In 2020, I was tasked with completing the Baseball America Prospect Handbook section on the Pittsburgh Pirates. This required doing the top 30 prospect report and writing up individual player reports for their annual book. One thing that always stands out to me about this process were the reports on Nick Gonzales.
I hadn’t seen much of Gonzales, who was drafted seventh overall in 2020 out of New Mexico State. I was relying on BA’s scouting reports from the draft. The loftiest had him as a future batting champion, with a chance to win multiple times. I’ll be honest that I’ve never seen that batting title potential out of Gonzales in the years since. That is, until this season.
Gonzales has always been a hard worker. He’s a “first to the field, last to leave” type of guy. He’s going to go all-out with his full energy spent on every play on the field. He’s got some of the quickest hands of any hitter in the system, with some of the best hand-eye coordination, and quick powerful wrists for a shortened-reaction swing. This profile should lead to good hitting results. There has been something wrong with the swing from Gonzales since he entered pro ball.
At the end of 2022, I talked with Gonzales about some of the changes he was working on at the plate. The biggest issue was that his bat wouldn’t stay in the zone long enough. His hand-eye coordination and quick bat speed was working against him. He could put the bat to the ball out in front of the plate, but if the pitch he was trying to get in front of was a breaking pitch, his bat didn’t stay in the zone long enough and would swing up over those offerings.
Below is a look at some highlights from Gonzales in the majors in 2023. You’ll notice that he’s almost rushing out to hit the ball in front of the plate, with a quick and somewhat compact swing that leads to speed out of the box.
The above are the highlights from Gonzales, so the results are going to look good. That wasn’t the case when you look at his batted ball data from the 2023 season, via Baseball Savant.
The only area where Gonzales rated average or better was with his chase rate. He wasn’t finding the barrel or sweet spot, he wasn’t hitting the ball hard, and he wasn’t hitting.
Gonzales is having much better results in 2024.
