Cedric Mullins got off to a relatively slow start as a Tampa Bay Ray and some fans were concerned he’d never recover. However, a strong stretch in May suggests Mullins is still largely the same player he has been throughout his career.
Let’s compare Mullins’s profile for his Major League career through 2025 with what he’s showing so far this season. Zone minus out-of-zone swing rate is a good measurement for swing decisions, contact rate reflects bat-to-ball skills, EV90 is the industry standard for power, and flyball plus line drive rate helps show how often a player is getting the ball in the air at optimal launch angles:
The underlying key performance indicators show Mullins is the same player as he has always been. One thing to note here is that 154 plate appearances is not nearly enough of a sample for batted ball angles to stabilize, so we can expect that to continue to decrease to his career norm. This is actually a positive regression candidate; Mullins isn’t a true power hitter, so turning some of those fly balls into line drives would likely improve his overall offensive output.
The biggest difference for the turnaround in Mullins’s production is BABIP luck. This can be considered a lazy way to analyze a player, but in this case it’s appropriate. Mullins had a .139 BABIP through April but is now running a .343 BABIP in May. Both BABIP marks – and the corresponding swings in wRC+ – are almost certainly unsustainable. Based on his profile, Mullins is not going to be 87% worse than league average, nor will he continue to be 21% better than league average. He’s likely to land around his career average of 102 wRC+ and be a roughly league average hitter. He may end up a bit higher than that as he’s almost exclusively being used as a strong-side platoon player at this stage of his career.
Roughly league average offensive production with above average base running and defense in centerfield is a valuable player to have on a roster with playoff aspirations. Mullins is also valuable in the clubhouse as a veteran leader and mentor. As long as he stays healthy, there’s little in the underlying data to suggest meaningful concern going forward.
