A look at Alex Bregman's offensive struggles

Third baseman Alex Bregman is in the final year of his contract with the Houston Astros and it hasn't gone well for him or the Astros so far in 2024. 

Houston is in last place in the AL West, 4.5 games behind the Athletics for fourth place and 8.5 games off the division lead. There are several reasons for this poor start, like the fact their rotation has been battling injuries going back to 2023. They've also gotten no offensive production from first base. 

Another key reason is that Bregman has been awful so far. His slash line is brutal - .189/.268/.252 - with only one home run and five doubles. If he were a rookie, he would have been sent back down to the minors weeks ago. 

There are some definite reasons for his struggles. 

His BABIP (batting average on balls in play) is sitting at .209. While he's been below average in this category for most of his career, he's never been below .254 for a season. This indicates he's hit into some pretty bad luck so far. 

However, there might be a reason for such an abysmal BABIP, other than him just hitting at fielders. His fly ball rate is 45.9 percent so far this season, which is in-line with what he has done for most of his career. His home run-to-fly ball ratio, on the other hand, is way below his career average, sitting at just two percent. His career average in 11.9 percent. He's only finished lower than 10 percent once, at 9.8 in 2021.

This means that he is hitting the ball in the air at about the same rate as he always has, but those balls are not getting out of the park. They're just fly ball outs. This combination will drive down the BABIP as quick as anything. 

Bregman is also hitting line drives 14.4 percent of the time, way below his 20.8 percent career average. Line drives tend to get through more often than other types of batted balls, so this is another reason why he's not getting as many hits and why he isn't producing many extra base hits.

Bregman is only 30 years old, so he shouldn't be to the point where is he is already losing bat speed and power. If he could get more of his fly balls to be line drives, and to hit more of his fly balls out of the park, then his BABIP, batting average and overall production should improve mightily. He started slowly in 2023 too, but he eventually got on track, so there is hope he will this season. 

Not only do the Astros need Bregman to turn things around quickly, but he's costing himself millions of dollars as he approaches free agency. No team, including the Astros, will be wanting to reward him with a big contract if his batting skills are trending downward so severely. It will be interesting to see if he can turn it around.