Jake Cronenworth's Complicated Struggles Against Righties Have Made Padres' Lineup Less Effective

In baseball, one of the biggest concerns for a left-handed hitter is almost always facing a pitcher with the same profile. It is never comfortable enough, and one of the reasons is that you simply do not see lefty-vs.-lefty matchups every day. San Diego Padres second baseman Jake Cronenworth would tell you the opposite about that approach. There is a major reason behind that conversation, and it is that Cronenworth is being neutralized by right-handed pitchers. His 75 wRC+ in 222 plate appearances is the ninth-lowest in the league among left-handed hitters with at least 200 PA against right-handed pitchers this year. But that is not the worst part. Any hitter can go through a slump and then show signs of recovery.

Cronenworth’s problem is unprecedented. He is going through the worst stretch of his career, and the offensive collapse has been devastating. Listen to and internalize what this combination of inconsistencies at the plate means: he is producing the highest ground-ball percentage of his career (50.0), the lowest line-drive percentage (16.4), along with his highest strikeout rate (23.0 K%). His .215/.308/.287 slash line, .595 OPS and .072 ISO are also career lows. Yes, there is more. The problems have reached his plate-discipline metrics, with career-worst rates in SwStr% (9.1), Contact% (79.4), O-Contact% (54.1) and O-Swing% (27.3).

The strangest part of all is that Cronenworth has never had major consistency problems that have been exposed against right-handed pitchers. In fact, he is coming off a couple of seasons in which he averaged a 120 wRC+, and he is still a hitter who has outperformed the league over his career in this split. So this creates a major contradiction. What has caused such an unexpected collapse in Cronenworth’s profile, and how can he solve it?

To start, it is true that he is striking out like never before in his career, but he is only 2.5 percentage points above the league average. He is still walking (10.8 BB%) at a rate close to the average (10.0) and remains above that standard in HardHit% (35.9). So, we have to go a little deeper to discover where the real breakdown is in Cronenworth’s swing and how opponents are limiting him.

As usual, this story starts with fastballs. Opponents are using them 66.9% of the time, the second-highest percentage of his career behind the 69.6% from 2024. In other words, the rest of the pitches, between a litany breaking balls and off-speed pitches, represent about one-third of what he's seeing. This is what happened when I separated both groups and mixed in some key metrics for power, plate discipline and swing evaluation.

*Note: The statistics include all pitch types that were recorded at least five times.*

As expected, there are several interesting trends here. Within the chaos, Cronenworth has continued to take advantage of fastballs. Even with a 16.1-point drop in Ideal Attack Angle%, he has managed to produce a .284 BABIP. He is striking out 23.5 percentage points less, has eliminated a large amount of Whiffs%, while sustaining a similar increase in Hard Hit% and double the xSLG and xwOBA, respectively.

In other words, when you analyze Cronenworth only against right-handed pitchers’ fastballs, the story does not look nearly as chaotic. Quite the opposite, in fact, as it appears when we look the other way: all the pitches that are not fastballs. You can clearly see that BABIP is the only point where Cronenworth’s contact ability still makes a difference.

Here we have the graphical comparison of Cronenworth against right-handers’ fastballs (left) and the rest of the pitches from righties (right). Notice how blue dominates the whiff rates against fastballs. There are no misses in the lower portions of the middle to the outer part. The biggest problems appear in the upper-third outside the strike zone and down and in. Those are pitches Cronenworth could stop chasing if he improves his plate discipline.

Even so, check the expected averages on the right. His swing can still handle the fastball in the strike zone, and he can crush pitches on the inner part of the plate. Everything would be very different within this slump if he only had to face fastballs. But the game is much more challenging, and pitchers know where to look for weaknesses. And, you know, it all starts with a choice. Cronenworth is chasing too many pitches outside the strike zone.

Unlike fastballs, he does not have problems when the rest of the offerings hang up high in the strike zone. His best xBA marks remain in similar areas where he has also punished fastballs. But there is a point here that I find even more revealing and that could be a key piece of this puzzle: Cronenworth is averaging 44.6% in Ideal Attack Angle. That is 16.1 percentage points higher than his swing against fastballs. But here is a difference we cannot overlook: the exit velocity on his batted balls is lower, at just 84.3 mph. If you're not hitting the ball hard... well, it doesn't really matter at what angle you strike it, does it?

This is going to require a multitude of changes to fix, which means that this problem likely can't be solved during the middle of a playoff push. Cronenworth hasn't completely lost his way at the plate, but as right-handed pitchers continue to expose his weakness against the soft stuff, he's going to have to feast on the steady diet of fastballs he's receiving to salvage his season.