Alex Bregman is off to a slow start in 2026, compared to a strong season just a year ago.
There might be a couple things you could point to as drivers, namely a higher Groundball rate as the one that jumps out to me. But otherwise the profile as a whole looks roughly similar. He has been a guy that leans to consistent optimal angles over impact quality to get to his production. Through May 1st, he once again has a good Average Launch Angle and is getting to at least a 14 degree Attack Angle on 43.7% of his balls in play, roughly what we see from an 86th percentile performer in this metric (he was 80th percentile a year ago). But attack angle does not always necessarily mean resulting in a good combination of Launch Angle and Exit Velocity, so I wondered whether despite being in a good spot from a process perspective, if his ideal attack angles just aren’t getting the same outcomes as we’ve seen in the past from him.
I was initially interested in a simple year vs year comparison for Bregman’s performance on batted balls with an attack angle at or above the 14 degree mark. Sure enough, even the ideal attack angles have been underperforming what we’ve seen previously. But after splitting results by month, it hasn’t been a sharp dip from last season to this season, but rather a gradual decline that started at the beginning of last year.
This is helpful in being able to break it down a bit further, to really compare when it was going good for Bregman versus when it hasn’t been. For example, comparing last year’s Month/April period (really good) to this year’s (really bad), the ideal attack angles in 2025 were seeing a more optimal launch angle distribution, higher volume of hard-hit exit velocities, and better expected outcomes.
Clearly the outcomes have not been as good this year, but why? When comparing those same two months, we are seeing a bit of a change in where he his is making contact for the ideal attack angles.
2025 showed some stronger relationships between pitch height and contact depth, where he was letting the ball travel further for higher pitches. Also a relationship between contact depth and attack angle, with higher attack angles (green-ish dots) on contact further out front. In 2026, these relationships don’t appear to be as strong, and we can validate this visual with the numbers.
Contact Depth - Standard Dev.
- March/April 2025: 4.63
- March/April 2026: 4.24
Attack Angle x Contact Depth
- March/April 2025: r = 0.49
- March/April 2026: r = 0.44
Pitch Height x Contact Depth
- March/April 2025: r = -0.43
- March/April 2026: r = -0.34
Because we know that, in the aggregate, the performance outcomes between these two periods are very different, I think we can attribute some meaning to the distribution of where these points are. In 2026, his contact seems to be more centralized around a consistent contact point, rather than being dependent on where the pitch is thrown. He’s still getting to ideal attack angles at a high rate, but not all ideal attack angles are created equal. He’s seemingly only able to do so at a specific point of contact depth, but potentially one where, based on the other qualities of his swing (sequencing, rotational acceleration, etc.), it’s not allowing him to get in a position to drive the ball effectively by the time he gets to contact.
Whereas in 2025, I think there might be something to be said about an element of swing adaptability or later commit times when he is getting ideal attack angles at different points of contact depth and different pitch locations. Making contact in ways that jelled better with how his swing worked. A way his movement quality was different than it might be now.
*Data through May 1 2026*