Every time I’ve opened the Twitter machine this month, there was a particular Cincinnati Reds player hitting a home run. Fine, I lied, as I scroll through Twitter constantly and said player only hit 11 home runs. IN 18 GAMES!!! Babe Ruth began his professional baseball career in 1914. After three seasons, in which he played 166 games and accrued 405 plate appearances, the Bambino hit a total of 9 homers. Let’s just leave him with his candy bar, shall we? Because there’s a new Bambino in town, and his name is Aristides Aquino. He’s obviously not going to maintain this ridiculous pace and hit another 20 homers to finish the year, but how bad will the regression be?
Aquino is 25 years old, 6′ 4″ 220 pounds and bats from the right side. The Reds signed him back in 2011 as an international free agent.
He spent a little over four years playing rookie ball, where the batting average was sub-.200 the first two years and he never hit more than 4 home runs in a season until he broke out out in 2014 (.292 average, 16 home runs and 21 stolen bases). In Double-A, he continued to show the pop (17 and 20 homers in 2017 and 2018), but the batting average was in the low-.200s. Aquino began 2019 in Triple-A, where he batted .299 with 28 homers, and 5 stolen bases.
Throughout his minor league career, the numbers have been all over the place. The batting average has been .188 on the low end to as high as .308. The ISO range was .084 to .337. The strikeout range was 16.7% to 31.4%, while the walk rate has been 2.9% on the low end to 9% on the high end. On one hand, that could mean a wide range of outcomes for Aquino, but on the other hand, some of the variability could be explained by living in a new country and getting coached up.
It is promising to see that the Triple-A and current MLB numbers aren’t too far apart. Let’s dig in a little deeper and see if we can discover anything.
The GB/FB rate is 0.55. For perspective, there are only three MLB players with a rate in the 0.5s (Mike Trout, Rhys Hoskins, and Brandon Belt). That number could go up, but that ratio has been consistently low throughout his minor league career that it may not be too far off. The HR/FB of 50% isn’t sustainable, but he did have a 30.1% mark in Triple-A. Only Christian Yelich and Peter Alonso have HR/FB rates above 30%. He’s pulling the ball 43.2%, which is actually a career-low and the hard hit rate is 45.5%.
The plate discipline numbers show that he chases 42.2% of pitches outside the zone. The swinging strike rate is 15.9%. That would place him in the top 10 or bottom 10, depending on how you look at it. Bottom line, not good. The contact rates are average at 79.3% in the zone and 71.6% in general.
Looking at the splits, he’s hit 8 of the 11 homers off of right-handed pitching, but he’s been much better against lefties. Granted the sample sizes are small (49 plate appearances against righties and 18 against lefties). Against lefties, the ISO is .667!!! Ha! The BABIP is .556 as well!!! HA! The strikeout rate is only 16.7% while the walk rate is 11.1%. Nice. Against righties, the strikeout rate is 26.5% while the walk rate is 8.2%. The ISO is a ridiculous .533, but the BABIP is only .125.
When it comes to young hitters, I’m especially interested in how pitchers are attacking him and what possible adjustments could be in the works. Currently, the pitch distribution has been 39.6% fastballs, 19% sliders, 15.4% cutters, 13.9% curveballs, 8.4% changeups, and 3.7% splitters. He’s been crushing the fastballs, cutters, and sliders. Location wise, most of the pitches have been low-and-away.
Where has Aquino been swinging and doing most of the damage? To his credit, he hasn’t chased the low-and-away stuff as I initially expected, as he has only swung at 39% of pitches in that area. Middle-in is where the highest swing percentages are. As for striking out, the four main zones have been up-and-away, low-and-in, middle-in, and middle-down. The power zones have been middle and away, which makes sense as those are the zones in which he can extend his arms and barrel the ball.
I’d imagine that pitchers will start attacking him inside. The average exit velocity inside pales in comparison to the middle and middle-away zones. With that said, with his open stance, that could be a scary proposition, especially with his power and ability to feast on mistakes.
He’s a young hitter. Regression will come and pitchers will attack him differently. I’m thinking teams will start pounding him inside. With that said, it’s hard not to like Aquino. The power is insane, as he can drive the ball out to right field no problem, and his open stance makes it difficult to bust him inside. The most promising thing to me is that he doesn’t flail away at the low-and-away junk. TREASURE