Turning Smoak Into Fire with Hernandez & Grichuk

One month into the regular season, Randal Grichuk’s tenure with the Blue Jays is off to a horrendous start. At the same time that Grichuk has struggled, Teoscar Hernandez has picked up where he left off last September, slugging .632 through sixteen games since his mid-April call up.

It doesn’t take a genius to point out that Grichuk (who was just sent to the DL) isn’t this bad and Hernandez isn’t this good. Or that Grichuk and Hernandez are actually very similar players. Both players lack plate discipline – they walk infrequently (although Hernandez has walked in the minor leagues and so far this season) and both players have been striking out around 30 percent of the time to this point in there careers.

These offensive holes have prevented Grichuk from providing much more than league average production in the major leagues for any extended period of time. They also prevented Hernandez from being viewed as an elite prospect. The swing and miss in their games means slumps like Grichuk’s are going to happen; don’t be surprised to see Teoscar hit a similar skid at some point this season. And don’t be surprised if you see Grichuk go off like Teoscar has, either.

Despite their warts, they both excel at one offensive skill: hitting the ball hard. Both Grichuk and Hernandez have shown strong batted ball skills as measured by exit velocity, hard contact percentage, and barrels per plate appearance.

Seeing as the Jays traded for both Grichuk and Hernandez, it appears the team’s front office values the high exit velocity/swing and miss hitter profile more than some organizations.

Is it possible that the Jays see the same thing in Hernandez and Grichuk that they did in their 2017 breakout player, Justin Smoak?

Smoak is a lot more similar to the two athletic outfielders than you think. Smoak was 37th in all of baseball in average exit velocity (90.4 mph) between 2015 and 2017. Of major leaguers who put at least 100 balls in play, he ranked 8th in barrels per plate appearance in 2017 and 18th in 2015 (although he did drop to 67th in 2016). Smaok doesn’t get much press as an exit velocity darling, likely because he was doing some of his barreling and exit velo damage before it was cool. But just like Hernandez and Grichuk, Smoak was hitting the ball on the screws pretty often for someone who owned a career wRC+ of 95 heading into 2017.

Smoak also had a strikeout problem. It wasn’t as pronounced as Hernandez (28%) or Grichuk’s (30%) but Smoak’s strikeout rate had been creeping up gradually, year over year, and reached 33% in 2016.

Then Smoak’s breakout happened. As Travis Sawchik noted, (link) Smoak was able to cut his strikeout rate by making more contact both inside and out of the strike zone (contact rates that he has carried into 2018 so far despite a slow start).  Something he attributed to “I stopped trying to hit home runs”.

Is the path to offensive improvement for Hernandez or Grichuk making more contact?

For Grichuk, it appears as though his O-Contact% and Z-Contact% numbers have trended in the wrong direction this season – 52.8% and 76.1% compared to 55.1 and 81.5 for his career. But this downward trend would be true for even an elite bat-to-ball hitter in the midst of a slump.

Hernandez, however, does appear to be making more contact in his 75 plate appearances (hellooooo small sample size). So far this year, Hernandez’s in-zone contact percentage (82%) is up from his career mark of 77% while his out-of-zone contact percentage (52%) is in line with his career mark (53%). As a result his strikeout rate has dropped.

Like Smoak, Hernandez has maintained the same overall swing percentage (51% this year compared 50% last season) while improving his contact rates. Grichuk has reduced his overall swing percentage (47% compared to 52% for his career) and the results have not been pretty.

The season on the whole is only four weeks old. Hernandez’ is only three weeks old. Plate discipline statistics require a lot of information (ideally a full season’s) before they can indicate a real trend. They can also be subject fluctuation during a player’s hot or cold streaks.

Smoak’s breakout last year could give us an indication of what to look for when determining if a breakout is happening for Hernandez or Grichuk. If the Blue Jays think they can work with Hernandez and Grichuk to improve their contact rates, like they did with Smoak, it’s possible the outfielders could take their offensive production to another level, and sustain it.

Maybe Hernandez has begun to do that. With 282 career plate appearances to his name, he is very much an unfinished major league product. Despite his early season struggles, Grichuk still appears to be barreling the baseball better than almost anyone in the major leagues. As the season rolls on, if Hernandez is able to maintain his increased contact percentage, or Grichuk is able to increase his, expect bigger things from them moving forward.