Dissecting Patrick Bailey’s second-half struggles as SF Giants place catcher on IL

SAN FRANCISCO — Standing in front of his locker Monday night with an ice pack wrapped in athletic tape around his right torso, Patrick Bailey smiled and snickered.

The Giants’ catcher rarely hits on the field before games; he prefers to get his pregame work done in the batting cages in between prepping with that night’s pitcher. But he changed his routine before their series opener against the White Sox, incorporating some early on-field swings, and afterward felt some discomfort in his side.

Bailey was scratched from the Giants’ lineup before the first game of the series and on Tuesday was placed on the 10-day injured list after an MRI revealed a strained right oblique. Jakson Reetz was recalled from Triple-A Sacramento to back up Curt Casali, who started behind the plate for the second straight game.

After downplaying the issue as “very, very minor,” Bailey was asked about the circumstances that led up to the injury.

“I think you know the answer to that,” he grinned.

With defensive metrics that are unrivaled around the league, Bailey’s loss is a substantial one for a team that entered Tuesday 3½ games out of playoff position with 35 to play. But he had frustratingly found himself stuck in a similar second-half rut at the plate to the one that ended his rookie season, when he was open about the toll a 162-game schedule took on his body and the steps he took to address it this offseason.

His troubles since about the All-Star break this season aren’t so easily explained.

“Last year, you could tell he was dragging a bit,” hitting coach Justin Viele said. “He seems stronger (this year). He’s still hitting the ball hard. He’s still in his at-bats, even though it might not always seem like he’s in his at-bats. I just think there’s a point where you aren’t getting hits and you aren’t getting rewarded and you’re just like, ‘Are you kidding me?’

“There’s a little bit of that after games with him, like, ‘I just can’t believe it was an 0-fer again when I felt like my swing was good, I hit two balls hard.’ There’s just not much to say when that happens. It’s a bummer because he’s doing everything right.”

Just two of Bailey’s seven home runs last season came after the calendar turned to July, and he has been stuck on the same total this year since his solo shot in a two-hit, three-walk performance July 10 against the Blue Jays. He batted third as the designated hitter that day, and the showing raised his batting average to .280, his on-base percentage to .356 and his slugging percentage to .430 — a .786 OPS that ranked eighth among 16 major-league catchers with as many plate appearances.

He turned in a couple more multi-hit games before the All-Star break, and in 27 games since has 11 hits — two for extra bases — in 96 at-bats with 24 strikeouts to five walks. His .115/.157/.135 batting line equates to a .292 OPS, the lowest of 16 qualified catchers during that time. (Topping the list? Joey Bart’s .970 mark.)

For further context, the only catchers with an OPS as low over a 27-game span this season are Martin Maldonado of the White Sox and the Rays’ Alex Jackson. Maldonado, 38, is a career .203 hitter with a .404 OPS this season, and Jackson has a .135 average and .460 OPS in 289 career at-bats.

But the Giants don’t believe fatigue is a factor.

“He tells me right now he wants to play every game,” manager Bob Melvin said. “If it’s there it’s certainly something he tries to push through. …

“The last couple of games he’s had some really good at-bats. Before that obviously it wasn’t pretty, but there were a lot of lineouts and there was some unluckiness to his at-bats. Earlier in the year all the way up until probably the halfway point, his workload has been OK compared to most in the league. I really don’t think that it has much to do with that.”

Bailey has caught 730 innings this season, eighth-most in the majors, and appeared behind the plate in 91 of the Giants’ 126 games before Monday. After dropping weight last season, he changed his diet this spring to help him hold up for the grind of a full season, which appears to have paid off.

Over the course of his career, Bailey has put 40.7% of his balls in play on the ground while being limited to soft contact 12.7% of the time. Over the final month of last season, when he batted .121, those rates spiked to 61.1% and 27.2%, respectively. In other words, he was grounding into a lot of easy outs.

In 15 games this August, Bailey has a .057 batting average but more encouraging batted-ball tendencies. His average exit velocity (89.1 mph) is markedly better that last September/October (85 mph) and in line with his career average (90.1 mph). The ball is leaving his bat at an average angle of 17 degrees, opposed to the minus-4 launch angle over the final month of last season.

While it has resulted in only a .078 weighted on-base average (wOBA), the quality of his contact suggests an expected rate of .244, a much wider gap than the end of last year (.141 wOBA vs. .201 xwOBA).

“He’s still hitting the ball hard, on a good flight,” Viele said. “He actually has more bat speed in August. That isn’t always the answer. He might actually be swinging too hard. … One lineout, two lineouts leads to the next two at-bats him trying a little too hard.”

So, on the field Monday, they weren’t working on any drastic changes.

“Just trying to quiet some things and let him see some ball flight. Kind of understand that he doesn’t have to do a lot to hit balls hard,” Viele said. “He was trying to just pepper left-center and hit the ball up the middle. Basic stuff. It wasn’t anything real nuanced. … Just stay the course and hopefully stuff starts to fall.”