Can Rowdy Tellez Get Extra By Swinging Much less?

Rowdy Tellez has stopped swinging. Not completely; he’s tied for ninth within the National League with 12 dwelling runs and twentieth with a .494 slugging share. But this yr, the Brewers slugger has reduce at simply 35.3% of all pitches, the second-lowest fee in baseball after the famously picky Juan Soto. It’s uncharacteristic of Tellez, representing an eight-point drop from final yr and a 13.2-point drop from his 2021 marketing campaign. The new method has accomplished wonders for his chase fee: his O-Swing%, which was 35.2% in 2021 and 31.0% in 2022, is now thirty third within the majors at 25.9%. And whereas he’s by no means been a really impatient hitter, slicing again on swings at unhealthy pitches has meant a rising stroll fee, which isn’t fairly Soto-esque at 12.0% however is a marked enchancment from his 7.1% fee two years in the past. That alone will get you on base an additional 30 or so occasions over a full season.

Tellez began to vary his method final yr, swinging at fewer and fewer pitches than he had by means of the primary three-plus seasons of his profession. For most of his time in Toronto, he supplied at someplace between 48% and 50% of pitches he noticed, however proper across the time he was dealt to Milwaukee in 2021, he bought a good bit extra aggressive with pitches over the plate, slicing at 73.9% of strikes and simply 34.5% of pitches exterior the zone. Since then, the aggression on the plate has given strategy to radical ranges of endurance:

Now, cease me if you happen to can guess what the issue with by no means swinging the bat is: he’s taking a lot extra strikes. While everybody else within the league is swinging at a majority of the pitches they see within the zone, Tellez is providing at simply 47.4%, almost seven factors decrease than any of his contemporaries. If he retains this up, he’ll be the primary qualifier to swing at lower than half of pitches within the zone since David Fletcher in 2019 and ’20. In the 22 seasons of our Z-Swing% knowledge, his 47.4% fee could be second-lowest over a full season, beating solely Brett Gardner’s 44.8% in 2010.

As a outcome, over one out of each 4 pitches Tellez sees will get referred to as for a strike, a fee no one has matched over a full season since Fletcher. He’s benefitting from improved stroll charges, however his strikeout fee, too, has gone up, from 20.2% final yr to 23.9% in 2023. Despite a low swinging-strike fee, his CSW% — the speed of pitches that find yourself as referred to as or swinging strikes — is seventh-highest within the majors at 32.4%.

The distinction between affected person hitters that produce like Soto or Mookie Betts and those who don’t is elite recognition of the strike zone and pitch choice. Tellez doesn’t seem to have that in sturdy sufficient order to drive each his stroll fee and strikeout fee down. So why isn’t he swinging? Let’s take a better have a look at his 2022, utilizing Statcast’s swing-take profile:

Last yr, Tellez generated -14.4 runs of worth on swings in comparison with 22.9 runs on taken pitches, good for a web optimistic run worth of 8.5. A whole lot of this disparity was made up the place we’d count on it: within the chase and waste zones, the place Tellez had a bonus of 32 runs on takes in comparison with -12 on swings. But he additionally bought beat badly on swings within the shadow zone, to the tune of -11 runs in comparison with +3 on takes. Even if we restrict his shadow swings to those who Gameday discovered would have been strikes, Tellez was effectively within the destructive at -8; because of unhealthy contact, that’s extra harm on a per-pitch foundation swinging at that subset of strikes than he did taking them. Only over the guts of the plate was he rewarded for swinging.

Last week, sabermetric pioneer and MLB knowledge architect Tom Tango fired off a number of tweets musing about simply how troublesome it’s to be a net-positive hitter within the shadow zone, noting that simply seven of 479 hitters since 2020 have managed to contribute positively on all pitches there. Of the 466 hitters with at the least 250 takes within the shadow zone in that point, 205 have net-positive run values on these pitches, Tellez amongst them. Of the 491 with at the least 250 swings at shadow pitches, simply seven had been within the black. In 2022, taken pitches on the sting of the zone had been about impartial total, the balls and strikes roughly night out. Swung-at pitches on the sting of the zone had been vastly advantageous for these throwing them, giving pitchers round three runs per 100 pitches.

So what good does all this attempting to hit the ball do? Short of the flexibility to tell apart between strikes and balls on the sting at an elite stage, a participant would possibly see all this proof and goal to swing solely at pitches within the coronary heart of the zone — the one space through which Tellez’s swings, like many others, have had any broad success.

If that is Tellez’s method, he’s accomplished effectively to put off pitches within the waste zone (down from 6% swings in 2022 to 4% in 2023), chase zone (23% to 19%), and most of all of the shadow zone (51% to 38%); he’s additionally swinging at solely 54% over the guts in comparison with 62% final yr. Extreme because it appears, this can be near a good commerce; a couple of third of the way in which by means of, he’s been in a position to restrict the harm on swings to -3.4 runs and accumulate 6.3 runs on takes, good for two.9 runs total. This quantities to .36 runs per 100 pitches, even with final yr.

Pitchers appear to be taking some discover, although, and so they’re coming into the zone at a 43.6% fee, extra often than ever in Tellez’s profession, and getting the benefit early extra typically with a 59.2% first-pitch strike fee, up over two factors from final yr. But this can be of much less concern to Tellez than it might be to a different hitter. Last yr, he was 40% higher than league common by OPS after a first-pitch strike and 22% higher behind within the depend on the whole. This yr to this point, he’s 62% higher than league common after falling behind 0–1 and 24% higher when the pitcher has the benefit. That’s to not say he’s a greater hitter in these eventualities than when he’s forward, however he doesn’t appear to pay fairly the identical worth for falling behind as some hitters do. Still, the extra Tellez invitations pitchers into the zone with out punishing them for it, the extra harmful this method is.

It is a radical experiment to chop your swing fee by eight share factors, and precisely what it means for Tellez stays to be seen. So far, he’s getting on base extra, however whereas his batting common and slugging share have additionally jumped up, his batted-ball peripherals counsel that is likely to be because of some BABIP magic; he’s overperforming his anticipated stats after underperforming them within the final two seasons. His endurance hasn’t led to extra favorable pitches to hit; he isn’t hitting the ball as laborious neither is he getting it within the air (the place power-hitting first basemen make their cash) as typically as he did final yr regardless of clearing the fence 12 occasions. For now, he seems to be about as helpful as he was final yr, if not a bit of extra so — a profound shift touchdown a participant in an analogous spot. But there’s time left for Tellez to search out that glad medium that may permit him to maintain his stroll fee up with out letting too many potential homers slip by him. Finding that improved steadiness might yield a severe return for the hassle.

All stats as of the tip of play on May 31.