In 2016, things feel different. Despite his second-half slump, there’s a different aura around Bogaerts when he comes to the plate, and there’s more reason to feel confident that he will come up big. At least that’s true in the mind of this egotistical writer who believes everyone shares even his most meaningless opinions. Of course, much of that confidence is built off what Bogaerts did in the first half of the season when he was inserting himself into early MVP conversations.

In actuality, his overall offensive value hasn’t been much different from the 2015 season that I was relatively down on compared to the normal Red Sox fan. Through Tuesday’s action, Bogaerts has a .265 TAv on the season. He finished last season with a .266 mark. Heading over to Baseball-Reference, his OPS+ is identical to where it finished last year. On Fangraphs, his wRC+ this year is 113 compared to 109 last year.

Part of the reason Bogaerts’ year feels so much better is that he’s doing it in a more sustainable fashion, with more walks and power than he showed in 2015. However, it’s also because we are humans and thus get sucked in by first impressions. The fact is after his great start to the season Bogaerts has fallen off hard in the second half, giving him another inconsistent year. What now must be asked is how worrisome is this slump, and is he starting to work himself out of it?

Although Bogaerts is still relatively young, we have enough time watching him to know that when he’s going bad, he’s striking out a lot.

In reality, the struggles began in August. I’m sure we could pin down a more exact date, but any way we slice it will involve arbitrary endpoints and choosing the start of a calendar month makes my job a lot easier. That’s what really matters. Anyway, Bogaerts was atrocious in August. In 124 plate appearances in the month, he hit just .219/.274/.325. By wRC+, he was the 13th worst qualified hitter in the month among all major-league hitters. That is not ideal. Those struggles have even carried through much of September. To wit, through his first 13 games of the month, he hit just .196/.274/.321.

So, what’s changed from his hot first half to his lackluster second half?

As far as I can tell, there are two major differences in the shortstop’s offensive profile during his struggles. The first is that he’s simply striking out more. After keeping a strikeout rate that stayed remarkably consistent around 15 percent throughout the first half on a month-to-month basis, the rate rose to 21 percent in August and has remained that high in September. Although Bogaerts is still relatively young, we have enough time watching him to know that when he’s going bad, he’s striking out a lot.

On top of that, he seems to be suffering from some BABIP blues. After spending the first half with well-above average production on balls in play, and July with roughly average production, August and September have seen Bogaerts’ BABIP crash to the .260 range.

So, let’s look a little deeper and try to figure out just why the hell Bogaerts has turned back into this kind of hitter. We’ll start with the strikeouts, because that’s the thing I listed first, so why not? Remember when I said that we’ve seen enough of the young shortstop to be able to identify trends when he’s struggling? Well, guess what pitches he’s struggling against right now. Go ahead, I’ll wait. Ready? No? Then stop reading until you’re ready, you idiot.

The pitch type Bogaerts is struggling against right now is unsurprisingly the breaking ball. Per Brooks Baseball, his whiff rate is way up against curveballs since the start of August, and he’s also seen a significant rise versus sliders, sinkers and splitters, too. Basically, if the pitch breaks, Bogaerts is having some issues against it right now and particularly in August.

The BABIP issues are a little more confusing, but a little digging makes it easier to understand. To start with, I will acknowledge the luck factor. While we’re well beyond the point of using BABIP strictly as a luck metric, I’m willing to admit there is probably some bad luck involved, just like there was probably some good luck involved with his early season marks. There has to be something more, though. People are starting to look at exit velocity more and more as a mark of quality contact, and thus a predictor for BABIP. In Bogaerts’ case, it doesn’t really work.

There is certainly a huge dip against offspeed pitches in August, but he doesn’t see enough offspeed pitches for that to entirely explain the dip in BABIP. Instead, where he’s hitting the ball appears to be the bigger issue. Bogaerts thrived on a high BABIP in 2015, and a huge reason was that he was willing to slap the ball all over the field. This was a major reason he was able to get over his breaking ball issues. He did that for much of the first half — while also adding power — but lately his opposite field percentage has gone way down, per Fangraphs. Taking more pitches the other way, particularly tough breaking balls, will solve both of his issues.

