The best OF defender the Braves have had since Andruw has crossed the 100 PA mark, so let's see what's up.
Overall Slash Line:
101 PAs, .233/.307/.356 (.663 OPS, .122 ISO), 76 wRC+, 0.0 WAR
What's Not Real:
Unfortunately, not much. The best we can do is look at things we hope aren't real because they are so out of whack with what we've usually seen from Ender since he became a regular in 2015.
The first place to look is the .284 BABIP being way below his .320 career mark, and even more below the ~.330 mark he established from 2015-2017. It's easy to say he is due for positive regression, but his 47.8% Pull% (34.6% career) suggests he is not spraying the ball around like a slap hitter needs to be in order to produce a .320+ BABIP, and his 58.5% GB rate is telling us what we all see...weak grounders to the right side.
We have to hope that this chart:
https://www.fangraphs.com/graphs.asp...=single>1=15
and this chart:
https://www.fangraphs.com/graphs.asp...15&dStatArray=
suggest Ender's early season pull happy approach resulting in weak grounders to the right side is being corrected, and he will go back to being the low power slap hitter who sprays the ball around enough to be an average-ish offensive performer.
We also know the 18.2% HR/FB rate isn't going to continue, but those 2 HRs aren't boosting his line to something that's fooling anyone anyways.
What Is Real:
Perhaps everything, but we can hold out hope the batted ball profile is fixable.
Some things seem fine. He is following the team-wide trend of posting his highest BB rate of his career at 8.9%. The LD rate is sitting at a perfectly reasonable 24.6%.
Other things seem...less fine. His average FB/LD exit velocity is down to 85.0 from his usual 87-88. His K rate has jumped to 21.8%, and this chart doesn't allow even the most optimistic fan to see a downward trend:
https://www.fangraphs.com/graphs.asp...15&dStatArray=
Moving Forward:
In short, 2019 doesn't look good for Ender. The hope is that whatever is causing him to pull weak grounders to the right side at an alarming rate is also responsible for the K rate, and is a correctable problem. Perhaps a hidden injury? I've seen him do the "stay inside the ball" warm up swing lately, so he's obviously conscious of the issue.
The flip side is declining bat speed and/or reaction time could be causing him to be a guess hitter that is out front when he guesses wrong, and getting beat by hard stuff. There's not enough data to make any sort of conclusion along those lines, so we just have to wait and see.
At least the Braves are finally limiting his exposure to LHP, which needed to happen even if he were performing offensively as we expect.
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