Travis Snider’s Strikeouts
Travis Snider has been back in the major leagues for a little over a month now. Needless to say, he’s still on the learning curve. Over the last 30 days Snider is reaching base 32.7% of the time and has a .407 slugging percentage. He’s just shy of performing like a big league hitter, minus one aspect. In this ~100 at-bat sample, he’s striking out nearly 47% of the time.
Snider’s 65.6% contact rate over that timeframe is surprisingly not the lowest in baseball (Mark Reynolds, Brad Hawpe, and Jason Bay are blocking him from that dubious honor) but he is in the bottom five. Snider showcased similar issues with contact in a much smaller sample last season and has always possessed a tendency to whiff a decent amount. Baseball America highlighted this as a major concern in their pre-season scouting report of Snider:
Because lefthanders threw him a steady diet of offspeed pitches—even in hitter’s counts—Snider struggled versus southpaws in the high minors, hitting a mere .233/.295/.310 in a limited sample of 116 Double-A and Triple-A at-bats. Showing a more patient approach could help him overcome this shortcoming, as he showed a tendency toward free swinging as he moved up the ladder. It’s not a long-term concern if he refines his approach to the point where he’s confident hitting with two strikes.
His power potential is yet to show up in the majors either. A .175 ISO is nothing to write home about, but a .326 ISO posted during his 200 plate appearance stint in Triple-A this season is. Nobody expects him to hit for that much power on a consistent basis, just a little bit more above league average would be a nice starting point.
Snider is only 21-years-old so there’s plenty of time for him to mature. In the meanwhile, opposing pitchers are going to pad their strikeout totals against him.
5
Well he is young as you point out but throughout his minor league career he has a high K per PA rate. While I think he’ll be a plus MLB contributor, Snider strikes me (unintentional pun) as an Adam Dunn minus the walks (Good power, lower BA, terrible fielding)
Snider can’t catch up to a fastball, i have yet to see him hit cheddar right down broadway with authority, so I bet his swing is too long to do anything more than guessing and hacking away. His OBP is .100 above his average, so he is seeing the ball well, but he can’t hit the good pitches.
Oh please Joe. He’s 21 – can’t expect him to catch up to a high 90′s fastball yet.
More like high 80′s actually, everything over 90 he can’t catch up to.
There must be a lot of house leaguers playing in AAA then.
Which is why he got two singles today on 95mph fastballs each… wah wah wah.
Oh, you mean that lucky bounce on a routine groundball, and a groundball that snuck through the infield. Even a hitter cheating on pitches and just hacking away will get lucky sometimes.
Travis Snider has power, but his lack of consistency makes him a replacement level player at best (according to FanGraphs).
Statistics for rookies are like that of fighter pilots; equating one full year to one combat mission, one in five doesn’t survive the first one; barely more than half survive the fifth one.
I’m not understanding how much value to put in the contact rate stat. One would think that generally, high contact guys would hit for high averages and low contact guys would strike out more and hit for lower averages. But if you look at the lowest 21 contact rates this year you see:
Hawpe
Bay (next to Dunn)
Ibanez
Kemp (next to Uggla)
Votto
and other strange names
Without even crunching the numbers, one would not consider any of the above a batting average liability and Kemp and Votto are career .300 hitters.
I know the components of batting average are:
BABIP (which involves a batted ball profile plus a player’s speed)
HR (or power to hit the ball with authority)
K%
but how much value should we assign to contact rates and K% when Bay, Hawpe, Votto and Kemp are in the same class as low average guys like Uggla and Dunn?
When I need AVG help, I look for great contact and line drive rates, but that doesn’t always work. James Loney is hitting about the same as Dunn, but with a 11% K%, 23% LD% and 89% contact rate (compared to Dunn’s 33%, 21%, 73%).
And at one point early this season, Justin Upton and Jack Cust had the same K%, batted ball profile and contact rates, but Upton was hitting about fifty points higher.
AVG is such a frustrating thing to project…….
For Snider gettin all the press as a can’t miss prospect, everyone’s over looked Adam LInd. He’s more the real deal.
Lind stopped being a prospect when he lost rookie eligibility, which was a long time ago.
Adam Dunn might be a stretch but maybe a poor man’s Jason Bay?
Snider is young. His swing is very fluid and quick, and happens in one motion. As he matures, it is obvious that his recognition of major league pitches will improve. His issue at this point is identifying the breaking ball and adjusting to the fastball; the result is a lot of hacks on high fastballs and breaking balls out of the zone. There is no denying the talent or his swing.
I see him as a high power/high average upside. Even with a big K rate, as he establishes himself he will walk far more often, making him very dangerous.
As a fielder, as someone mentioned, I think he is also underrated…his arm and general skillset fits the RF mold quite well. Lefty Carlos Lee? We’ll see.