Inside Yainer Diaz’s Lab: What Surprising Secrets Are Coming to Light?
These numbers are a testament to the fact that most hitters don’t change all that much. Their results might change if the sample size is small enough. The chase rate is self-explanatory and the highest on the Astros. In fact, it is amongst the highest in the league. I suppose we see some small improvement there so far, but 30 percent tends to be league average. With the walk rate going up league wide, that benchmark might need to be recalibrated. In other words, Diaz might actually come off looking worse.
The swing rates tend to hover around 50 percent league wide. Again, that might be lower with the ABS adjustments. Again, his rate is higher than anyone else on the team. However, the contact rates are excellent and especially so when you consider how few strikes (zone%) that he sees. He is swinging at bad pitches and putting them in play for the most part.
However, what is the quality of that contact? As we saw above it isn’t very good. Pitchers know they don’t have to throw him anything good, so they get him to chase their pitch. Fortunately for Diaz, he is talented enough to make contact, but it is not going to be quality contact. So, the area for growth for Diaz is as easy as it gets. Stop swinging. If he swing percentage went down to 55 percent it would be measurably better and if it went down to 50 percent it would be a revelation.
Putting it all together
It is hard for me to remain completely neutral when it comes to players like Diaz. The analytical mind has an almost allergic reaction to free swingers like Diaz. However, I have to acknowledge the advanced hit tool that it is there. No matter what we say, the future is unwritten. There is always the hope for improvement even if the underlying numbers don’t allow for much of that. The most likely result will be that Diaz will not be a regular catcher beyond this season. That is doubly true when we also look at his defense as we will see in another lab. He has time to fix this, but there is nothing in the current numbers to suggest that he will.
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