STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — Bryan Reynolds belongs.
That's the singular word that I keep deciding accurately describes how comfortable the Pirates' 24-year old rookie has looked during his first taste of the big leagues.
To be sure, there are still growing pains present. Breaking balls continue to be an issue for him, as I've documented previously, but there are indications that he is shoring up this "fatal flaw" right before our eyes.
First, consider this: Reynolds is second on the Pirates to Josh Bell in wOBA (weighted on-base average) when behind in the count. Bell clocks in at .313, with Reynolds at .291 as of this writing. For reference, the MLB-wide rate with these parameters is only .220. This means that Reynolds is 32.2 percent better than the rest of the league in terms of being productive after falling behind.
It also means that Bell is having an unbelievably good year. Each time I think that I have seen all the stats to prove this (other than the obvious), I find something else to marvel at. But you probably knew all that anyway.
One recent at-bat in particular serves as microcosm of Reynolds' improvements in approach.
Now, no one would confuse Reds reliever David Hernandez for Greg Maddux. In this at-bat, though, he showed some adequate craft. He starts Reynolds off with, what else, a breaking ball, knowing that Reynolds has a good chance at whiffing on the pitch. Call it a cheap, but effective, method by opposing pitchers to get to 0-1 against someone they might perceive to be an over-eager rookie.
And, yes, Reynolds does have some clear-cut rookie-type tendencies. Though they are improving -- Reynolds had a 40.9 percent whiff rate on breaking balls at that time; that figure has now dropped to 37.3 percent -- they are still present.
For the second pitch, Hernandez comes back with a good sinker that also benefits from a solid frame job by Tucker Barnhart. Now at 0-2, Hernandez goes back to the book on Reynolds and tries to get him to chase on a curveball down toward the dirt. Reynolds holds, and this is where so many get so excited about Reynolds' ceiling. Even with his perceived foibles against breaking balls, Reynolds already has an elevated two-strike approach against them. Currently, MLB hitters on the whole have a whiff-per-swing -- in other words, amount of swings that end as whiffs -- of 31.8 percent against breaking balls at two strikes.
Reynolds carries a 29.3 percent rate in that exact scenario. His ability to hold back in an obvious breaking ball count at this point in his young career will only improve as he sees a higher volume of pitches. Here, doing so led to an easy fastball take, followed by a decisive swing on a curveball.
Again, Hernandez is a perfectly adequate MLB pitcher with a career 3.89 ERA. This was not some epic battle against a Max Scherzer or Jacob deGrom-level hurler. This plate appearance is also an admittedly cherry picked one, but for a reason. This particular pitching sequence saw two fastballs and three breaking balls. Though Hernandez does not carry screaming velocity, he did have good spread in velo from his sinkers to his curveballs. All told, there was an 11.9 mph spread in velocity among this group of five pitches.
I looked it up, so you don't have to. The current league rate in wOBA for at-bats in which there was at least a 10 mph spread or greater is .327. Reynolds is right there at .314. Breaking balls are starting to fool him less, and now he is wising up to the game of mix-and-matching velocity as well.
Reynolds may yet have some holes in his approach at the plate.
But, they are closing. Quickly.
