[Do not start another article with every year, do not start another article with every year] ……. EVERY YEAR there’s the backup catcher that has a sort of breakout. It’s not a real breakout like they’re fantasy relevant, but it’s the kind of breakout where they hit double digit homers while only getting 330 plate appearances. What make these folk heroes extra memorable is how much the hometown announcer loves them. Every time they pop a 3rd inning solo homer to put their team ahead 1-0. The broadcast duo exclaims like the team just wrapped up the division for the first time in 10 years. When the season is over, you say, “I can’t believe I drafted Alec Bohm and he ended up with as many homers as Pedro Pages”
What’s really happening here, though? Is it that Alec Bohm sucks that much that he couldn’t hit more homers than a guy who got +100 fewer plate appearances? Is it that Pedro Pages is secretly Cal Raleigh but not getting the playing time? The answer to the first question is yes (sorry, Alec Bohm), and the answer to the second question is painfully obvious, looking at the overall ratios (although Pedro Pages might be more like the 2026 version of Cal Raleigh). So if their ratios are not good, meaning they are probably not great hitters, how are they still getting the dingers? This is where I want to introduce the concept of the “Kyōshin” from the Japanese baseball video game Power Pros.
Kyōshin literally means “strong swing”, but in the US version of the Power Pros video game, it was called “Big Swing”. It was the ability for a hitter to greatly reduce their hit area (where they can make contact with the ball) but greatly increases the hitter’s power *if* they make contact. There’s a similar feature in MLB: The Show where users can prioritize contact or power by using the Contact/Normal/Power Swing options.
The theory is that these backup catchers with terrible ratios but bunch of dingers are always using the kyoshin option, even with two strikes. These are guys who only get to play maybe one game a series, and even after a few at bats they could get pinch hit for by the starter if the game is close. Given their limited chances, they’re always gonna swinging away like the main character told Joaquin Phoenix to do in the movie Signs (2002):
To dig into this theory, I started by looking at wOBACON, which is just a player’s wOBA but only when they put the ball into play. A player with a low wOBA but high wOBACON would likely mean they are swinging and missing a lot, but doing a lot of damage when they *do* put the ball in play. Looking at some of the biggest wOBACON overperformers among backup catchers the past two years:
I mean, this list is perfect. It’s almost all guys who are at or above average in wOBACON in the league (league average is around .366), but far below league average in actual wOBA (league average around .312). So overall most of these guys were not great, unless they put the ball in play in which case they turned into league average hitters. So next, we need to check swing speed to see if these players are indeed the Swing Away Merrills.
To check this, I looked at overall bat speed for all +800 players tracked since public bat tracking data became available in 2023, and compared their average bat speed against their 2-strike bat speed. The average player swings the bat almost 1.0mph slower when they have two strikes, which makes sense since you are obviously prioritizing contact over power. However, there was a small group of players who actually did not slow down their bats with two strikes, and two of them were on our first list: Korey Lee in 2024 and Riley Adams in 2025. Here is the difference for each of those 9 backup catchers:
So almost all but two were above average (below 50th percentile) in their “swing away-ness” which I think showed that these players had an approach that matched the result. They were indeed not changing how fast they swung their bats with two strikes, looking to do damage and not afraid to strike out.
Finally, since we have the data, we can show the top 20 biggest Swing Away Merrills in the league this season, and the 20 biggest [not sure what to call] Shy Away Derek(?) who *drop* their bat speed with two strikes:
2026 Swing Away Merrills
An all or nothing player like Colson Montgomery or Matt Wallner makes a lot of sense, but also interesting to see younger players like Victor Osuna II or Alex Freeland, who you would think would be more cautious to make contact. Also funny to see Pedro Pages swinging away looking to once again match Alec Bohm in homers.
2026 Shy Away Dereks
Very interesting to see Shohei Ohtani on this list. This could be a result of guys like Soto and Ohtani having such elite bat speed that they don’t need to swing as fast to do damage. It’s also interesting to see that there are actually shy away backup catchers like Austin Hedges and Tyler Heineman. Are they the reverse of those journeymen catchers who are just trying to do damage, instead of looking to put the ball in play, move the runner over, do all that John Smoltz good teammate stuff? I guess there’s no way to know (other than asking them, of course).
