Josh Bell is a Hard-Hitting Opposite-Field Machine

I don’t mean to over-hype anyone. Or maybe I do. I don’t know. I seek to provide an adequate amount of hype and keep things in perspective. That said, I’m pretty excited about Josh Bell. You may know him, you may not; he’s slated to be the Pirates’ primary first baseman, maybe with a little bit of backup outfielding thrown in. Josh Shepardson talked about him and his general skill set in November. Bell’s young and a several-time top prospect, although the highest he ever reached on any given list was MLB.com’s, at No. 34 overall prior to 2015. Nothing to sneeze at, but he never carried the same hype as, say, Yoan Moncada currently does. He’s Eric Longenhagen’s No. 50 prospect this year and KATOH’s No. 25. Knowing the gory math that goes into KATOH, I’m very partial to it. Also, all of this suggests I’m not early to any kind of party here. I’m reluctant to claim as much. I just can’t help but produce my own tributes every now and then.

Bell walked more than he struck out last year. As a rookie. That’s what gets to me. Not that it’s never been done before, and it’s not like it was a huge sample size — 153 plate appearances. I found plenty of examples in the last 25 years to compare; Bell’s rookie season is almost a dead ringer for that of Doug Mientkiewicz, a first-ballot Surname Hall of Famer but otherwise mediocre ballplayer with a decent three-year peak.

Where Bell diverges from Mientkiewicz — and everyone else, for that matter — is his hard-hit rate (Hard%). Mientkiewicz decidedly did not hit the ball hard. Among rookies since 2002 (because that’s as far back as our batted ball data from Baseball Info Solution dates) who notched at least a .130 isolated power (ISO), none hit the ball as hard as Bell. Again, small samples, but this is already a decent list to top.

When we expand the sample from rookies to all hitters in that same timeframe, things become even more interesting. Here’s a list of every hitter, in no particular order, who, in any given season, minimum 150 PAs, achieved (1) more walks than strikeouts, (2) an ISO better than .130, and (3) a hard-hit rate better than 33 percent.

Maybe this counts as over-hyping someone.

Where Bell diverges from that list — resoundingly, I might add — is in his batted ball spray. As Shepardson noted, Bell hit to the opposite field almost 43 percent of the time. No other hitter in the sample topped 40 percent, let alone 36 percent. Expand the sample to include all hitters — not just the ones who met the aforementioned criteria — and his oppo rate (Oppo%) would rank among the top-10 in the last 15 years. Given his approach, he, perhaps unsurprisingly, didn’t hit a ton of true fly balls. We’re getting into Michael Young territory now — specifically the 2008 version of him, which produced comparable hard-hit and oppo rates as well as a similarly suppressed rate of home runs to fly balls (HR/FB). Accordingly, Bell has a bit of a 2016 DJ LeMahieu flavor to him as well and is not quite as extreme as Christian Yelich’s unique profile.

The caveat must be reiterated: 150 PAs is not a lot of playing time. Anyone can kick ass for a fourth of a season. Still, Bell already seems like a unique baseball specimen — one with a very deliberate and efficacious opposite-field approach that may not immediately translate into power but should bode well for his batting average. Indeed, various iterations of my xBABIP equation (1.0, 2.0) pegged Bell for a .320-.335ish batting average on balls in play (BABIP) last year. And the plate discipline is legitimate; his chase rate (O-Swing%) and contact on outside pitches (O-Contact%) ranked in the 84th and 86th percentiles, respectively. His zone contact (Z-Contact%) ranks at about the median, which is weird, but it’s still good, and it suggests to me there’s room for growth in that regard. (Or maybe it’s his O-Contact% that regresses. Who knows.) I have a thing for switch-hitting plus-contact guys.

Where does that leave us? Hard to say, mostly because we haven’t really seen a hitter quite like Bell, at least in the context of newer advanced metrics at our disposal. He should play almost full time and could easily hit .300 but with maybe 15 home runs and a handful of stolen bases. It’s atypical for a first baseman, but it’ll do — it’s something like peak Joe Mauer before he actually moved to first base (but not that silly season during which he hit 28 home runs). So I guess that wasn’t actually a very good comp. But, whatever. You get it. He’ll deliver value, and it’s important to know there’s power in the tank when he starts to elevate more. I hear launch angles are in these days.

It’s doubtful Bell finishes the season a top-15 mixed-league first baseman, but he could make a decent outfielder where he has eligibility. He was the 13th National League first baseman off the board, though, per the National Fantasy Baseball Championship (NFBC), and I think it would take some kind of disaster to prevent him from turning a profit on that draft price.

(Some of you may mention Bell’s splits versus left-handed pitching, as Paul Sporer did in January. Valid as the concerns may be, I’m reluctant to rule out anyone using 23 Major League PAs as the rationale. No matter how anemic his production may eventually be against lefties, if he can continue to strike out only 13 percent of the time against them, he should be able to hold his own; the contact skills, both past and present, suggest as much.)





Two-time FSWA award winner, including 2018 Baseball Writer of the Year, and 8-time award finalist. Featured in Lindy's magazine (2018, 2019), Rotowire magazine (2021), and Baseball Prospectus (2022, 2023). Biased toward a nicely rolled baseball pant.

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noseeummember
6 years ago

Major major typo! “Bell struck out more than he walked last year.” Left me totally confused there for a bit. Once I figured that out, thanks for the info.