Even Justin Smoak Has Restraint With Two Strikes
Pitchers saw a 33% strikeout rate and got a little too greedy; now Smoak is making them pay the price
Justin Smoak has long been a familiar name to baseball fans. As a Texas farmhand, he developed into the 13th ranked prospect in Baseball America’s Top 100 by 2010. Not long into his Major League career, Smoak was traded as the headliner in a Cliff Lee blockbuster; Texas’ offer of Smoak was accepted over the Yankees’ offer of Jesus Montero, who was the 3rd ranked prospect on Baseball America’s list at the time.
From that point on, Justin Smoak did everything he could to prove that he would never amount to anything more than a AAA player. In 2,887 career plate appearances from 2010–2016, Smoak produced 0.2 Wins Above Replacement (WAR); if that isn’t the definition of “replacement player,” then I don’t know what is. Of course, then 2017 happened:
Identifying the adjustments Smoak has made to enjoy the success he has is a difficult task. Jeff Sullivan of FanGraphs pointed out that Smoak has made no major changes to his diet, exercise, swing, exit velocity, launch angle, or anything else that might be directly conducive to power. The only major change in Smoak’s vitals were a near 50% decrease in strikeout rate. Smoak struck out at a 33% clip last year, which would have been the highest in the league had he been qualified. This year Smoak is down to 18%, which is only the 96th highest in the league (or 67th lowest). Sullivan attributed Smoak’s low strikeout rate to selectivity with two strikes, as evidenced in this graphic:
Naturally, chasing less pitches with two strikes forces pitchers to give Smoak better pitches to hit, and he has definitely hit those. But while it’s easy to say Smoak has been a revelation because he suddenly learned how to avoiding chasing pitches down and out of the zone, I felt that there must be something more to it.
Smoak had a particularly high strikeout rate in the second half of last season, and opposing pitchers located their two strike pitches accordingly:
Obviously, pitchers were very effective. Smoak is a switch hitter (although naturally, he bats more often from the left side) and had to deal with a steady diet of pitches around and below the knees. One would presume that staying with this approach would remain effective at keeping Smoak chasing, but interestingly enough, pitchers have changed their approach.
This next plot is another two strike heatmap, this time for April of this year, before Smoak went on his tear (15 of his 19 home runs have come since May). If Smoak spent the early part of the season laying off bad pitches in two strike counts, then we can get a good sense of how pitchers approached him before being forced to throw up in the zone by examining his April.
Note: The sample size of results in this April plot is 30, which is actually more than the sample size of 24 in our previous July — Rest of 2016 Season graphic.
From the looks of it, pitchers were trying to get a little more greedy. They saw a guy who had an incredibly high strikeout rate in the second half of last year and decided to press the issue of making him chase pitches. Justin Smoak may be a free swinger with two strikes, but a player from the right side of the plate wouldn’t hit pitches that far away from him unless he had a boat oar. It’s easy to make a batter chase if you make a bad pitch to hit look good — that’s what we saw in the 2016 plot — but it’s no wonder Smoak has been able to lay off so many two strike pitches and force pitchers to throw him cookies inside the zone.
Justin Smoak has been a valuable player to a Blue Jays team that desperately needs one, and it’s a great story when a former top prospect who never met his lofty expectations finally does so in his 30s. Unfortunately, it seems like his success is predicated by the overcorrection that opposing pitchers made against him early this season. As long as pitchers keep throwing pitches that are clearly outside the zone to Smoak in two strike counts, he’ll keep laying off until he gets a pitch he can drive. Perhaps pitchers could stand to return to their previous approach from last season if they want him to return to his free swinging ways.