The good news is that he appears to be coming out of this slump at the perfect time for the Red Sox. He’s currently in the midst of a five-game stretch with a 1.095 OPS and four extra base hits. More importantly, things are trending in a better direction in September. His whiff rate against breaking pitches is normalizing, as you can see in the picture above. Plus, Fangraphs’ batted ball data indicates he’s also going the other way more.

Bogaerts is already an above-average hitter while playing at a position that doesn’t have many of those. He’s already a fantastic player. The scary part is that he could take another step forward, which is obvious just by watching him. We’ve seen him take that step for months at a time; the final step is just finding that consistency over a full season. I can’t wait to see him do it in 2017.

Photo by Mike Dinovo/USA Today Sports Images

Betts put together an incredibly impressive 2015 that made his floor look almost impossibly high for someone his age. For me, though, the change was more about what Bogaerts did in 2015. He was good last year — even I would not deny that — but he wasn’t quite what we expected.

That’s changing this year, and oh my goodness, this version of Bogaerts is super scary for his opponents. In the piece I linked to above, there were two broad and important issues with his 2015 campaign. He showed a lack of patience and a lack of power. We’ll start with the patience, because it’s first alphabetically and Alpha-Bits cereal is a real tasty snack. Last season, Bogaerts did manage a .355 OBP, which is clearly a good thing. However, it came on the back of a .320 batting average. His patience had waned incredibly, and he finished the season with a walk rate just under five percent.

This year, he’s bringing back some of that patience and discipline with a 7.6 percent walk rate over his first 172 plate appearances. Put another way, he’s already reached 40.6 percent of 2015’s walk total in 26.2 percent of the plate appearances. That seems good.

Bogaerts’ swing rate has stayed almost exactly the same as it was last year on pitches that come through the zone, but it has fallen significantly on pitches out of the zone.

If you read that piece I wrote back in September, I vaguely stated that he needed to find a happy medium between being too patient and too aggressive. It sure looks like he’s found that. As of this writing, his swing rate is almost exactly in the middle of where it was in 2014 (when he was super patient) and in 2015 (when he was weirdly aggressive, at least relative to his track record).

That on it’s own isn’t always a good thing, however. We want Bogaerts swinging at good pitches to hit; we just don’t want him taking hacks at pitches falling out of the zone. As you can probably tell by the complimentary tone of this entire article, that is exactly what Bogaerts is doing. His swing rate has stayed almost exactly the same as it was last year on pitches that come through the zone, but it has fallen significantly on pitches out of the zone.

The biggest reason for this appears to be improved pitch recognition. Intuitively, we know that fastballs are the easiest pitches to hit and also the offerings that end up in the zone at the highest rate. On the other hand, breaking balls and offspeed pitches are tough to barrel up and often break out of the zone (at least if the pitcher is executing his plan.)

Well, so far in 2016, Bogaerts is laying off the offspeed and breaking stuff, while jumping on fastballs a little more often.

All this helps that walk rate, of course. It also helps the other part of his offensive game that needed to improve: his power. This was supposed to be Bogaerts’ calling card when he reached the majors, but we’ve yet to see it on a consistent basis at the highest level. His 35 doubles last season were certainly encouraging, but the home runs simply weren’t there. That’s what leads to a .101 ISO that puts a player on the same power tier as guys like Cameron Maybin and Brandon Phillips. This year, he’s continuing to hit the doubles while also sprinkling in four home runs (57.1 percent of last year’s total), culminating in a much more encouraging .166 ISO.

Some of it is likely luck reversal. Bogaerts’ 5.5 percent HR/FB ratio last year was too low, but as always, it’s not quite that simple. He’s hitting the ball a lot farther this year, which helps more of those fly balls leave the yard. To wit, his average fly ball in 2016, per Baseball Heat Maps, is 287 feet. Last year, it was 268 feet.

