Meaningful to us or not, the Isotopes lineup has been torching the PCL of late. The following doesn’t include last night’s multi-home run Ryan Ritter outing, but the 15 days before that:
Hard not to wonder if this is a product of easier competition, as a whole lineup doesn’t typically get scorching hot together. But everyone is hitting bombs except young Yanquiel, huh? Through 4/23, he had 7 bombs on the campaign. Today, 5/30, he’s still sitting on 7. Where has the power production gone? I can’t say I have a bunch of answers for you, but I did take a look at a lot of things:
Don’t be overwhelmed. We’ll walk through this together.
On the surface, 2/3 of the slash line is the same, but slugging has dropped 280 points. The average EV may have dropped a tick, but no flags. The low K rates have held. Looking at the batted ball, we see he’s hitting more balls on the ground. The 48.8 GB% aligns more with his career than the previous 39%. We see he’s hitting more line drives during the drought, but the 14.6% fly ball rate is going to sap HRs, of course; furthermore, the flyball quality seems to pale in comparison. He was making better contact prior, and flyballs have turned into groundballs and line drives. A home run drought checks out. But why? Is there a why? Yanquiel is another of a long line of young, aggressive hitters from this org, so of course, wonderment over his approach ensues. Have there been any changes? I’ve seen many Rockies’ young bats go through some changes (or attempts at) by trying to tone down an ultra-aggressive approach. Is that part of the story here?
We aren’t going to delve deep into every aspect of whether Yanquiel is toning it down or not; we could be here forever, but there are some noteworthy tidbits. Since the arbitrary divide between his last home run, he is swinging at less 0–0 counts. We see the contact going more to the ground. We see the quality of shapes and production drop significantly on 0–0. Chicken or the egg, who is to say? The same story goes for the second and third pitches of ABs, and the harder to wrangle in, 0–2 counts.
Is this seemingly less aggressive 0–0 approach due to how he’s being attacked? As far as Yanquiel seeking a specific offering 0–0, I haven’t come away with that opinion in years past, and the Savant data from this season seems to show a non-discriminating aggressive 0–0 hitter:
0–0 pitch types put into play whole season:
before HR drought
after HR drought
Is it a matter of 0–0 locations? I didn’t delve into the Statcast here, but my inclination is to say no. Yanquiel has a long history of being a see strike, attack strike kind of bat. As far as pitch types go, and you will see this a bit in the video, the only noteworthy takeaway was what might be a little issue (or rough patch, or blip, or growing pain) with offspeed, particularly on the second pitch.
It doesn’t appear he’s getting fewer 0–0 strikes than previously. Although the ruler used here isn’t the greatest, as his decisions play into the strike earning, my inclination again is to think this isn’t quite it either. He does seem to have toned down chase a smidge since his last home run. Some metrics are going in the right direction here, but again, all the damage seems to have disappeared. Is this an example for us pro-aggressive hitters to point at and claim that taking a guy’s aggressiveness away makes him impotent at the plate? It’s probably far more complicated than that, but I thought hey…let’s see what the video shows, at least the 0–0 approach. There are 27 (28 now) instances Yanquiel took an 0–0 strike. Pre-drought video is black n white. Post is in color with some takeaways from the AB afterwards:
0–0 takes for strike 1 on the season:
0–0 called strikes before, goes 0 for 6 with 1 BB, 2 K
0–0 called strikes after, goes 8 for 19, 1 BB, 2 K
Like I said, I wasn’t promising many answers, but I do think it’s safe to say that of late, there does seem an effort to try and pass on 0–0 offerings by Fernandez. At least at times. Who or what is driving that, we can’t say with much conviction, but one of the org’s many issues is having too many young aggressive hitters in the MLB lineup at the same time over the past few seasons. Being one who has watched a lot of hitters in this system over the last five seasons (and suffered through a lot of MLB games these prospect bats played in), this Fernandez dive isn’t a unique look. Tovar, Toglia, Jones, Goodman, Beck, Montero…I’ve seen all of them go through periods where taking 0–0 seemed a plan. We could debate for days on the merits or lackthereof during their turns with such an approach. On one hand, you can point to guys like Nolan Jones and Elehuris Montero and how toning 0–0 appraoch down sapped their production. Those stories too, aren’t that simple, but it sure seemed a part of the story. Some, like Tovar, who was very much not swinging at 0–0 pitches to start this season, and came back from injury on an obviously more subdued approach, getting on base at an insane pace, but not slugging how he was as “the worst swing decision-maker” in baseball. Fernandez is still only 22 years old and finding himself as a hitter. We will see him in the bigs at some point, and when we do, 0–0 is going to be an interesting watch. How much buy-in will there be (another Rockies chapter I could go on about, particularly with Zac Veen?) Is toning it done going to prove a sabotage like it seemed with Montero? Will it lead to more damage as he settles into the approach? We might be fixing to find out the rest of 2025. But as you can see, these things can take time. A third of a season goes by and you only get a handful of ABs that might glean something on the matter.