Teoscar Hernandez Is Fascinating
Teoscar Hernandez has been one of the most fun players to think about recently. He had a phenomenal September, but there were also major red flags around his performance. His strikeout rate was the obvious red flag, but there was also his lack of walks and the fact that the vast majority of his production came during a 6 game span.
However, for all the red flags there were definite positives. First of all, you can't ignore the results. He ran a 132 wrc+ which was equal to what Justin Smoak produced over the full 2017 season. Then there was his batted ball data. Hernandez was among the league leaders in barrelled balls per plate appearance. He was barreling a lot of balls and putting the ball in the air often. That's a recipe for strong power numbers.
Yes, Hernandez can crush the ball with the best of them, but those pesky strikeouts remained an issue during spring training and early in the minor league season. The Blue Jays feature another hitter who has a reputation for barrelling a lot of balls and he has hasn't much success. Randal Grichuk has been among the league leaders for exit velocity and barrelled balls since Statcast started tracking them in 2015, but due to strikeout issues and a lack of walks, the overall offensive package was that of a barely above average hitter. With good defence and base running that's a quality player that certainly has a use on a winning team, but Teoscar's early performance for the Jays has people hoping for more than that.
I wrote multiple articles this offseason about Teoscar's need to cut down the strikeouts or increase his walk rate if he hopes to be a star hitting moving forward. So far this season he has done both. It's still only 11 games, but it's hard not to be impressed with his 11.8% walk rate and his 23.5% strikeout rate. If Teoscar were to maintain those numbers he would easily become one of the best hitters in baseball.
But are those numbers sustainable? Despite Buck Martinez raving about Teoscar's improved discipline seemingly every at bat, Hernandez has actually chased more balls outside of the zone compared to last season. His chase rate has gone from 31.4% to 35.5%. At the same time, his swinging strike rate has also increased from 16.6% to 17.5%. It's hard to see Teoscar's walk rate continuing above 10% if he is still chasing more than a third of balls out of the zone. Last season among qualified hitters who chased balls around the same rate as Teoscar saw walk rates around 6-7%. Some of the less disciplined hitters saw walk rates as low as 3%. Hernandez's current walk rate of 11.8% will likely come down and settle around 6 or 7%.
With a below average walk rate, Hernandez will need to keep his strikeout rate from climbing into the 30% territory again if he doesn't want to become an OBP hole. If he were to put the ball in play less often there would be added pressure on his performance on batted balls. He is elite on batted balls, but that only matters if you're putting the ball in play often. Remember, Grichuk is also elite on batted balls. The increase in swinging strikes certainly isn't a positive sign for Teoscar reducing his strikeout rate. However, there might be one sign that he can keep a lower strikeout rate and that's his pitches per plate appearance. Last season Hernandez saw 4.52 pitches per plate appearance. Lots of deep counts for a batters who swings and misses a lot is a bad thing. This season Teoscar's pitches per plate appearance are down to 3.92. He has been more aggressive and seems to be trying to put the ball in play early in counts so his elite power can be put to use.
Another positive in Hernandez's hitting profile is his increased line drive rate. Last season Hernandez was an extreme fly ball hitter. He managed a .333 BABIP, but that number probably should have been much lower. Joey Gallo is a very similar hitter in terms of power and fly ball rate and he produced a .250 BABIP. Granted, Hernandez's 22.6% line drive rate was above league average and Gallo's 17.9% was easily below average. If Teoscar were to continue to put around 50% of his batted balls in the air his .333BABIP would be hard to maintain. But, as I mentioned, he isn't putting the ball in the air as often and is instead hitting loads of line drives. His 30.3% line drive rate makes his .367 BABIP a lot more believable than his .333 with lots of fly balls. Now, his .367 is probably going to drop quite a bit, but it's easier to see him running a high BABIP if he's hitting an elite amount of line drives. Hernandez probably isn't going to have a 30% line drive rate all season, that would be insane, but if he can keep hitting a well above average rate of line drives he should power his way to a very good BABIP.
There is no denying that Hernandez hits the ball as hard as almost anybody in baseball. That was never in question. What remains to be seen is where his strikeout and walk rates settle and whether he can continue hitting a lot of line drives. Like I said in the title, Teoscar Hernandez is fascinating. You wouldn't expect a guy who chases more pitches out of the zone and swings and misses more often to lower their strikeout rate and increase their walk rate, but here we are. All of the data we have on Teoscar is pulling his expected results this way and that. His batted ball data is elite, his plate discipline data is below average. Each of these things matters and combine to make the whole hitter. You can succeed without being good at one or the other, but the true stars do well in both. Right now I'm having difficulty determining whether Teoscar is going to end up a really good hitter, or a really, really, really good hitter.
I've been trying since last September to get an idea just what he's likely to become over a full season and it's been difficult. I could just look at his AVG and home runs and consider him a star in the making, but there's so much more to the equation than the final results. That method has gotten fans to jump to wildly wrong conclusions countless times in the past. Kevin Maas, anyone? Teoscar seems to have dramatically altered his approach to hitting after coming to Toronto so he's likely still a work in progress. As time goes by the picture will become clearer. One this is for sure, however he ends up, I will definitely learn something about player evaluation from him because he's a unique subject that has forced me to look at things differently than before. I didn't start this blog to one day become a professional sports writer. I started it because I wanted a place to keep my thoughts on baseball so I could look back and learn from what I once believed. I also wanted to force myself to look into things deeper than I normally would. Teoscar is a player who has definitely helped me accomplish that.
