North Shore Tavern Mound Visit: Max contact feeds Suwinski's power taken in Miami (Mound Visit)

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Ben Gamel, Jack Suwinski and Diego Castillo celebrate victory Sunday in Milwaukee.

MIAMI -- Jack Suwinski started this season in Class AA Altoona, seemingly lower on the major-league depth than four or five of the Pirates' outfield prospects.

If he keeps up his current hitting pace, he could end the year flirting with a 30-home-run season. There’s still a long way to go, but he’s already at 14 and was promoted after 16 major-league games had already passed. That puts his pace right at about 30.

Suwinski being able to hit major-league pitching and provide some much-needed pop has been one of the more pleasant surprises for the Pirates this season. Since 2014, there have been 239 individual seasons where a batter homered at least 30 times. Only one of them was a Pirate (Josh Bell with 37 in 2019).

And if he does fall short of 30 – an admittedly arbitrary number – he still has a good shot at breaking the franchise’s rookie record of 26 homers, shared by Bell and Jason Bay at 26.

Coming into this year, Suwinski had never even cracked 20 home runs in a professional season. While he emerged as a prospect with the Padres last season and came over to the Pirates in the Adam Frazier trade, it didn’t seem like he would be able to provide this much power this early in his career. It’s something that even caught hitting coach Andy Haines a bit off guard, based on the work they did together and what he saw this spring.

“My first impression in spring training was the bat was probably ahead of the power, because of his ability to hit the ball to left-center,” Haines told me in Cincinnati. “That has not played out at all in the big leagues. The power has played out ahead of the bat.”

The trade-off for that power is that Suwinski has been streaky. His 106 wRC+ indicates that he is having a slightly above average offensive season, which is solid for a rookie who skipped Class AAA entirely, but it’s almost entirely based on his power. His batting average is just above the Mendoza line (.206). Even with a healthy walk rate, his .292 on-base percentage is definitely on the low-end.

So when you’re a rookie whose OPS is based almost entirely on slugging percentage and homers, you’re going to get ups and downs like this:

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“When he does have a little bit of a cold spell, what’s impressive about Jack is he does get himself back on track and make something good happen,” Haines said. “... It shows me what he’s capable of doing and that he’s just scratching the surface.”

Suwinski’s productivity, at least for now, is going to be reliant on his slugging. Looking at some of Suwinski’s batted ball peripherals, that could spell trouble for a lot of hitters. His average exit velocity entering play Sunday was just 88 mph, putting him in the bottom 28% of major-league hitters. His 38.7% hard-hit rate is also below average. You need hard contact to homer, and he isn’t tagging as many baseballs as his home run total would indicate.

But Suwinski has been effective because most of his hard contact he has made has been on balls he elevated.

Take a hitter like Ke’Bryan Hayes, for example. He posts really good exit velocities, averaging 91.3 mph, second among all Pirates and in the top 14% in baseball. If there’s any criticism, it’s that a lot of his hard contact is on the ground. Of the 256 hitters who qualify for Baseball Savant’s leaderboards, his 91.8 mph exit velocity on ground balls is the seventh-highest. His exit velocity on fly balls and line drives is 93.4 mph, 120th among that same group of hitters. So he’s hitting the ball hard and has a really good exit velocity, but a good chunk of that hard contact is on the ground, which will very rarely lead to an extra-base hit.

Suwinski, on the other hand, is the inverse. His exit velocities on ground balls average to just 80.8 mph, ranking in the bottom 10 among those 256 hitters. His average exit velocity on fly balls and line drives is 94.9 mph, good for 58th place. So he’s well above-average when it counts.

In fact, the only hitter with a bigger separation between his ground ball and fly ball exit velocities is Joey Gallo of the Yankees:

Joey Gallo, 96.7 mph EV on FB/LD, 71 mph on GB, 25.7 mph difference
Jack Suwinski, 94.9 mph EV on FB/LD, 80.8 mph on GB, 14.1 mph difference
Max Muncy, 95 mph EV on FB/LD, 81.3 mph on GB, 13.7 mph difference
Chas McCormick, 94.8 mph EV on FB/LD, 81.3 mph on GB, 13.5 mph difference
Michael Chavis, 93.9 mph EV on FB/LD, 80.8 mph on GB, 13.1 mph difference

So how exactly does one do that? That’s been the burning question in baseball since the start of the fly ball revolution around 2015. How do you put yourself in position to maximize your hard hit balls?

“I think for Jack's case, it's as much the pitches he swings at to be able to get them in the air,” Derek Shelton said. “And that's going to be part of the progression he takes as a hitter is learning which pitches he should swing at so he can maximize on that."

Taking a look at where the balls Suwinski hit in the air were pitched, there is a noticeable trend. He tends to do better with stuff on the middle or outer half of the zone, especially changeups and sliders:

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In my conversation with Haines, he brought up Suwinski’s home run Tuesday against the Yankees. There, he got a changeup on the outer half of the plate, and even though he may not have put the absolute best swing he could have on it, he stayed on balance enough to drive it out to center:

Most of Suwinski’s homers and doubles have come to his pull side this year, which stems from his approach and sequences he goes through to make sure he gets the barrel through the zone at the right point. He and I talked about that a month ago in Atlanta

And the results speak for themselves:

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BASEBALL SAVANT

But that doesn’t mean he’s selling out to his pull side, and Haines sees an opportunity for growth with him going the other way.

“He’s got as much power to left-center as any young player I’ve seen,” Haines said. “Not only is his swing going to play in his park, but the fact that he can leverage the ball to left-center is another thing that sticks out.”

Perhaps that’s where Suwinski’s on-base percentage and batting average are, being able to drive balls more efficiently to center and the other gap for base hits while keeping the power stroke to right. That would play a big part in him being a more consistent producer, and elevate his game beyond someone who might hit 30 home runs to a legitimate top half of the order threat.

It’s a step that Haines thinks he can take.

“As he grows, I see a good, all-around versatile hitter in there that has power when they make a mistake,” Haines said. “I don’t just see this power hitter that doesn’t have the hit tool.

"That hasn’t showed up in the big leagues yet, but when I talk to people across the field, I get similar sentiments. Like, ‘this Suwinski guy can really hit.’ It’s not, ‘hey, this guy has ridiculous raw power.’ What’s interesting for us to see is for us, he’s shown the power.”

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