What Padres' Miguel Andujar Lacks In Patience, He Makes Up For In Contact

[TomCent]

Miguel Andujar has been one of the San Diego Padres’ most aggressive, but also one of their most valuable, hitters this season.

He has drawn exactly three walks in 122 plate appearances and was sporting one of the highest chase rates of his career as the club opened a weekend series Friday in Seattle against the Mariners. His patience at the plate was really short during the club's previous series, against the Brewers in Milwaukee. He swung at 26 of the 43 pitches he saw in the three games. That's a 60 percent rate. And yet, after all that swinging, he was second on the club with a 126 wRC+, trailing only Luis Campusano.

How is Andujar able to maintain a high level of production when he seems to be swinging at everything? It comes down to the fact that this is who Andujar is and it works for him.

Start with his swing. He attacks the ball at a 7-degree angle, one of the most shallow on the club, according to Baseball Savant. The bat is mostly level as it enters the zone. That's one reason why his squared-up rate was in the 81st percentile entering Friday.

But level doesn't necessarily mean all fields with Andujar. His 46.2 percent pull rate through May 15 was three points higher than the full-season career high he set during his breakout 2019 campaign with the New York Yankees. His 24.2 percent pull air rate was a fraction below his career best, which he also set in 2019. His attack direction was five degrees to the pull side, trailing just Campusano and Nick Castellanos among the club's pull-heavy hitters. A 10-degree average helps explain why he had just three home runs, one of which came off a hanging breaking ball by the Brewers' Brandon Sproat on Tuesday.  

The pull approach makes him vulnerable off the plate and, indeed, Andujar will expand the zone. His 38.2 percent chase rate through that Brewers series put him in the 10th percentile league-wide. But he can get to those pitches. He entered Friday's game second on the club with a 67.9 chase contact rate, trailing only Gavin Sheets. He was batting .412 against sinkers and .357 against sweepers. (On the other hand, he was batting .222 against four-seamers.) That level of plate coverage helps explain his 19.5 percent strikeout rate (61st percentile) and 19.6 percent whiff rate (79th percentile).

All of that is the long way of saying that Andujar knows how to succeed as a free swinger and “bad ball” hitter. Expect him to stay on the attack, even if it means passing up a free trip to first base every now and again.

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