Is a Yainer Diaz Breakout Coming?

Catcher is a thankless job. In case you do it efficiently, completely even, that signifies that you’re letting extremely paid professionals whip projectiles at you as onerous as they’ll lots of of occasions a day. Typically, different extremely paid professionals will divert these projectiles towards you on the final second, or inadvertently hit you with the enormous picket sticks they’re carrying. It’s a must to dive round and flail your limbs, as a result of the one factor worse than getting hit by one among these balls is not getting hit by them; letting them fly by hurts your workforce. Individuals attempt to steal from you consistently, so when you’re attempting to catch a rock-hard 100-mph pellet, you additionally need to scan your peripherals. And if all of that isn’t dangerous sufficient, right here’s the worst half: Typically your supervisor chooses to begin Martín Maldonado forward of you.

I child, after all, however I’m writing about Yainer Diaz immediately, and his gradual phase-in to the foremost leagues is a key a part of his main league profession up to now. Diaz burst onto the large league scene in 2023 with the type of strategy that makes hitting instructors wince, then shrug their shoulders and nod. He swung early and sometimes, took huge hacks, and usually acted like he was allergic to taking walks or hitting singles. It labored. He clobbered 23 homers in solely 377 plate appearances, spraying loud contact to all fields. He performed better-than-expected protection, too, belying his early scouting reviews.

Regardless of that wonderful rookie season, Diaz couldn’t displace an getting old Maldonado because the workforce’s major catcher; he took some reps at DH, however misplaced these as effectively when the workforce obtained wholesome. By the playoffs, he was an afterthought, a pure backup catcher. However when Maldonado (and supervisor Dusty Baker) departed within the offseason, Diaz ascended to a beginning job. Then he struggled – via the All-Star break, he was hitting a so-so .284/.308/.409 with iffy protection. In case you’re extra of a WAR individual, that’s 1.1 WAR, not nice. Right here’s one story you can inform about Yainer Diaz: a prospect who struggled to interrupt via with common taking part in time.

That’s the mistaken story, although. It’s straightforward to get confused by arbitrary endpoints and focus an excessive amount of on how somebody’s 12 months begins. However the second half of Diaz’s season? It was electrical. He began hitting the ball with authority, peppered line drives, and hit .319/.346/.482 the remainder of the best way. That introduced his seasonal line as much as a 117 wRC+, and his profession slash line to .291/.317/.476 (120 wRC+). That sounds much more like a prime hitting catcher than my earlier descriptions would have you ever imagine.

The purpose of splitting this up into too-small sections isn’t to attempt to let you know that one among these is the actual Diaz. Many years of analysis and studying have taught us that splitting manufacturing into tiny buckets is a good way to delude your self with noise. As a substitute, I’m hoping to exhibit why you shouldn’t do this, and why some large-sample stats will paint you a clearer image of what’s really happening: Diaz is a particular expertise who has an opportunity to be top-of-the-line hitters in baseball – if he could make one essential and tough change.

Right here’s one method to excel at hitting: When pitchers go away you one thing in the course of the plate, destroy it. That’s tougher than it sounds, however let me put it this manner. The very best hitter in baseball when it got here to run worth accrued on pitches over the center of the plate final 12 months? Aaron Choose. The second greatest? Shohei Ohtani. Everybody will get some pitches to hit, as a result of pitchers aren’t excellent machines. All you must do is have a look at Choose to know that you must by no means put one thing proper over the center – and greater than 1 / 4 of the pitches he noticed in 2024 had been proper down the pipe anyway.

There are different methods to succeed at hitting, and it’s definitely attainable to crush middle-middle pitches and nonetheless battle sufficient elsewhere to deliver down your total line. However it’s an important first-order take a look at, and it’s steady from one 12 months to the subsequent. A few quarter of the variation in year-two manufacturing over the center of the plate might be defined by variation in year-one manufacturing, a significant quantity. Even higher, there’s an especially sturdy correlation (0.67) between coronary heart run worth and wOBA. In plain English, when you can hit the meatballs, you’re in all probability an excellent hitter, and when you can hit the meatballs as soon as, you possibly can in all probability hit them once more.

Why deliver this up? Listed here are final 12 months’s 5 best hitters towards something thrown over the center of the plate:

Hey, there’s our man! And whereas he’s so much like his counterparts in some ways – he hits for a excessive common, makes a ton of onerous contact, and produces gaudy total numbers in consequence – there are some key variations.

For one, have a look at the discrepancy between hard-hit fee and barrel fee. For the uninitiated, a barrel is a hard-hit ball at a harmful launch angle, more likely to end in an extra-base hit. Most of those guys are hitting it excessive and watching it fly. Diaz is torching pitches, however he’s hitting a ton of grounders and never sufficient airborne missiles. Diaz hit 46% of his honest contact on middle-middle pitches on the bottom final 12 months; the opposite 4 averaged 30%. Oh, he’s hitting the snot out of these grounders, to make sure, however that’s principally simply wasted loud contact.

