There's a running joke on the more analytical -- or at least more nerdy -- areas of baseball online discourse that a player is good because the circle is red or bad because the circle is blue. It's a reference to Baseball Savant's player pages where they track key peripherals such as exit velocity and expected stats and scale it to the rest of the league. A red circle means you're generally one of the best in the game in that given area, in the 95th percentile or so. A dark blue circle means you're one of the worst.
It's a gross oversimplification, hence why basing an opinion on a player is often mocked. There are nuances that are ignored, trends that aren't always seen if you only skirt the surface level. A player isn't good or bad solely because of their exit velocity. It's about the overall package and what they bring to a team.
With all that in mind, the reason why I bring this all up is because there may not be a better way to start a Jack Suwinski Mound Visit than to look at those circles to show how extreme of a player he is:
BASEBALL SAVANT
There's a lot of dark red and a lot of dark blue there.(I swear there's going to be some analysis here soon.) He's drawing a ton of walks (16.1%), putting him in the 95th percentile. He's also striking out a lot (30.8%), putting him in 8th percentile. He's not chasing out of the zone and barrels up a ball once every 8.6 trips to the plate. Both are solid numbers. He also has a 30.9% whiff rate, ranking in the bottom-fifth of the league. As far as analyzing a player's peripherals, this is borderline analytical whiplash.
The overall product on the field has been undeniably quite good. Suwinski's batting average is just .231, but that high walk rate boosts his on-base percentage to a reliable .357. He's homered seven times and has a .470 slugging percentage. Overall, an .827 OPS and 126 wRC+ makes him a very good candidate for a middle of the order bat.
This Mound Visit comes at a time where Suwinski isn't producing that much at the plate. He entered Sunday with a .278 wOBA and .279 expected wOBA in the month of May, both of which are well below the league average. He was very streaky as a rookie last year, and while that is still the case to an extent this year, he has done a much better job consistently reaching base.
Going based on his 10-game rolling on-base percentage averages, his lows this year aren't nearly as bad as they were in 2022, and he's generally reaching base much more consistently:
Suwinski has power and is a threat to contribute that way any given night. Being able to reach base more consistently is helping his OPS right now, where a slump is just a slump and not a hole in the lineup.
There are more benefits to that increased walk rate, too. Entering play Sunday, Suwinski ranked 10th among hitters who qualified for a batting title in pitches per plate appearance:
Miles Mastrobuon, 4.63
Ha-Seong Kim, 4.58
Patrick Wisdom, 4.56
Connor Joe, 4.54
Ryan Nada, 4.49
LaMonte Wade Jr., 4.48
Max Muncy, 4.41
Ian Happ, 4.39
Matt Olson, 4.38
Jack Suwinski, 4.36
Even in this down month of May, Suwinski is still averaging 4.20 pitches per trip to the plate, well above the league average of 3.91.
And he also was enjoying one of the largest year-to-year leaps in expected wOBA of any hitter. A year ago, his .304 xwOBA was a little below average. He has a .371 xwOBA this year, ranking in the 85th percentile of hitters.
When asked what the biggest difference is between rookie Suwinski and sophomore year Suwinski, Derek Shelton quickly responded, "confidence."
"Last year, it looked like at times he was in a rush to hit because he wanted to hit so bad," Shelton said. "I feel from having watched hitters for a long time, that’s a really common thing. And then if you don’t get hits, you really want to rush to hit. Now we’re seeing him control at-bats, foul pitches off, take borderline pitches.That’s something you grow into. He’s going to continue to grow. I think once we get to that final product, it’s going to be really good at commanding the zone."
That confidence is taking form in a more focused approach at the plate. As a rookie, Suwinski knew what his damage zones were, but would look beyond that to try to control the whole zone. That's not to say he's neglecting parts of the zone, but he is keying in a certain spot more now.
"I know my zone awareness is a lot better when I shrink the spot I'm looking for, where I want the ball to be," Suwinski was telling me. "... You don't have time to see it and then react. It has to be all together. It's why my committing to a spot can be really helpful attacking that."
Let's take a look at two heat maps to support that. The first is based on Suwinski's slugging percentage. What parts of the zone does he get the most bases:
FANGRAPHS
Unsurprisingly, it's pretty much right down the middle and middle-inside. That's pretty common for a slugger. He can turn on those pitches, and when he gets fully extended, he has the ability to put one in the seats.
The other heat map is the location of the pitches he's swinging at whenever he's ahead in the count. This is where he is has the best opportunity to do damage and can be more selective. When he's in these spots, he rarely goes out of the zone and rarely lets one down the middle go by:
Again, middle-middle and middle-in. Suwinski has seen his exit velocity leap this year from a fairly pedestrian 88.3 mph to 91 mph. He's chasing less, he's offering at good pitches more and he's driving them more. All of these are great traits for a young hitter.
But remember those blue circles?
Suwinski still has a lot of swing and miss in his game. He was a hitter of extremes as a rookie, and his whiff and strikeout rate and both still north of 30%. But he doesn't chase.
What he does do is swing and miss a lot in the zone. Of Suwinski's 72 whiffs on the year entering Sunday, two-third were in the strike zone (48). Going by zone contact rate, his 74.1% clip is the third-lowest among batting title eligible hitters.
And these are fastballs mainly, too. Of those 48 whiffs, 26 were four-seamers or sinkers, 11 were changeups and 11 were some variation of breaking ball. He's drastically cut his whiff rate against breaking balls this year (37.7% to 23.8%), but it's not reflective on his strikeout rate because he's missing more fastballs (26.6% to 31.7%).
"We're working really hard on pitch selection, swing decisions," Suwinski said about his approach. "Contact up, swing and miss down. Obviously, that's gonna start with going after pitches I can hit and knowing what I can drive."
Swing and miss on pitches in the zone has been a knock on Suwinski for a while. It's why he experimented with opening up his stance this spring, just to go back to a more closed look in April to make sure he moved more efficiently. If there was an easy fix for this, it would have been done and Suwinski probably would be on an All-Star trajectory. For now, it's a hole in his game, but not one that's holding him back from putting together a good season.
Suwinski still has very strong numbers this year, is reaching base far more consistently to still chip in a bit during his leaner stretches and is still having some really good and long at-bats.
At the risk of oversimplifying, focus on the red circles, not the blue ones.