Giants' Bailey searching for better offensive, defensive balance

SAN FRANCISCO -- Baseball Savant has all of the advanced statistics you could ever want for a player, but the website has also done a brilliant job of distilling the numbers for fans who might want to determine how a hitter or pitcher is doing with just one glance. At the top of every page is a player's "percentile rankings," showing how he compares to others in stats like expected batting average, hard-hit percentage and sprint speed. Red bars are good and blue bars are bad, and the darker the shade is, the better or worse you're doing. 

Through the first two months of the season, it might be a Giants regular who has the most fascinating Savant page. 

Patrick Bailey's fielding categories are all dark red, and he's in the 100th percentile in fielding run value. But he's also in the second percentile in batting run value. The columns for things like expected batting average, strikeout rate and hard-hit percentage are a dark shade of blue, indicating "cold" production at the plate. 

Simply put, Bailey might be the best defender in baseball. There also are few who have gotten off to a slower start at the plate. 

The dichotomy has rarely been more apparent than in Tuesday night's 3-2 win over the Kansas City Royals. Bailey went 0-for-4, but the Giants might not win that game if he's not behind the plate. In addition to his usual framing and guidance for one of the best pitching staffs in baseball, Bailey threw a pair of runners out at second base. 

Maikel Garcia was cut down early, and with the Giants holding a one-run lead in the eighth, Bailey threw out Royals star Bobby Witt Jr. That was an example of two of the game's greatest individual skills battling for superiority. Witt was in the 100th percentile in Sprint Speed. Bailey was in the 100th percentile in Pop Time, and he got out of the crouch in an elite 1.83 seconds to get the throw down to second.

The first run of that game came after a sequence during which Hayden Birdsong threw away a pickoff attempt and then made a wild pitch. Afterward, he laughed and said he had learned a valuable lesson.

"I'm dumb for picking off, honestly," he said. "I have no reason to pick off when he's back there. There's no reason, because he's just going to throw somebody out at second."

That faith is exactly what Buster Posey was looking for when he first met with Bailey this spring. He told his fellow catcher that the only thing that mattered was his ability to handle and lead the pitching staff, and while Bailey's offensive numbers are concerning, the Giants put tremendous value on his overall output. 

Bob Melvin is leaning heavily on those defensive traits. Melvin, himself a former catcher, has started Bailey in 35 of 50 games and brought him off the bench eight other times. Managers generally prefer to give their catcher a full day off when possible, but Bailey often comes in late as a defensive replacement when Sam Huff starts. He leads the majors with 43 games caught, and the Giants know that even the threat of him throwing someone out can make a difference late in close games.

"First and foremost, we look at the catcher's position as a guy that manages the staff and plays defense, and he's done that beautifully," Melvin said Thursday. "It's even more so of a priority with Buster here -- it's managing the staff and doing what he does defensively."

Bailey is well on his way to becoming the first Giants catcher to win two Gold Glove Awards, but that doesn't make it much easier to sleep on a night like Tuesday. The next morning, he talked about how he knows there's much more to give. 

"It definitely helps but I'm not swinging the bat the way I'm capable of," he said. "I'm working hard to get back to myself and get my swing back and just being confident and competing out there. Obviously when we're winning it makes it easier to go through the struggles, but that being said, I need to be better at the plate. 

"At the end of the day, I'm trying to do the best I can to help the team win, and obviously I understand what I do behind the plate can really influence that."

A few hours later, Bailey hit his first homer since Sept. 24, but he still headed out on the road trip with a .183 batting average and .507 OPS. His power production started to dip in the second half last year, and this season he is slugging just .270. His strikeout rate is up above 30 percent, and when he does make contact, he far too often is hitting non-threatening fly balls. 

Bailey's hard-hit percentage is down nearly 10 percent year over year, but his launch angle is up eight percent. He leads the majors in balls hit up the middle -- 52.9 percent -- which ordinarily is a positive for hitters. But using the biggest part of the field isn't as effective when you're not hitting line drives. Bailey is second in the majors in fly ball percentage and second in fly balls to center field, specifically. At Oracle Park, that's particularly challenging. 

Every day, work is being put in to iron out that approach. When Bailey was succeeding in the first half of last year, he was pulling the ball about 40 percent of the time, but his timing has been off this year. That number has nearly been cut in half. 

"The swings are fine right now. I think for me, it's probably still just a timing thing, a confidence thing," he said. "You forget the success you've had in the big leagues when you're going through it and struggling. I've just got to get back to believing in the swing and the talent. I've had really, really successful months left-handed and right-handed in the big leagues. I know it's in there and I'm working my butt off to try and get back there."

That effort is complicated by the fact that Bailey has more on his plate than any other Giant. In addition to playing the most difficult defensive position, he's the roster's only switch-hitter, giving him two swings to maintain, not one. There were times in the minors when he considered hitting only left-handed, but the Giants value the flexibility that comes with doing both, and Bailey has at times in the big leagues been better from the right side. 

Bailey said the added daily tasks aren't a reason for his early struggles. 

"At the end of the day, I've got to go out there and produce and do what I need to do before games to get the swings right and not let anything slack defensively," he said. "There's no excuse to have a .400 something OPS. I'm better than that and I think as time goes it'll get better and we'll get back to where we want to be."

Melvin moved Willy Adames down the order when he slumped through April, and he has found extra days off for LaMonte Wade Jr., who, like Bailey, has hit too many soft fly balls early on. But there is nothing to do behind the plate but be patient and hope for more days like Wednesday. 

Bailey's defense makes an impact every time he's in the lineup, and Melvin is confident the rest of the game will come around. For a player who has tried to take a more confident approach to the plate, perhaps it will be as simple as finally seeing a ball clear the wall. 

"He's going to hit," Melvin said. "I've seen him be a good hitter before and I think the challenging part is the mental part, which I think probably was an issue last year in the second half. Everybody has to fight through those things at some point in time in their career."

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