A big reason for that is the improved pitch selection outlined above. In addition to that, he’s pulling the ball a lot more often this year than last. In 2016, Bogaerts has pulled 40 percent of his batted balls, according to FanGraphs, with the other 60 percent being evenly split between center and right field. We know from watching many, many baseball players hit baseballs that power is enhanced by pulling the ball. Last season, Bogaerts distributed the ball across all three fields evenly, per FanGraphs. That approach helped with his BABIP ability, but it hurt his overall power production.

Now, here’s the really scary part for Red Sox opponents. Bogaerts improving in these two key areas is great! The expectation — at least from me — was that this improvement would come with regression in other areas. Instead, that BABIP ability I mentioned a few seconds ago hasn’t gone away. As of this writing, he’s the proud owner of a .389 BABIP in 2016. That’s unlikely to last all season, but we’re also talking about a guy with a .375 BABIP over a year-plus-six-weeks stretch. It’s not at all unreasonable to expect him to be near the top of the BABIP leaderboard for years to come with a true-talent ability in the .335-.350 range. Oh yeah, and Bogaerts plays a legitimately solid shortstop and has turned into a near-elite base runner, too.

That Betts/Bogaerts conversation has always been more entertainment than anything else. They are both Red Sox, and should be for a long time, and that is rad as hell imo. With that said, I wavered on my stance for a little while, but I’m back fully on the Xander Train. That has nothing to do with Betts’ relatively slow start, and everything to do with some more impressive adjustments from Bogaerts. He’s now showing the potential to be a player who can put up .300/.400/.500 seasons in his prime while playing above-average shortstop. Even better is that ability he’s shown to grow each and every year. It’s a really fun time to be a Red Sox fan.

Photo by Winslow Towson/USA Today Sports Images

Top Plays (WPA): May the Mookie Betts/Xander Bogaerts debate never end! In the second inning, Bogaerts clubbed a three-run homer to give the Sox a 6-3 lead, adding a cool 23.6 percentage points to Boston’s win probability. Not to be outdone, Betts struck his own big blow later in the game, tripling in the seventh inning to drive in Ryan “Mike Piazza” Hanigan, pushing the Sox’ lead to what would end up as the final score of 10-9. For this, he also added 23.6 percentage points to Boston’s win probability. That’s ridiculous. These two are good, man.

Bottom Play (WPA): Sean O’Sullivan is, to be fair without being mean, less good. The Sox decided to roll with house money and send him out there a second time after a successful enough first start, and they were lucky not to get burned. To wit, the three-run blast Luis Valbuena clubbed in the second inning, turning a 2-0 Sox advantage into a 3-2 Astros lead, was Houston’s biggest hit of the day. O’Sullivan gave up two more runs before being pulled in the fifth, after which the Sox sent their SO’S to the moon. He was designated for assignment at game’s end.

Key Moment: I’m going to jump straight to the end and say Craig Kimbrel’s shutdown inning was the biggest moment of the day, if only because I don’t think a single Red Sox fan could stomach another inning of this series. I mean, the series was fun and all, but enough was enough: Game 7 of Raptors/Heat was coming to a close at the very same time, and we needed to get prepared for our elaborate home cosplay Game of Thrones rituals (i.e., putting on pajamas). Kimbrel gave us the time we needed in a 1-2-3 ninth. It was sweet.

Also, Joe West tossed Brock Holt for arguing balls and strikes, because Joe West is ridiculous.

Trend to Watch: Let’s continue to roll with Jackie Bradley Jr.’s hitting streak, which reached 21 games when he singled in the bottom of the fifth. It’s (still) the longest active streak in the majors, and the longest by anyone this season. Circle your calendars:

Jackie Bradley, Jr. still on pace to break Joe DiMaggio’s record on June 25 in Texas.

— Tim Britton (@TimBritton) May 15, 2016

Up Next: The Red Sox head to Kansas City, Missouri, to face the defending champs in three-game set. Rick Porcello toes the rubber for Boston, while noted firecracker Yordano Ventura will sling it for the Royals. The last time the Royals won the World Series, the Sox made it the next year, only to fall to the Mets — which is an early possibility for this year’s fall classic. Too soon? Nah. If the Royals can be champs, we can all dare to dream.

Photo by Bob DeChiara/USA Today Sports Images