P2Daily: Jack Suwinski Showing He Belongs Despite Bad Luck

When the Pirates sent Jack Suwinski to the minors this spring, the initial thought was that he wasn’t going to be one of the first call-ups should the major league team need an outfielder.

Fast forward to now, and Suwinski leads all NL rookies in home runs after his game-tying three-run shot against the Colorado Rockies on Wednesday.

Jack-Jack Suwinski! pic.twitter.com/MLKG6K3g2B

— Pittsburgh Pirates (@Pirates) May 25, 2022

It hasn’t been all pretty. Despite the five home runs, Suwinski is currently batting below the Mendoza line with a .188 average, and has struck out 26.7% of his plate appearances.

Despite that, he hasn’t looked completely out of place, and depending on how much you buy into analytics, there is actually a lot there that makes a strong case for a huge turnaround.

While the exit velocity is a tad below major league average (86.7, 88.4 ML average), it’s ground balls weighing that down. His average exit velocity on fly balls and line drives is 94.6.

Two other things that Suwinski excels in is chase rate, and barrel percentage. He chases pitches only 23.5% of the time, with the major league average being 28.3%. He also barrel ups balls 10.9% of the time, which is three-points higher than the average.

A ‘barrel’ is the perfect combination of launch angle and exit velocity.

One last number is his average of balls put in play, which for Suwinski is .192. Typically the average BABIP is around .300. For a bigger perspective, the Arizona Diamondbacks and Houston Astros have the worst team BABIP at .261, 69-points higher than Suwinski’s total.

If we just adjust the math to get Suwinski around the lowest teams mark (19 hits), that bumps Suwinski’s average to .238, which would be the fifth best mark on the Pirates for players with at least 20 games played.

We saw the Pirates get more aggressive with the younger players, and Wednesday’s victory was sparked by mostly them. The best part about Suwinski’s situation is that they have stuck with him to allow him time to learn and grow as a major league player.

We’ll have to wait and see if the numbers play to a jump, which would be impressive since even looking past his average, he’s showing he can be a player that sticks on this roster the rest of the season.