Tom Brennan - BASEBALL CONTRARIANS JEFF MCNEIL AND WILLIANS ASTUDILLO

BASEBALL CONTRARIANS JEFF MCNEIL & WILLIANS ASTUDILLO


This is a new era in baseball:

An era of high, high home run totals

Coupled with:

High, high strikeout totals.

Two guys stick out as contrarians to that major league thrust of "All or Nothing At All" hitting:

The Mets' Jeff McNeil, now a favorite of Mets fans.

And

Willians Astudillo, catcher for the Minnesota Twins.

Why Contrarians?

Because both like to a) hit for average and b) not strike out.

Jeff McNeil, through April 26, in his career was hitting .339/.397/.481 in 344 plate appearances in the big leagues.  

Quite a few unbelievers thought he would regress in 2019 from his stellar, less-than-half-season .329 average of 2018, but he was hitting .365 in his first 96 PAs in 2019, so he seems to be upping his game instead.

He adheres to the old motto - hit 'em where they ain't.   He also understands that a 380 foot fly ball to a part of the park that is 390 feet will simply show up as an out in the box score.

Jeff has just 33 Ks in those 344 plate appearances, in a day and age where striking out less than once every ten times up should result in receiving a medal.

Willians Astudillo takes that "let's not strike out" mentality to a whole new level.   

The older brother of Mets catching lower minors prospect Wilfred Astudillo, the Twins catcher has been to the plate 49 times, walked just once, but is hitting .313 and has struck out ONCE.

Fluke?  Nope.  Last year, in his Twins debut, Astudillo was up 95 times, walked just twice, but hit an amazing .355 and fanned just THREE TIMES.  

So, in his big league career, he has fanned just 4 times in nearly 150 plate appearances.  In this day and age of ultra high velocity pitchers, that is utterly remarkable - and his MLB career slug % is a terrific .518.  

Remarkably, in almost 95% of his plate appearances, he puts the ball in play, walking and fanning less than 5% of the time!

His extreme avoidance of Ks is nothing new for Astudillo.   

From 2015 through 2018 in the minors, he had 1,113 official at bats and fanned just 40 times.

These two guys prove that you can hit for high average and accumulate very few strikeouts, even in this "High, high strikeouts" era of baseball.  

It is surprising that so few try to emulate them, since they do prove it can be done.

Of course, Mets fan might wonder if the "Low K" approach of Willians carries over to brother and Mets prospect Wilfred.  

The answer is, not to the same degree, but YES.

The just-turned-19 Wilfred will be playing in rookie ball in 2019, apparently, since he is not now in full season ball.  

However, in roughly 350 minor league plate appearances, mostly in the DSL but with 50 at bats in 2018 in the rookie Gulf Coast League, he's hit .277/.351/.360 and fanned just 33 times, or less than a 10% K rate.  

That kind of contact rate could find itself in Citifield in, say, 3 years.  

Contrarians like Jeff McNeil and Willians Astudillo can succeed in baseball.  More should try to be contrarians, too....they might just get there, too.