However, Diaz comes up empty far much less usually than his slugging counterparts. That’s how he’s on the prime of this record regardless of less-than-perfect contact high quality. A smashed grounder isn’t nearly as good as a smashed liner – but it surely’s so much higher than a whiff. And this isn’t a matter of Diaz concentrating his swings on fastballs whereas others chase breaking stuff, or something like that. In case you ignore the 13 middle-middle splitters he noticed, his highest whiff fee was really towards four-seam fastballs. Aspect notice: That is imply stuff from George Kirby:

What provides with all of the grounders? It’s a elementary a part of Diaz’s sport, as greatest as I can inform. He’s run excessive groundball charges all through his skilled profession, and each scouting report I’ve discovered mentions his incapacity to raise as a possible pink flag. This isn’t some one-year deviation, along with his 2023 dwelling run binge the norm; he simply hits loads of stuff down or flat. In different phrases, whether or not you’re speaking Yandy or Yainer, a Y. Diaz in your program comes with extra rifled grounders than you possibly can presumably think about.

Does that sound dangerous? I imply for it to sound just a little dangerous, however not disastrous. Not all grounders are created equal, and Diaz’s have a tendency towards the great. Right here’s a technique of taking a look at it: In 2024, grounders hit zero levels or decrease produced a .181 batting common and .183 slugging share. Even hitting these onerous didn’t assist a lot; hard-hit grounders in that launch angle group went .279/.303. However hit the ball increased – one diploma of launch angle or extra, however nonetheless categorized as a grounder – and the story adjustments. You may consider these as sizzling photographs, quite than balls smoked straight into the bottom. These? They produced a .442 batting common and .495 slug. The hard-hit ones went for a .575 batting common and .641 slugging share. Even when you can’t raise the ball to the outfield, avoiding straight-down contact does wonders.

So sure, Diaz hits too many grounders, however he does most of his groundball injury by hitting the ball onerous and never straight down. He nonetheless has room to enhance right here, however regardless of his elevated groundball charges, he did a stable job of staying on airplane with the ball as an alternative of punching it down. Examine him to Tampa Bay’s burly grounder-producing Díaz, and you may rapidly see a distinction. Although they produced equivalent GB/FB ratios, 28% of Yainer’s grounders had been hit above zero levels, my “good grounder” cutoff. Solely 18% of Yandy’s had been. “Grounder” is an imprecise time period, and it paints Yainer Diaz with an incorrect brush. He’s not that distant from producing line drives, and shut really does depend right here.

One other, cruder mind-set about it. Certain, each of them produced a 1.95 GB/FB ratio, and yeah, that’s a ton of grounders for each fly ball. However Yandy’s common launch angle, aggregated throughout each baseball he put in play in 2024? 5 levels. Yainer’s is 9 levels, meaningfully increased. 9 levels is within the twentieth percentile for the foremost leagues in 2024; 5 is within the fifth percentile.

So right here’s how I’m studying this heading into 2025: Yainer Diaz has an opportunity to be a dominant offensive participant as a result of he has a transparent and actionable talent: When pitchers give him one thing over the center of the plate, he tattoos it. Now, the place he tattoos it? It’s not excellent. It might use some work. However it’s not as dangerous because it seems to be, both, it doesn’t matter what a fast look at his web page says.

We knowledge analysts are all the time falling for the hitters with nice measurables however only one factor to repair. What number of articles have been written concerning the groundball hitters who simply must elevate? What number of concerning the bat management wizards who must raise and pull extra usually? However many occasions, these are fruitless pursuits. We generalize an excessive amount of, or breeze over how tough the change is. However this time, perhaps it’s completely different. Perhaps Diaz’s groundball tendency is nearer to cracking than you’d count on. Perhaps the trail ahead is simpler. Perhaps he can ascend from good to nice hitter with an additional diploma or two right here or there, the place different seemingly related groundball hitters by no means had an opportunity.

However, uh, about that plate self-discipline? Yeah, that may be tougher to alter. None of this can work if he retains strolling solely 3.6% of the time – his profession huge league fee. None of it is going to work if he retains chasing practically half the pitches he sees exterior the strike zone. Diaz’s bat produces thunder, and he’s oh so near unlocking much more. If he can present only a barely higher mixture of managed aggression, get to the tenth percentile of chase fee as an alternative of the primary, he’ll see extra pitches to hit and make extra of his contact in locations the place he needs to, as an alternative of the place the pitcher prefers.

None of that is set in stone, after all. I can’t show that any of this can occur, and I’m not even certain it is going to. However when you’re searching for somebody who may need one other gear, I current to you Yainer Diaz. He won’t appear to be your common bopper. His stat web page won’t even appear to be it – approach fewer true outcomes than anticipated, all that chase, all these grounders — but it surely’s there, or at the very least the likelihood is there. Perhaps the Astros have discovered their subsequent middle-of-the-order menace. I’m definitely keen to imagine.