ALTOONA – Reese McGuire has been rated as one of the best defensive catchers in minor league baseball, ranked as the best defensive catching prospect by MLB Pipeline back in January. Although he continues to be ranked as one of the best overall prospects in the Pirates’ system, his bat has been behind the glove from a developmental standpoint. For his career, his .270 batting average does not look terrible; however, the .652 OPS is mediocre at best, and the .057 ISO is simply not good.
Contrarily, McGuire has recently hit a hot stretch from the plate, as his numbers from the last two weeks are a complete 180° from the beginning of the year. Take a look for yourself.
“There hasn’t really been anything mechanically,” McGuire said about the changes in his recent at-bats. “I don’t even think about a swing plane or anything like that. I just try to hit the ball hard wherever it’s pitched — square it up and hit it hard. You can’t really control the results; you can control is hitting the ball hard.”
From a quick glance, it looks as if McGuire has found something to turn around his early season slump. Obviously, most people would recognize that a player batting .200 with a pedigree and expectations like McGuire would make a turnaround at some point, and he has done some great things recently for the Curve with a .406 average and .897 OPS over the last couple of weeks. It’s also not a coincidence that Altoona went on an eight game winning streak almost at the exact same time that McGuire began producing from the plate.
Of course, when a player goes on a streak like McGuire has, you understand that the level of production that McGuire is giving the Curve at the plate is difficult to be sustainable over a long stretch of time. However, you can hope that the changes and work put in by a player will result in a higher level of normalcy once they come back down from that mountaintop. In McGuire’s case, the before and after of his latest stretch are two separate extremes, and the hope would be that he could fall back somewhere in the middle.
I wanted to see if there were some other statistics to back up what McGuire has been doing lately at the plate. Unfortunately, my findings do not quite bode well for the youngster from a statistical standpoint.
Of course you see the batting average being on two extreme sides of the spectrum. Next, I usually jump to a player’s Batting Average of Balls in Play to see if there is an extreme difference in that statistic. In McGuire’s case, there is. His BABIP more than doubled over the past two weeks compared to the beginning of the year. That tells me one of two things — either he has figured something out or he has been getting extremely lucky. The middle ground between “figuring it out” and lucky would be the norm for a professional hitter, as both play a role in being productive at the plate (with “having it figured out” getting you to the major leagues for the most part). His BABIP of .211 before May 8th is extremely low, even for a struggling hitter. As long as you are getting the ball in play, a professional hitter can produce a BABIP in the upper 200s, and that wasn’t the case with McGuire. On the flip side, a .406 BABIP is pretty high, and it shows that a regression is bound to occur at some point.
The next few numbers tell more of the story for McGuire. His isolated power has stayed close to the same. He only has four extra base hits in 94 at-bats this season, which simply isn’t good enough. His total ISO for the season is .060, which is rated as very poor by Fangraphs’ metrics; however, it is an increase from last season in Bradenton when McGuire had an ISO of only .040. Simply speaking, McGuire’s career isolated power is .060, which shows that he has yet to totally figure out how to get the most power from his bat as a professional hitter. He did show signs of that pop last fall in the Arizona Fall League, but he has fallen back to his career norm so far this year.
Next, it is worth noting that major league ground ball percentage hasn’t fluctuated much over the last 13 years, as batters had an average GB% between 43.3-45.1% every year. Major leaguers average a line drive rate around 20% – between 18.2-22.5% in each year over the last 13 years.
McGuire has produced a ground ball percentage over 52% in every year he has been a professional. He has improved upon his line drive rate every year since he went pro — hitting line drives 18.4% of the time last season in Bradenton. It is back down around 15% so far this season.
Looking at his GB% and LD% is what worries me about his recent stretch of production, as he has actually hit less line drives in the span, and the ground ball rate hasn’t fluctuated all that much.
So… give me some positives here.
It really feels like I just wrote a lot to try to prove that McGuire is still not hitting well; however, there are positives to look at from what he is doing at the plate. First of all, he is average 1.889 walks for every time he strikes out. That is an absolutely terrific rate — especially for a young hitter at the Double-A level. He is one of the best in the Pirates’ system at protecting the plate with the bat, and that surely cannot be overlooked. His BB rate of 14.4% is the highest it has ever been in his career, and his strikeout rate of 7.6% is the lowest. Not enough can be said of a hitter that knows how to protect the plate, take walks, and not strikeout. You cannot teach a player to have an eye quite like that, and McGuire should be able to take that as he continues to improve.
You also need to remember that it was only last fall that McGuire performed extremely well in Arizona, and he is not far removed from that experience. For the Glendale Desert Dogs, McGuire was facing higher level pitching, and he hit better than any time in his career. He saw his strikeout rate jump a little, but it is possible that he will need to attack the zone a little more — meaning more strikeouts — to get after balls that he can drive into the gaps.
“It was a great experience for me getting out there and playing in a different environment,” McGuire said of the Arizona Fall League. “I found some success and brought some confidence into this year.”
Tim Williams was able to catch up with Hitting Coordinator Larry Sutton and talked with him about what McGuire did in the Arizona Fall League that led to his success. Sutton explained that they helped McGuire “find a better balance point that is going to help him attack any pitch in any count with his approach.”
“When we talk about being aggressive and being committed to what he wants to hit, the adjustments we helped him make allow him to do that more,” Sutton explained on McGuire’s selectivity at the plate. “It allows him to be able to take a risk and attack rather than just trying to make contact with the ball.”
McGuire’s aggressiveness in Bradenton last year was not what the Pirates wanted to see from him, as he too often went after “pitcher’s pitches” — down in zone or just off the corners — early in the count rather than staying disciplined to his plan of attack. Sutton said that McGuire has improved upon that this season, trying to be more picky on his best pitch to hit and driving pitcher’s mistakes.
Through all of the ups-and-downs, McGuire really does seem to have a level head. As one of the youngest players in Double-A baseball, his maturity and respect for the game speaks volumes.
“Honestly, you sometimes can’t control whether a ball drops or not,” he told Pirates Prospects. “I’ve hit a lot of hard balls right at people in my career, and they go as an 0-for-1 in the books. When I go back to the dugout, that’s a great at-bat for me, though. Balls fell in the AFL, so my average was a little bit higher. Some balls drop here or there during the season, it’s the same outcome.”
Sutton agrees that McGuire has the maturity and savvy nature to continue to improve. He just needs to completely sell out to his approach at the plate.
“Now, it’s just a matter of him feeling confident and selling out to the approach,” Sutton said. “Win, fail, or whatever, ‘I’m going to continue to do this’. Now, he can learn what pitches to drive and continue with his strengths as a hitter.”
The recent Francisco Cervelli contract will actually benefit McGuire, as there will be no need for his arrival in Pittsburgh for a few years. With Chris Stewart under contract until after next season, there will not be a rush for Elias Diaz to get back to Pittsburgh quickly this year, as he is returning from right elbow surgery later this summer. This trickle down will positively affect McGuire, who should be able to get the extra time at Double-A for his hitting to continue to develop and catch up with his defensive skills.
