.

Finally, we should go over some of what Cruz isn't good at. We already mentioned strikeouts; paired with that is his lackluster defense. Cruz has -17 defensive runs saved in his career, and there hasn't been a single season where he eclipsed 4 defensive runs saved. But being in the AL his whole career has certainly helped him, as he normally plays designated hitter, especially of late. In 2017 and 2018 combined, Cruz only spent 54.1 innings in the field, and hasn't played a single inning outside of DH ever since. There's not much else to say here, considering the lack of quality defensive stats available, but I imagine we don't need the most elaborate data to determine that Nelson Cruz isn't a good fielder.

So what does this leave us with? Incredible amounts of consistency. Amounts that defy father time at that. Just think about how hard it is to have 13 seasons in a row with more than 20 home runs (again, excluding 2020 where he hit 16, which is clearly on pace to surpass 20). Many players can luck into the right situation, coach, confidence levels, etc. and have an all star caliber season. But to do it across 4 different teams, from age 29 to 40, unhindered, is simply incredible. As far as his flaws go, every player has a flaw. Every player. There's something to be said about accepting that and trying to be the best you can at what you're good at, rather than trying to change who you are as a player to obtain everything. You can't have every skill. So you might as well master the ones you already have a head start in. Cruz has done that. And I won't be surprised if he continues to do so. As far as I'm concerned, that's how you fend off father time while you can. Not with a specific skill set or formula, but by being good at what you're good at, and working hard at making those attributes better.