Julio Rodríguez is here to hit
Julio is on the attack this year, swinging at first pitch strikes more than ever—and making better contact when he does
Last week, Julio Rodríguez went through a seven-game stretch without striking out, more than double the second-longest such stretch of his career. And even before that streak started, Julio was already running the lowest strikeout rate of his career. For several years, we’ve wondered what parts of the stratosphere Julio might reach if he just lowered his strikeout rate. We’re seeing it, and the result is an xwOBA of .360,* which would indeed be a career best by a meaningful margin. A .256 BABIP—an implausibly low number for someone who both hits the ball hard and runs fast—is keeping us from seeing the results yet, but there’s a lot of promise in what Julio is doing right now.
What’s he done to get that lower strikeout rate? It’s not the most likely factors. He’s actually whiffing at more pitches this year and he’s chasing roughly as often as he always has. Instead, the explanation is that he’s almost doubled the percentage of his at-bats that end on the first pitch. Can’t strike out if you’re avoiding two-strike counts in the first place.
Indeed, Julio is attacking the first pitch like he’s got dinner reservations after the game, swinging at the first pitch 52.2% of the time, compared to the roughly 40% he’s sat at in his past three seasons. All those extra swings mean that more than a fifth of his PAs are ending on the first pitch. This has been particularly dramatic when the first pitch is in the zone.
What’s perhaps most remarkable about this change is that it’s coming from an already-high starting point. Julio was already swinging on the first pitch more than the league average, but he’s increased that gap to substantial margins. On pitches in the strike zone? Julio is now swinging at 25% more of them than the rest of the league is.
That change is doing more than just reducing his strikeout rate. There’s a bit of small sample theater going on when you’re talking about only 98 pitches and 31 batted balls—it’s less reliable than the change in approach, which comes over a 178 PA sample—but when Julio is swinging at first-pitch strikes, his expected stats look like Aaron Judge on a hot streak. Over his first three seasons, his xBA on such pitches was .353 and his xSLG was .674. This year? Those numbers are .492 and 1.054. And amazingly, he’s doing that without sacrificing contact, whiffing at the same rate as his career norms. That’s a lot of numbers, so a chart is probably easier to take in. You can see the difference.
Of course, the combination of more swings while maintaining a stable whiff rate will result in more swinging strikes. But if the pitches are in the zone, you’re looking at an 0-1 count if you don’t swing (probably). So you might as well.
Not only is Julio swinging at more first-pitch strikes without sacrificing his contact rate, he’s also doing it without just swinging at the first pitch indiscriminately. It’d be almost impossible to swing at so many more first pitches in the zone without elevating your first-pitch chase rate at least a little, but Julio’s increase has been relatively mild, chasing on the first pitch just 31.3% of the time compared to career norms in the mid-to-high 20s. The expected results when he makes contact on those pitches has been worse, but I’m comfortable chalking that up to it being based on just seven such balls in play.
This change really is limited to the first pitch, and specifically when the first pitch is in the zone. His swing rate on pitches that are not the first pitch is 57%, right in line with where he’s sat throughout his career.
Hitting coach Kevin Seitzer says this has not been something the organization has specifically coached Julio to do. Instead, he attributes it to the overall approach of being aggressive on fastballs and the fact that the first pitch you see is often the best one of the at-bat. There’s some truth to that. Julio gets fastballs about 5% more often on the first pitch than on subsequent pitches. Yet, far be it from me to disagree with Seitzer, but while Julio’s a touch more likely to see fastballs on the first pitch, I’m not totally convinced that the first pitch is all that much likelier to be a better pitch to hit. In the image below, one shows a heat map of the location of first pitches to Julio. The other shows the rest of the pitches.
The map on the left is first pitches, and I guess those look a bit more hittable. But compare these maps with the heat map for where Julio does damage and I’m even less convinced.
It’s still probably a good idea to swing at early strikes though. Over at Baseball Prospectus, Robert Orr has shown that “the penalty for being overly aggressive early in an at-bat is substantially smaller than it is later in an at-bat, incentivizing early swings.” So especially if you’re a guy who tends to make good contact—like, say, Julio Rodríguez—if you get a first pitch strike, by all means, swing. (For those wondering, Julio’s SEAGER is actually at a career low despite the change in approach on first pitches in the zone. This is because SEAGER (1) accounts for pitch location with more specificity than simply whether it is in the zone and (2) goes more in-depth on the count rather than just “NOT 0-0.” Without publicly available SEAGER splits, it’s hard to do much analysis on this.)
Whatever the reason Julio’s doing it, it’s working. But now for the bad news. This seems awfully exploitable. If you know Julio is going to ambush you with damaging contact on the first pitch if you throw him a strike, maybe just don’t? I’m not trying to do Houston’s homework for them, but I don’t think this is rocket science. And yet . . .
I have a hard time believing I’m ahead of the league in their scouting of Seattle’s most dangerous (if perhaps not currently their best) hitter. But if they were reducing the number of first pitches in the zone, you’d expect this line to be plummeting, rather than leveling off after reaching a reasonable sample size. Maybe teams are too afraid to end up in a 1-0 count. Being behind in the count to Julio doesn’t seem like a great outcome either. So he’s really boxed pitchers into a corner. Whatever the reason the league isn’t adjusting, I’m just planning to enjoy this for as long as it lasts. After all, if his results start matching his expected statistics, we could be watching the Julio we’ve been waiting for.
*All stats through Sunday, May 11