Can Seiya Suzuki Dig Himself Out Of 2023 Slump?

Chicago Cubs right-fielder, Seiya Suzuki, has been struggling at the plate as of late. What can he do to heat up his bat?

Seiya Suzuki of the Chicago Cubs has been regrettably poor in the batters box for the past couple of months. Suzuki has been pulled out of the every day lineup due to his struggles at the plate, only being inserted against left-handed pitching. The second-year big leaguer has been slashing a solid .269/.325/.407 against southpaws in 108 at-bats this year.

Seiya Suzuki’s performance against right-handers sees a noticeable drop-off, with a decrease of twenty percentage points in batting average to .249 with negligible changes in on-base and slugging percentages. This wouldn’t necessarily be head-scratching differences until you observe Suzuki’s month to month splits.

Opening Day To End Of May

Seiya Suzuki started off the first month of 2023 decently, concluding the month of April with .254/.333/.373 splits but not much can be surmised in fifteen games of baseball. The former Hiroshima Toyo Carp was dealing with a strained oblique in Spring Training and missed some time prior to the start of the season so any struggles early on could likely be attributed to recovering from the injury.

Suzuki had an excellent month of May however. The right-fielder was batting an exemplary .319 with an OPS of .977 while hitting five home-runs with thirteen RBI’s in 91 at-bats in the month. That is All-Star level production despite the underwhelming power numbers. The Cubs of course could live with that level of hitting but Suzuki did not sustain that beyond May.

No Boon In June

The Japanese slugger saw a concerningly steep drop-off in hitting splits in the month of June. Seiya Suzuki slashed an abysmal .177/.247/.228 in twenty games, making Mario Mendoza look like Rod Carew. There wasn’t a rise in strikeouts in this month but he walked significantly less. There are some trends year over year that may be contributing to Suzuki’s decline in performance at the plate.

Suzuki’s batting profile seems to indicate a few potential issues with the outfielders approach at the plate per Baseball Savant. There is just under a 10% increase in Suzuki’s pull percentage from last year to this year and a 13% decrease in contact to the opposite field.

Seiya Suzuki seems to potentially be deliberately trying to pull the ball more, presumably for more gaudy power numbers but this may be having the opposite effect. The right-fielder needs to be more focused on letting the ball come through further into the zone to force better contact especially with the barrel and not worry too much about home-runs.

Suzuki’s weak contact percentage has increased by 1.5% and his barrel rate has dropped around 2% since last year. This is likely a result of swinging slightly early to again try to pull the ball and making weaker contact in the process leading to a higher amount of ground-balls and fly-outs.

July & Beyond

Seiya Suzuki bounced back in July in relation to his disastrous June but the bar wasn’t set all that high to top that. The Cubs tried to let him figure it out but a .240/.310/.350 slash line in the month was not enough to overcome the career resurgence of Mike Tauchman. Tauchman spent the 2022 season in the KBO playing for the Hanwha Eagles then signed with the Cubs in the offseason on a minor-league deal.

The sixth-year veteran is currently slashing .278/.374/.430 this season and hitting significantly better against right-handing pitching in comparison to Suzuki. Tauchman boasts thirty percentage points higher on his batting average (.280) than Suzuki against righties while playing the same position in the outfield. The Illinois product is hitting well above .300 in the first two weeks of August and has been a vital piece to the Cubs making a playoff push instead of selling at the trade deadline.

Unfortunately, Seiya Suzuki will likely be utilized mostly against left-handed pitching for the rest of the season and may see spot starts here and there against right-handers depending on how Cubs manager David Ross wants to shuffle the lineup around to rest his starters.

Suzuki was signed by the Cubs in the 2022 off-season with the expectation that the outfielder would bring a superb power bat to the team. The Arakawa native slugged 25 home-runs and 75 RBI’s or more in six seasons in Japan including his best year in 2021 where Suzuki hit 38 home run’s with 88 RBI’s prior to inking a contract with the Cubs.

Seiya Suzuki is in the second year of a five-year 85 million dollar deal so it would be premature for the Cubs to give up on him especially when this season hasn’t comparatively been much worse than 2022. Tauchman will potentially garner interest in free-agency from other teams which will give Suzuki another shot next year to prove this season was merely a fluke. The trends though in his hitting tendencies draw some cause for concern and hopefully the Cubs right-fielder can work through them in the off-season if not sooner.