I used to love watching Scooby Doo when I was a kid. That love was taken to another level when I discovered trees and magic mushrooms. Man, if I wasn’t married with two kids, I would have moved to Colorado yesterday. Anyways, when something bad was about to happen on the show, Scooby Doo would go “Ruh Roh”. Well, when I dug into the numbers for Ronny Rodriguez of the Detroit Tigers, who was one of the hottest hitters over the past week, the Ruh Roh-ing of Scooby Doo kept echoing in my head. Should we be worried?
The Cleveland Indians signed Rodriguez as an international free agent back in 2010. After spending seven years in their minor league system, he became a free agent and was signed by the Detroit Tigers. Rodriguez played 63 games with the Tigers Triple-A team before getting a call up to The Show, where he played in 62 games, accumulated 206 plate appearances, and slashed .220/.256/.335 with 5 home runs and 2 stolen bases. After playing 8 games in Triple-A to start the 2019 season, Rodriguez was called up to the major league team and has played in 21 games. The numbers have been impressive: .312/.357/.701 slahs with 6 home runs and 2 stolen bases. Over the past week, he’s gone 9-for-28 with 3 home runs and 1 stolen base. So, why the Ruh Roh-ing from Scooby Doo?
Well, there were three numbers that jumped out to me: the swinging strike, chase, and pull rates. Rodriguez has a 14.7% swinging strike rate. If he qualified, that would place him in the top 25, or bottom 25. I never know how to do that. As for the chase rate, he’s swinging at 45.9% of pitches outside the strike zone. That number would lead all of baseball. Finally, he’s pulling a whopping 63.3% of pitches. That would also lead all hitters. So, my initial thought was that pitchers would just start throwing him junk away and get him to flail with reckless abandon. Seems logical, right?
Here’s the thing. Pitchers are already throwing him low-and-away stuff close to 10% of the time, the most out of any zone. The swing rate in that particular zone is 24%, one of the lowest rates. Hmmmm. I’m intrigued, very intrigued. Now, the area right below the bottom of the strike zone is where pitchers are getting the most whiffs, so that accounts for the elevated swinging strike rate. Pitches inside the zone, though? Rodriguez is absolutely mashing. If the strike zone is broken up into nine zones, Rodriguez has not whiffed at a pitch in six of them, and only one zone is above 12%.
Rodriguez is akin to a plump jaguar, one that rarely misses a meal, lying in the bushes waiting to ambush it’s prey. The launch angle is 17.9 degrees, good for 46th in all of baseball. The barrel rate is 13.3%, good for 57th. He also has multi-position eligibility (1B, 2B, 3B, and SS) and often bats fourth or fifth in the lineup.
Now it’s time to bring things full circle and go Ruh Roh. The BABIP is .333, which is fueling a .312 batting average. That will likely come down. Steamer has him projected for a .302 BABIP and a .261 batting average. The ISO of .390 and SLG of .701 are way outside anything he’s done in his professional career, so those numbers should come down. He had a high of 17 homers back in 2017 and the highest ISO he ever posted was .219, and the highest SLG was .558.
Although Rodriguez is 27 years old, he’s still a relative pup to the MLB game, as he’s only had 290 plate appearances. I have a not-so-sneaky suspicion that opposing pitchers will eventually find a way to successfully attack him. As much as I’m intrigued, I don’t see this level of productivity continuing for much longer.
VERDICT
