Big Christmas Comes Early and Airborne

Let’s get one thing straight off the top: If all the Guardians got out of Jhonkensy Noel was the nickname, he’d be worth the roster spot.

The heyday of baseball was the early- to mid-20th century, a period which overlapped with what I assume was a New Deal policy where the government issued everyone a catchy nickname on their 10th birthday. It was not a perfect time; we’re better off having left the likes of “Chief” and “Fat Freddie” in the past, and let’s not act like it was the hallmark of a clever generation that every left-handed pitcher was called “Lefty” and every player with blonde hair was called “Whitey.”

In 2024, I’d give a kidney for a Joltin’ Joe or a Splendid Splinter. It’s a minor miracle that, in a few years, I won’t be checking off Markus Betts or Gerald Posey on a Hall of Fame ballot.

But even our generation can hit a fastball down the middle. Let’s say you were confronted with a 250-pound ballplayer, whose last name is Noel, and who is endowed with the cheerful, avuncular bearing of a certain mythical toy distributor. No need to overthink things: Just call him “Big Christmas.”

And for the Cleveland Guardians, Christmas has come at the right time.

Through this weekend, the 23-year-old rookie was hitting .268/.331/.634, with 12 home runs in just 41 major league games. He’s been a godsend for a Cleveland ballclub that, despite having a superb bullpen and a couple of All-Star-caliber hitters, tends to have a bit of a shallow lineup that’s light on power.

(Naturally, between when I finished writing this piece and before it was published, the Guardians dropped both games of their doubleheader against the Royals on Monday, and Noel went 0-for-6 with two walks and four strikeouts. Cleveland’s AL Central lead is now down to just one game, while Big Christmas is still batting a robust .254/.326/.602 with a 156 wRC+. Sometimes you get the Red Ryder BB Gun. Sometimes you get a lump of coal.)

The Guardians usually have about an average offense on the whole, but their competition isn’t the entire league: This is a team that aims to make the playoffs. The Guardians are 16th and 17th, respectively, in wRC+ and SLG. But among the 12 teams currently in possession of a playoff position, they’re 11th and 12th in those two stats.

I’ve written repeatedly about how, when it comes to hitters, the Guardians have a type, so I won’t belabor the point here. What I will say is that while Cleveland’s approach to building an offense might be iconoclastic, it’s not necessarily self-defeating. The Guardians want to win, but not so badly that ownership is going to pay sticker price for veteran power. And power, particularly reliable power, is expensive.

Moreover, as much as baseball has converged strategically over the past 20 years, there are still multiple ways to skin a proverbial cat. Each team has its own core competencies, and I’m sympathetic to the argument that an imperfect strategy executed well is more effective than a theoretically perfect strategy executed poorly. If the Guardians think they’ll get more runs out of speed and contact than power, well, go for it.

With all that said, there is a way to get power on the cheap. It’s generally good to hit the ball hard no matter what direction it goes, but it’s especially good to hit the ball hard, in the air, to the pull side. That’s where home runs come from. And this is a simple enough concept that it can be taught to existing hitters. Particularly cheap, team-controlled hitters, i.e. Isaac Paredes during his Rays tenure.

Or Big Christmas.

Of Noel’s 12 home runs this season, 11 have been hit to left or left-center. In his brief major league career, his GB/FB ratio is 0.72, and his pull rate is 51.3%. The Large Festive Season is hitting 43.8% of his fly balls and liners to the pull side, which is in the 94th percentile among hitters with at least 120 plate appearances this season.

Hitting the ball where Noel hits it is how a big, strong guy like him gets the most out of his bigness and strongness. And it’s also how a guy with a strikeout rate of roughly 30% stays in Cleveland’s lineup. He is the antithesis of the stereotypical Guardians hitter. They’ve had big, right-handed Dominican sluggers before — specifically Franmil Reyes — but Reyes had a bias toward hitting the ball on the ground, and when he did put the ball in the air, it usually went to center or even the opposite field.

Again, you want to pull the ball in the air. In the 2020s, it looks the Guardians were at first indifferent to this reality, then just as pulled fly ball rate came into vogue, Cleveland went the other way (so to speak) and had Myles Straw spray weak grounders everywhere. This season, something’s different. Here’s Cleveland’s team-wide pull rate on fly balls and line drives over the past five seasons.

Now, Mammoth Holiday isn’t responsible for this on his own. I looked back through the past three seasons and found every position player who registered 120 plate appearances for a team (so a player who’s traded midseason could appear twice). That generated 400-odd players a season. Then I narrowed the list to players who had a GB/FB ratio of 0.9 or lower and an air pull rate of 33.3% or more.

In 2022, there were 70 such players, four of whom played for Cleveland; in ’23, 71 players, including two Guardians. This year, there are 67 players on the list in total, including four Guardians, including Noel.

That isn’t an upward trend unless you look at the players in question. In 2022, they were José Ramírez, Óscar Mercado, and two catchers: Luke Maile and Austin Hedges. I don’t think anyone who’s employed Hedges in the past five years cares much where he hits the ball. If he’s even holding the correct end of the bat, that’s a win. He’s there for defense and clubhouse vibes.

The two lift-and-pull Guardians in 2023 were Ramírez and Kole Calhoun. I’d completely forgotten that Calhoun played for the Guardians last year. And because the former Angel hit .217/.282/.376 in 43 games, I imagine Cleveland would envy my forgetfulness.

So in 2022 and ’23, the lift-and-pull guys were the team’s franchise player, one of the best all-around players on the planet, a couple backup catchers, and two forgettable corner outfielders.

Here are the four Guardians on the list this year: Ramírez, Noel, David Fry, and Bo Naylor. The superstar, the hot rookie, the breakout All-Star, and the catcher of the future. These are integral players, in other words. If nothing else, all four of them figure to start Game 1 of the ALDS if the current standings hold.

So the Guardians seem to be modernizing, thanks in part to Il Natale Grande.