3 Chicago Cubs whose metrics indicate a hot streak is on the horizon

2. Christopher Morel

Christopher Morel is the king of expected stats, but they are not panning out how they should be. During the season, he has struggled to keep his batting average above .200, but he also leads the team in home runs with 18. He is a player who always appears to be one step away from reaching his potential at the major league level. His expected stats, plus stats that show potential misfortune, are eye-opening:

Morel 2024:

BABIP: .219
Batted balls: 260
Hard hit rate: 44%
BA: .199, xBA: .247
Slug: .375, xSlug: .457
wOBA: .300, xwOBA: .349

Of the 260 balls that Morel has put in play, a whopping 44.2% of them have been of the hard-hit variety or at least carry an exit velocity of 95 mph or greater off the bat. Take a look at this article on sabermetrics written last year by Chris Clegg, who beautifully breaks down different advanced stats.

"In 2023, hard-hit batted balls produced a leaguewide .506 batting average, a 1.008 slugging percentage, and a .625 wOBA. On the flip side, batted balls hit below 95 miles per hour produced a leaguewide .221 batting average, a .261 slugging percentage, and a .207 wOBA. "

Chris Clegg

To put it bluntly, Morel should be seeing more success. At almost 50% of batted balls being hard hit, which last year carried a batting average of around .506 according to Chris' piece above, that should mathematically translate to an overall better batting average than sub .200, and the well below average BABIP is a further indication of that.

Another improvement has been cutting his strikeout percentage by nearly 7% from just a year ago, but his batting average on balls in play in 2024 is 84 points lower than a season ago. That indicates that things should be much better for him, but he hasn't seen the results. Those results will come, and I expect another offensive outbreak from him, much like the one I predicted right before he hit four homers in the next seven games.