After taking a week-long break from pontification on hitters and their current trends, we’re right back at it from our Aaron Civale reprieve (who just threw 8 innings with 1 earned run and 6 strikeouts, ahem). And while you’re sure not here to pat my back (I am perfectly able to physically and mentally take this burden and pat myself on the back), I assume that you’re hear to get the downlow on what’s up. I’m now geographically lost. However, this week, we’ll be taking a look at Rob Refsnyder and the almighty equalizer in all of sports: playing time. Injuries would be acceptable too, but lets keep that between you and me, we don’t want it waking up and exploding other players this year. Trust me on this. *cries in Mike Trout.
So what is ending up a typical affair around these parts, or “part” I guess… I don’t have multiple places to do this from so the pluralization makes no sense here. But yes, the notes I’ll hit here will not be musical, but will be familiar in that, well I’ll just get out of the way and say it; I like Refsnyder and I think you should too. Because? Value. Availability. Need. And, he might actually be an okay hitter? And as I’ve been hinting at, every one of the things I just listed is pretty much what my content usually focuses on when analyzing a player, so I really get excited when someone like Refsnyder comes along, a player that can apply to every single aspect.
Value is the easiest one to sell, as you probably didn’t draft him and he should be available (generally) in a lot of leagues and formats. With the baseball population perpetually performing seppuku at a record rate (say that three times fast!), Refsnyder should have availability, but this window might close fast the longer you wait. And need. The Twins look to be giving him starting at-bats right now (playing time baby!), and if that continues, this hitter and his potential has touched all my sweet spots. Mmm. So now that we know he’s checked the artificial boxes I’ve standardized for my own purposes (self-awareness baby!), let’s get to the hitting part, in that: can he do it?
| Year | G | AVG | OBP | SLG | wOBA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 40 | 0.167 | 0.314 | 0.216 | 0.209 |
| 2020 | 15 | 0.200 | 0.265 | 0.240 | 0.276 |
| 2021 | 12 | 0.400 | 0.436 | 0.233 | 0.229 |
Judging from this, in 2019 and 2020, and for pretty much his entire career, no, he couldn’t hit.
| Year | HR | R | RBI | SB | wRC+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 2 | 10 | 5 | 0 | 23 |
| 2020 | 0 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 75 |
| 2021 | 2 | 8 | 7 | 0 | 40 |
Yikes.
Look, it wasn’t that long ago he was a heralded Yankees prospect. Well, heralded is a stretch, but it was common enough to see his name around the top-10 or top-15 on New York’s prospect list despite lacking true homerun power potential and speed. Sorta-kinda-heralded? But he was considered to have above average plate discipline and could hit the ball a bit with good contact feeding off his strike zone prowess, so it’s not like 2021’s outburst should be all that surprising if you assume at some point Refsnyder could align some stars and produce. So yeah, fast forward three teams and five years later, what we have now is a career .231/.315/.326 hitter with just 193 MLB games under his belt (as of this writing) that’s going gangbusters at the plate.
While still just barely over a full season’s worth of games for a career, I’d argue that we have yet to see anything dipositive, even at the age of 30. At-bats are the name of the game (playing time baby!), I mean no, the name of the game is baseball, but in terms of young(ish) players who don’t have any star qualities, sometimes you just need to feed at-bats to make things happen. CRAZY, I know. And at the very least, the Twins may be in the midst of doing just that. Better late than never is what I always say. At least when I’m writing a post that can use it…
And while judging his first 12 games of this year after just telling you 193 isn’t enough to make any determination is quite the bold strategy, I did at least want to point to some trendlines I like.
First, he’s not hitting the ball on the ground yet this year, with a 25% groundball rate (50.6% career), his contact percentage in the strike zone has gone up to 86% to last season’s 75.9%, and based on pitch value metrics, he’s making solid contact on fastballs (3.14 in 2021, -2.43 in 2020), cutters (7.57 in 2021, -5.26 in 2020), and changeups (14.10 in 2021, -4.07 in 2020), all pitches he’s had trouble with in the past.
And if that wasn’t enough to convince you, keep in mind this one important fact that I’ve been holding back on and a tidbit many might have missed, and something that would explain these radical trendlines.
Following a rough Spring Training, Rob Refsnyder decided to remake his swing. Ten seasons into his professional career. At age 30. The longtime journeyman went to the alternate training site in St. Paul, Minn., and identified some tweaks with Triple-A hitting coach Matt Borgschulte. He remade his batting stance. He changed the timing of his stride. He found something that worked — and waited for opportunity to call. – MLB.com.
So look, while I’d love to be a contrarian here and mention that all of this could be aberration (it might be!) and that we’ve already seen the best of Rob Refsnyder, I actually don’t think it matters here when you can just grab now and see if we (royal “we”) had the right idea, or just move on if the going gets tough again for him. But we may have the early beginnings of a “to the moon” scenario, and time to get in on the ground floor is running out.
I have no idea why I went all diamond hands here, but we’re just going to go with it because I got nothing better. Life story baby…
Jay is a longtime Razzball everything who consumes an egregious amount of Makers Mark as a vehicle to gain wisdom and augment his natural glow. Living in the D.C. area, he also likes spending time visiting the local parks and feeding lettuce to any turtles he encounters, including Mitch McConnell. You can follow him @jaywrong, or read his rarely (like never) updated blog Desultory Thoughts of a Longfellow.
