Holy Sheets: Get Swept up in Gavin Sheets’ Torrid Start

What are you scared of? Like, if you close your eyes and imagine your deepest fear, what do you see? For me, it’s probably heights, or clowns, I’m not really sure. For Cleveland Guardians’ RHP Luis L. Ortiz, the answer is obvious: a 6’3”, 235-pound left-handed DH from Lutherville, Maryland.

Gavin Sheets faced Ortiz three times on a misty Monday night at Petco Park as the Padres sought a franchise record fifth straight win to open the season. They were three at-bats Ortiz would love to, but will not soon, forget. The two balls tracked by Statcast left the bat at 97.7 mph (two RBI, opposite-field double in the fifth) and 110.0 mph (single in the fourth). At the time of this writing, the third ball was not tracked by Statcast, likely due to the rain falling at the time interfering with Hawkeye cameras. However, from my seat along the 1st base line, I saw what was likely just as clear on television: Sheets line drive off the wall in RF was a Statcast “barrel”, a fact which will undoubtedly be confirmed if and when a correction is applied to the data to register the event. (As a San Diegan, I naturally have no idea how “weather correction” works for Hawkeye data, if at all.) 

Sheets' 2 RBI double in the 2nd inning with missing batted ball data. The 86.1 mph swing tied Jhonkensy Noel's 1st inning flyout as the fastest swings of the night on batted ball events.

Sheets capped his night with a walk off reliever Triston McKenzie, who appeared very rightly terrified to give him anything to hit. If his 3-for-3, 4 RBI, 2.667 OPS night against the Guardians was Sheets’ official coming out party, eliciting chants of "Holy Sheets" from the Petco Park crowd, his torrid start to the year was vindication for a Padres front office and coaching staff who saw their hands tied by what I have to assume was Sheets’ audition for MLB’s Home Run Derby during spring training. The non-roster invitee's six-hmer, 13-RBI, 1.077-OPS performance in Peoria made a clear case for his selection to the Opening Day roster.

But what does this all mean for the erstwhile White Sox outfielder? Where has this offensive surge come from, and how long will it last?

As much as Padres fans would all love to see Sheets maintain his 301 wRC+ mark all year, a stat truly worthy of a few "Holy Sheets," we know better than to read too much into 15 plate appearances (see also: reigning three-time batting champion Luis Arraez will not finish the season with a .056 batting average). However, we can look at batted ball, plate discipline, and bat speed from Baseball Savant, all of which stabilize a lot faster than wRC+ or OPS. As we dive in, keep in mind that we are still working with small sample sizes, even for these swing-level metrics, so they should be taken with an appropriately large grain of salt. 

In 2024, Sheets posted contact and plate discipline metrics around the 25th percentile. His 5.7% barrel and 35.3% hard-hit rates do not exactly inspire confidence. The contrast between these and his early 2025 numbers is quite stark, as one might imagine. Entering Monday, Sheets had nine batted ball events, and including his two tracked batted ball events from Monday night against the Guardians, he has a total of eight hard-hit batted balls and one barrel (his pinch-hit home run on Opening Day) in 11 events. Baseball Savant and Fangraphs erroneously include the "missing" batted ball event despite not having a measured EV for it, so they show 12 events. This is good for a 67% hard-hit rate and 8% barrel rate officially; that jumps to 73% hard-hit rate and a 9% barrel rate if we do the math correctly and divide by 11 events instead of 12, or to 75% hard-hit and 17% barrel rate if we believe his missing event from Monday was a barrel. In any case, Sheets has roughly doubled his 2024 season-long hard-hit and barrel numbers over a short sample to start 2024, his average EV is currently up around 10 mph from 87.8 mph to 96.8 mph and on Monday matched his 2024 Max EV (110.0 mph). While these are all good signs, early season barrel rates can be extremely fickle, as evidenced by the fact that we are quibbling over whether he has one or two barrels. In order to say anything definitive based on batted ball data, we need more sample. 

Gavin Sheets' 2024 and 2025 (as of April 1, 2025) hitting sliders from Baseball Savant.

In contrast to batted-ball data, plate discipline metrics offer us a bit more sample. Sheets had a 32.4% chase rate and 23.0% whiff rate in 2024, and his 2025 numbers appear to be largely consistent with these marks, if marginally better, at 28.9% chase rate and 21.4% whiff rate. While there is no obvious step forward in plate discipline, where these numbers eventually settle as we go from one week of data to one month of data will be important to watch. If Sheets can maintain a lower whiff rate while putting better contact on the ball, that will portend success. Indeed, Sheets' success on Monday came when he was absolutely locked in at the plate, hitting all three batted balls hard and joining Luis Arraez as the only two starters for either team to not record a single whiff. Sheets was able to consistently do damage in part because nothing Guardians' pitching did fooled him. 

Where batted ball events left us wanting for more sample and plate discipline metrics gave some hints, bat speed data offers us a more coherent and comprehensive view of Sheets' early success. Bat tracking burst onto Baseball Savant pages in May 2024, meaning this analysis would have to end here were we doing this one year ago, but thankfully the future is now and we have bat tracking. With the caveat that the same small sample concerns apply, Sheets' bat tracking numbers give us a way to make sense of both the plate discipline and batted ball data, along with offering a potential explanation for why this is happening.

Gavin Sheets bat tracking data for 2023, 2024, and 2025 compared to MLB average (bottom).

Let's focus on three parameters: bat speed, swing length, and squared-up rate. Sheets has added a modest 0.2 mph to his swing on average, but that has come at the cost of a swing which is 0.3 feet longer. This appears to be a wash on paper, since his swing got a bit faster but now has further to go. However, this is where squared-up rate and blasts, measures related to ideal contact rates, enter our calculus. Sheets' ideal contact rate has increased drastically over the short sample start to 2025 -- roughly doubling both the "per contact" and "per swing" of both squared-up and blast rates. This data, together with postgame comments about some approach tweaks, allows us to paint a picture here.

Imagine a reality where Gavin Sheets reported to Peoria sporting a 72.7-mph swing but inconsistent in his ability to make good contact. Padres hitting coach Victor Rodriguez, working with the 28-year-old, saw a way to tweak his swing to keep the sweet spot of his bat through the zone for longer. Trading a bit more swing length for a bit more swing speed, they were able to increase the effective cross-section of his bat through the zone, leading to a much higher rate of near-ideal contact. If that were the case, we would expect to see an uptick in offensive production driven by increases in average exit velocity, including rising hard-hit and barrel rates, along with lower whiff rates as his bat stays through the zone longer and makes contact more often. 

We are then left with two potential theories of the case for Gavin "Holy Sheets" Sheets: is his early-season offensive surge the result of deliberate adjustments to his swing path and stance (narrowed from 28.4 inches between his feet to 21.7 inches), or is it all just small sample noise? No one can know that answer for sure, after five games, but I intend to keep the faith.