Collette Calls: Breaking Down Adam Eaton, Melky Cabrera

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Updated on August 1, 2015 12:37PM EST

Coming into the season, a few people had high hopes for the Chicago White Sox. Hell, I even picked them as my AL Central Champs. The Chris Sale and Jeff Samardzija-led staff with promising rookie Carlos Rodon in the fold would help the team, but not as much as a loaded top half of the offense. Jose Abreu was going to have help in front of him and behind him as the team added new names. But alas, this did not happen.

As the White Sox went into the break, Jose Abreu had 46 runs driven in, which put him even with Mitch Moreland of the Rangers, who drove in 46 in nearly 75 fewer plate appearances. He had one more run driven in the much-maligned Ryan Howard and was well behind many players at first base that he was drafted ahead of, as Abreu rarely slipped out of the top 10 spots in a draft.

In the second half, Abreu had already driven in 15 runs in just 66 plate appearances. It isn't because he is doing anything differently insomuch that the table-setters in front of him have finally come to the party. Both Adam Eaton and Melky Cabrera have been on fire since the break as they rank ninth and 10th in the league in batting average, respectively.

PLAYER	TEAM	PA	AVG	OBP	SLG
Joey Votto	Reds	70	.531	.671	.878
Eric Hosmer	Royals	65	.450	.492	.733
Gerardo Parra	Brewers	51	.444	.510	.644
Jung-Ho Kang

PLAYER	TEAM	PA	AVG	OBP	SLG
Joey Votto	Reds	70	.531	.671	.878
Eric Hosmer	Royals	65	.450	.492	.733
Gerardo Parra	Brewers	51	.444	.510	.644
Jung-Ho Kang	Pirates	55	.440	.491	.760
Mark Teixeira	Yankees	57	.438	.526	.938
Paul Goldschmidt	Diamondbacks	64	.413	.531	.565
DJ LeMahieu	Rockies	58	.412	.483	.569
Carlos Gonzalez	Rockies	54	.404	.481	.957
Melky Cabrera	White Sox	68	.391	.412	.672
Adam Eaton	White Sox	68	.389	.515	.648
Adrian Gonzalez	Dodgers	51	.386	.471	.682

Heading into the break, the duo had scored 80 runs as a pair, but were failing to take full advantage of the thump behind them in the lineup as both were struggling to get on base. Eaton was hitting .245 with a .309 OBP while Cabrera was hitting .261 with a .304 OBP. Those kinds of lines were getting them dropped in many 12-team mixed leagues, or at least shifted to the bench because there were performing like zero-category players.

PLAYER	SPLIT	PA	BABIP	O-SWING%	Z-CONTACT%	CONTACT%	SwSTR%
Eaton	Pre-Break	359	.289	29	88	85	7
Eaton	Career	1,345	.276	29	94	88	5
Cabrera	Pre-Break	363	.284	34	94	88	5
Cabrera	Career	5,288	.311	32	94	88	6

In Eaton's case, we could see that he was struggling to make the contact at his career norms. He wasn't expanding his strikezone as much as he was having issues making contact within the strikezone. That kind of thing can happen when a batter is struggling with pitch recognition or is getting caught looking for one pitch in one part of the zone while letting a strike go by in another part of the zone. For Cabrera, he was expanding his strikezone a bit and not safely putting the ball into play at the rates he had throughout his career. Neither batter has had contact issues in their career, so when we see high-contact batters with low OBPs, we can look at the type of contact they are making.

The Fangraphs Glossary discusses how we can look at the Quality of Contact:

It's pretty easier to imagine why we might want to know about the quality of contact on a particular batted ball. While the obvious goal of the game is to score and prevent runs, a major part of that equation is getting and preventing hits on batted balls.

There's no guarantee that a ball hit hard will go for a hit and a ball hit softly will be turned into an out, but it is more likely that a hard hit ball will fall for a hit than a soft hit ball, in general. If you hit every ball hard, you'll almost definitely have a better year than if you hit every ball softly. There are other factors, but hitting it hard should lead to more bases per PA.

Here are how the numbers stacked up for Eaton and Cabrera:

PLAYER	SPLIT	PA	SOFT%	MED%	HARD%
Eaton	Pre-Break	359	21	54	25
Eaton	Career	1,345	20	55	26
Cabrera	Pre-Break	363	17	59	24
Cabrera	Career	5,288	18	56	26

Both batters were essentially making contact at career norms, so there isn't enough here to look for anything that would be fully fueling this second-half offensive explosion. Let's go back to the first skills table and see what has changed for the duo:

PLAYER	SPLIT	PA	BABIP	O-SWING%	Z-CONTACT%	CONTACT%	SwSTR%
Eaton	Pre-Break	359	.289	29	88	85	7
Eaton	Post-Break	68	.462	23	94	86	5
Cabrera	Pre-Break	363	.284	34	94	88	5
Cabrera	Post-Break	68	.511	32	83	83	7

Eaton's cure looks rather simple -- he's narrowed down his strikezone and is not chasing as many pitches. Additionally, he's making better contact within the strikezone and is not swinging and missing as often. Cabrera's case is not as simple. While he is chasing fewer pitches, he is making less contact within the strikezone and less overall contact, which has spiked his swinging-strike rate. That said, when he is making contact, he's finding safe grass for his batted balls to land on to.

The same duo that scored 80 runs in its first 81-85 games in the first half has already scored 27 runs in the first 15 games of the second half. As much of a professed Melk Man fan as I am, I'll put my chips on Eaton sustaining his second half success. His improvements are apparent in his skills whereas Cabrera's are a bit all over the place, making him less predictable. The lack of contact for Cabrera is especially worrisome given his career levels. As absurd as it sounds, his 14.2 K% this season is a career high, but it's gotten that high because of the efforts lately as he has three walks compared to 18 strikeouts in 68 plate appearances since the break. When a 12-percent K rate batter starts striking out 26 percent of the time, that dictates caution on your behalf.